Genre: Drama? Comedy?
Premise: Inspired by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, The Libertine follows the aftermath of a French politician accused of sexually mistreating a hotel maid.
About: A hot spec script that sold to Warner Brothers a few months ago from Ben Kopit, an up-and-coming screenwriter who only recently graduated from UCLA’s MFA screenwriting program.
Writer: Ben Kopit
Details: 99 pages
This script has gotten a lot of heat around town the last few months. The only reason I’ve avoided it is because it’s not my thing. I don’t even know who Dominque Strauss-Khan is, nor do I care about world leaders in other countries and their extracurricular activities.
But the script won’t go away. It finished high on the just-released Hit List, and with its political leanings, you can bet your ass the politics-obsessed Black List is going to give it high marks. Which brings us to today. I guess I’m reviewing The Libertine!
Maurice Lunel-Caspi, 60, is a major player in the French government. Which makes the fact that he inappropriately touched a maid at a New York hotel a big deal. The maid went to the police, and now Maurice is being kept in New York on house arrest until trial, where his media titan wife, Edith, is reluctantly staying with him.
“Reluctantly” may actually be an understatement. Edith HATES her husband. Not because she knows he’s guilty, but because she knows he’s been fucking anything with a protruding chest for as long as they’ve been together, and therefore, it’s likely that whatever he’s been accused of is true.
The Libertine is possibly the most unambitious screenplay I’ve read this year. All we do for 99 minutes is hang out in this dreadfully boring apartment while Maurice, Edith, and their angry daughter, Jaqueline, argue. I guess later on, Maurice’s lawyer makes an appearance to update him on what’s happening with the charges. And maybe that could be considered “story.” But it’s dealt with so passively that it could just as easily be seen as an interruption.
In the end, the fighting only increases, and everyone’s hate for one another grows from a 7 to an all out 10, until finally, in the end, through no doing of our characters’ actions (because god forbid our characters actually have an effect on the story) Maurice learns that the charges against him have been dropped because the maid has some shady immigration issues.
Were you one of the people who, after seeing Jobs, said to yourself, “Man, I wish there was a movie out there with a main character 180,000 times more of an asshole than this guy,” then my friends, I’ve found you your movie!
I have never – I don’t think in all of my script reading – read a script with a more deplorable main character. I don’t know if Maurice touched this maid or not (and neither does the script – it’s not interested in exploring anything that involves mystery, drama, interest, or suspense). But what I do know is that this married gentleman whose wife has given him unimaginable wealth, invites over prostitutes the second she leaves the building, jacks off when he’s bored, goes to online sex chat rooms to order women around, takes his wife’s favorite pen and, when she’s not around, rubs it inside his crotch and asshole before replacing it, and after somehow finally getting his wife to care enough about him to have sex with him again, starts surfing porn sites not five minutes later.
But here’s the thing about The Libertine. It’s not just Maurice. EVERYBODY in this script has more anger, sadness, evilness, negativity, narcissism, whininess, and overall shitiness than anyone you will ever meet in your life. Edith, the wife, is a bitch as well. And the one person who had a chance at being a likable character, the social crusading daughter who hates what her dad has done, is just as big of an asshole as her parents.
Everybody just yells at each other here. And there’s NO STORY. NONE! What is the goal? What is anybody attempting to do?? Even the problem, the thing that needs to be dealt with, is being tackled by a lawyer character in a storyline that never reaches the screen. So we’re not even seeing the interesting stuff. We’re just watching these miserable despicable human beings argue while the real story happens behind them.
The killer for me was the mid-point. We get this dinner scene with another man being kept under house arrest in the same building – a financial swindler. Why does this dinner occur? Oh, because Maurice feels like having a dinner with another person under house arrest. There’s no actual STORY REASON for this dinner to occur, of course. It’s there because this script is so threadbare, so devoid of a point, that if it wasn’t there, it would be 70 pages at most. So sure, why not invite a random character with no ties to anything and no reason to actually be in the story into the mix. Makes sense to me!
And if you had to make a bet, would you put money on this gentleman and his wife being nice caring people? You know, maybe to create some contrast in the conversation for once? Of course not! They’re total swindling assholes JUST LIKE OUR MAIN CHARACTERS. I guess when you’re holding an Asshole Fest, the policy is only assholes allowed.
The Libertine attempts to conclude its “story” with some sort of ironic anecdote. Maurice, in order to get back in his daughter’s good graces, pulls a favor to get her a job with an old friend. But when she meets this friend, he ends up making a pass at her. I guess we’re supposed to feel some karmic retribution that this man finally understands what it’s like to be on the receiving end of sexual abuse. But we hate everybody in this script so much, including Jacquline, that this moment leaves us feeling nothing other than contempt for coming this far only to be subjected to a half-assed cobbled-together ending. It’s one last-ditch attempt for the script to seem relevant.
I’m begging those of you who liked this enough to vote for it. Tell me what I’m missing. What is it that makes this script appealing? I honestly can’t find a thing. I suppose the dialogue moves quickly, but it’s laced with so much anger that the snappy rhythm is undermined by pure hatred. Help me understand!
In the meantime, please don’t let anything with a heartbeat near this script less they turn to stone. Now excuse me while I go google puppy images for the rest of the night.
[x] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the things that works well in screenwriting is contrast. You want extremes clashing against each other. So if someone’s a real asshole, you want to put them in a room with someone who’s really nice. That clash in ideology typically results in a lot of interesting dialogue. But if all the characters are assholes, there is no contrast. It’s just empty conflict, a lot of yelling and disagreeing with the same boring predictable tone. That sums up every single page of The Libertine.
Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A teenage boy, Caleb, and his friends, all of whom live on a moon mining colony, take a road trip to an old cave to fulfill a wish from Caleb’s father.
About: This script just finished NUMBER 1 on The Hit List, which is the screenwriting community’s appetizer for the later-to-come Black List. The Hit List is run by The Tracking Board and consists of the best SPEC screenplays of the year (the Black List, by contrast, tabulates the best of all scripts, including assignments). Because most professional writers are being hired by studios to write their projects, and because the best way to break into the business is still with a good spec, the majority of the writers on The Hit List are writers getting noticed for the first time. To give you a little perspective on the list, Bubbles, which I thought was great, finished number 2. The Water Man, which I reviewed last week and absolutely loved, finished number 4. And Collateral Beauty, written by Allan Loeb, which created some debate on the site, finished number 19. Actually, a script that was featured here on the site, Carver Gray’s Unlawful, finished in front of Collateral, in the number 12 spot. Congrats, Carver!
Writer: John Griffin
Details: 113 pages
So to start off, a lot of you have been asking about the Scriptshadow 250 and when the damn announcements are going to be made. And I feel your impatience! The two hundred and fifty script reads amongst an already busy schedule was always going to be a challenge, but maybe I wasn’t prepared for just how challenging it was going to be.
So the reality is, if I have any hope of finishing this month, I’ll likely need to take a week off from posting to do so. And that week will likely be next week. I’ll be hunkering down like a Jawa during a sandstorm and calling upon my speed-reading Force powers to get things finished. I’ll keep you posted on how that’s going. But there’s a chance this could eat into Scriptshadow posting throughout the month, with Christmas Week coming right after that, and then the weird “nothing week” between Christmas and New Years.
What sucks is that we’re swinging into the heart of “Awards Season” for screenwriting, with The Hit List coming out last week and the Black List soon to follow. At the very least, we’ll get one of those scripts in to review, as “Crater” nabbed the top spot on this list. Let’s see if its lunar pattern matches up with good screenwriting.
It’s sometime in the future where we now have a mining colony on the moon. Caleb O’Connell, 14, is a son of one of the miners. A big reason Caleb’s father and the rest of these miners agreed to this gig was that their children got to go to “Omega,” a utopia planet that, normally, only the richest people get to go to. That timeline gets accelerated if your parent dies in the line of work, and Caleb’s dad just did. Which means in 72 hours, he’ll be on a ship to Omega.
The thing is, Caleb doesn’t want to leave his friends: the rebellious Dylan, the wimpy Borney, the slow-witted Marcus, and his newest friend, Addison. Addison isn’t like these kids though. She actually grew up on earth. Her father was a scientist, which makes her the one “scholar” of the group.
What we come to learn through Caleb’s flashbacks with his father, is that his father made him promise that if he ever died, Caleb would go on a road trip with his buddies to deliver an old piece of memorabilia (a bobblehead), that Caleb’s father once gave him, to a deserted moon cave. So that’s what Caleb does. He steals a moon rover with his four friends and the group heads out to complete the mission.
All of them then talk about the difficulties of being a moon miner’s kid, get their flirt on with the one female in the group, and ultimately learn to let their de facto captain (Caleb) go. The question is, when they run into trouble, will they be able to make it back to the moon colony alive?
I’m not sure I was prepared for this. I saw a number 1 script on the ultra-hip Hit List, I saw the genre “sci-fi,” I saw a title, “Crater,” that elicited a degree of edge. I went into this thing (keep in mind this was before I read the logline) thinking I was about to read something maybe Darren Aronofsky would want to direct.
So I was not expecting what I eventually got, which was “The Maze Runner meets Earth to Echo.” It was kind of like ordering a ribeye at the best steak house in town, only for a grilled cheese sandwich to show up. I like grilled cheese sandwiches… when I’m in the mood for them. In this case, I wanted the steak.
Griffin’s heart is in the right place. He’s trying to create a nostalgic teenage road trip film with heart – I’m guessing “Goonies on the moon?” And I have to give it him, he definitely created something unique.
The structure is pretty solid too. I liked that we had a time crunch here (they’ve got 72 hours). The stakes are high. These are the last moments these guys will ever spend together. There’s obstacles too. The meteor shower looms over their trip. And then, of course, there’s the goal of getting to the cave.
But the script starts sending out red flags almost immediately. One character is described as, “14 going on 15.” Ummm… what other age would he be going on to? And then the flashbacks to Caleb’s father begin. I don’t like flashbacks. But I can live with them if the rest of the script is good. However, we’d go into a flashback with Caleb and his father, only to then jump into Caleb’s father’s flashback of HIS OWN father. So we’d get a flashback within a flashback.
???
Caleb’s motivation is also murky. His father received an astronaut bobblehead from Caleb’s grandfather. So Caleb’s father gives the bobblehead to Caleb, making him promise that, if he dies, he’ll bring the bobblehead to the caves. Which I guess means that Caleb’s goal is to deliver something for a grandfather he’s never met??
Even more egregious, there’s a lot of sitting around and talking in Crater. The characters talk about everything from what earth’s like to religion to their parents’ divorces.
This kind of thing drives me crazy because it feels to the writer like they’re being “deep,” like they’re letting you into their character’s lives and learning more about them. But these scenes never resonate with readers. We don’t care if someone’s dad used to be mean or if someone is scared because when they were nine, their mom made them turn off the bedside light every night.
We care about NOW, specifically the actions our characters take. For the most part, movies are about putting your characters in peril (whether that peril be losing your food supply, like in The Martian, or losing your mind, like in Still Alice) and then seeing how they react to that peril. Actions will always speak louder than words.
Go watch Cast Away, which barely has a lick of dialogue for 90 minutes. Watch how that entire character is built on his actions. Even the similar Stand By Me, reveals so much more through action (running from the train, escaping the junkyard) than through sharing stories about each other.
And even small moments are botched in Crater. There’s a moment when the group has infiltrated an old deserted base. Late in the sequence, Addison walks into a room and sees a tree standing in the middle of it. She’s taken aback, gob-smacked, can’t believe what she’s looking at. But wait a minute. Isn’t Addison the one character who used to live on earth and therefore has seen a billion trees? Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to have one of the characters who’s never seen a tree be the one to discover and be gob-smacked by it?
I don’t know. Maybe that early bias put me on the offensive here. But even if I’d gone into this knowing what I was getting into, these issues are pretty huge. The concept’s different. So that’s good. But man, this was tough to get behind. There was so much that felt “off” about Crater. I’ll be honest. I’m kinda surprised this finished number 1.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Everybody in your story needs motivation to do what they’re doing. Mad Max doesn’t join Furiosa cause he’s up for a rollicking adventure. He joins her because teaming up with her is his best option at escape. One of the common mistakes I see in these “group goes on a journey” scripts, is that it doesn’t make sense why half the people are there! At some point the writer, usually through feedback, is alerted to this. They then try to solve the problem by doing what I call, “retrofitting motivation.” This is where they have one of the characters ask the motivation-less character why they’re doing this, and that character gives a vague unsatisfying answer of sorts (here, the answer from Caleb’s friends is, “You go where your friends need you to go.”) The writer now believes they’ve solved the problem but all they’ve done is highlight it. It’s so much better if you do the hard work ahead of time and give each character a personal reason for going on the journey – or, at the very least, something they need to achieve before the journey’s over. The character ends up feeling more like an individual as well as more active. I didn’t get that from any of the supporting characters here, which contributed to my issues with the script.
Each week myself or one of the site’s readers will suggest an obscure, unknown, or under-appreciated film that you guys can then watch on a Lazy Sunday and discuss the screenwriting merits of. If you’re interested in submitting a suggestion, e-mail me at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the movie and a 300 word “pitch” on why you think people would enjoy the film. Together, I hope we can all find some hidden gems.
I wish someone would come up with an idea like this today. Ironically, The Freshman was way ahead of its time. It was not a big hit by any means, and it’s likely because the concept was too odd for the average moviegoer. In a time where it was harder to reach the niche film customer, the film didn’t get the credit it deserved. But this is the kind of script that, today, would finish #1 on The Black List. I’d suggest going into it not knowing anything, but if you need a little nudge, here’s the logline: A struggling film school student gets involved with a mobster involved in an extremely eccentric underground activity.
What you see above? That is all I want for Christmas. I’m serious. If you want to thank me for any help on the screenwriting front, bless me with that sugar parade. That is all the thanks I need. I just want to mash that thing in my face. Like rub the chocolate all over my forehead and then stuff it in my mouth. Then wrap the second cup up and hide it like a squirrel for later. Wait until the family is asleep and then sneak in another face-mashing session. Okay, now this is just getting weird. But the 2 pound reeses is not weird. It is wonderful. And I wish a merry Christmas to whomever eats one. Or two. Or three.
Title: Weep, Crave, Loathe
Genre: Comedy
Logline: 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: 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.
Thanks ahead of time if you take a look.
Title: Throw Away Love
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A disillusioned trophy wife has an affair with a photographer, unaware that he’s a serial killer.
Why You Should Read: I refined the logline in the comments section during the Thanksgiving Holiday. I got great feedback and now I’m hoping to get some more great feedback on the rest of the script. This script takes inspiration from films like “Body Heat”, “Unfaithful”, “Blood Simple”, and “Fatal Attraction”. I decided to write a Thriller because it’s a sell-able genre. “Throw Away Love” is the first script I’ve written since discovering Scriptshadow. From the initial idea, all the way to this current draft, I’ve made a concentrated effort to incorporate many of the tips from this site. I’m really excited to see how I’ve grown as a writer since discovering this site and its community.
Title: Recon
Genre: Action/Sci-fi
Logline: An Alien invasion seen through the eyes and the perspective of an Alien soldier. [Cloverfield meets Independence Day]
Why You Should Read: Well, if I won the lottery tomorrow, I’d spend the majority of the day splurging on a bunch’a nonsense that I’ve always dreamed of having… and then come home and type “FADE IN”. So yes, my name is Landon Collins and I’m an aspiring scribe [“Hiiii, Landon”]. Twice placed in the Nicholl Fellowships including 2015 as a Quarterfinalist. “RECON” is not my Nicholl script, but instead, it’s my latest script that’s been toiling in the back of my mind for about 5 years, and I just now gathered the testicular fortitude to hash it out this year. Not since my first couple of scripts a decade ago have I had as much fun writing and I hope you have at least half as much fun reading it.
Title: For Your Eyes Only
Genre: Espionage thriller
Logline: James Bond undertakes an unofficial mission of revenge in the first true adaptation of Ian Fleming’s story since it entered the public domain
Why You Should Read: I’m sending this script in response to your recent post (Increase Your Chances of Selling a Screenplay 100-fold). The public domain is fascinating, if tricky, place to play, with opportunities and potholes in equal measure. I’m hoping to get through without breaking an axel. In short: on January 1, 2015, Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels entered the public domain in Canada (and in numerous other territories worldwide, including the mega-market of China). I saw an opportunity, and wrote a feature screenplay based on Fleming’s short story For Your Eyes Only. The script presents a fully realized James Bond (no, it’s not another origin story, because who needs that?) at a crucial turning point in his life and follows him through an adventure that sets up a proposed four-film series — along with a potential spin-off series and cross-media tie-in content, both adapted and original. So yes, I’m thinking big here. — I think this could be an interesting case-in-point for your argument (or a cautionary tale, depending on how things work out). I had to contend with exactly what you describe in your article: how to tell a familiar story in a fresh way; how to breath new life into a character everyone knows; how to simultaneously meet and thwart expectations. Even if it never gets produced, this was one of the most educational screenplays I’ve ever written. (I have six produce features under my belt thus far, all very indie; this, if it got made, would be a whole new phase of my career.) — I’m pretty happy with the script now, but I don’t bruise easily, so I’m open for some honest criticism. (Btw, my choice for Bond: Cillian Murphy.)
Carson, you made a mistake.
You passed over this script for the 250. I understand these things happen, but lemme help correct that and show you my chops.
I’m a Chicago man like yourself and you picked my twin brother’s script for the 250 and amateur offerings and now he has a big head and is giving me shit. Among brothers, this cannot stand.
Here’s my submission:
Title: Team Deathmatch
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a crusty workaholic gets canned for an office meltdown, he must work together with his burnout son to win a million dollar video game competition and save their house from foreclosure.
Why You Should Read:
Because I wanna make you feel good.
Yeah…
That’s right.
But sadly, I can’t touch you. So let my script touch you… in the best way possible… and make you feel good.
E-sports (video games in non-douchey terms) is an untapped subculture ripe for parody. And these people go to the movies for R-rated comedies. Nice.
On top of that… day jobs can suck. So who can’t get behind a protagonist leaving his/her work-a-day life for a shot rarified glory, financial security, and more time with his/her family? That’s what this story is about.
But don’t all movies remotely tied to video games end up as catastrophic failures? Well… yeah. But this ain’t them. NOBODY has approached the video game subculture from this angle. Games, particularly ‘e-sports’, are GROWING in popularity. They aren’t going away and somebody’s gonna get it right. Eventually. Maybe now?
So spend some time with me, yeah? I’ll make it worth your while.
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: Horror/Thriller
Premise (from writer): When a desperate man drags his depressed wife and step-daughter to rural Germany for family support; what he discovers instead are dark cult roots, an isolated hippy haven, and the terrifying realization that they may not be free to leave alive.
Why You Should Read (from writer): My name is Alex Ross, and my screenplay, HEXEN, won the grand prize in the Script Pipeline competition (out of 3,500 scripts) and is also highly rated on the Black List as “top unrepresented horror”. Here’s why I would like the script to be reviewed: I see HEXEN as a fresh take on a very stale and predictable genre. It’s a throwback to the thrillers from the 70’s (Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, Don’t Look Now), but with a modern, realistic approach. It purposely breaks the tired “rules” of horror storytelling, which audiences have come to expect by now. A main protagonist vanishes half-way through, character’s motives are ambiguous, and the ending is left somewhat open-ended. Say what you will about the script… one thing it’s not, is predictable. However, it has alienated some who are looking for something a little more mainstream, and I’m finding it difficult to find industry pros who can see outside the box, and who are willing to take a chance and get behind it. I need all the help I can get…
Writer: Alex Ross
Details: 97 pages
Swweeeeet. We’ve got a contest winner here! Always fun to see which script beat out thousands of others. No time to waste so let’s get to it!
40-something Julian Nichols never expected his life to turn out this way. He recently got laid off. He and his wife, Anna, have grown so distant, they barely talk anymore. And they’ve got a beautiful young daughter, Jenny, who they’ve got to support with no income.
That’s why we meet them at the airport. The family is headed to Germany, where Anna used to live. She had a tough childhood, growing up in one of those commune-cult situations with a crazy fucking dad who thought mass-suicides were the bee’s knees.
They’ve gotten word that her father is on his deathbed and if they come and show their faces, sign a few documents, that large piece of land he owns could result in a desperately needed slice of the profit pie. Neither of them want to be here, but it’s a necessary evil.
Once they get to the secluded commune-turned-farm, they start meeting the folks that run the place, including Anna’s brothers, alpha-male Christian and mentally disturbed Thomas. Rounding out the Trio of Weird is Michael, a large man who has a strange fetish for calling people “moron.”
Julian’s surprised by how forthright Christian is. He tells him the whole story about their fucked up commune life and how Anna’s dad used to video tape her 24-7. Not creepy at all. But the longer the stay goes on, the sketchier Christian gets. He and the rest of the former compounders like to do drugs. Like, a LOT of drugs.
It isn’t long before Julian and Anna realize every drink they’ve had has been spiked, and therefore they start hallucinating, trying to figure out what’s real and what isn’t. Julian also wants to get to the bottom of where the fuck Anna’s dad is. He needs that money and he can’t get it until they deal with these documents.
What Julian will soon find out is that documents are the least of his worries. This friendly drug-loving bunch may not have left compound life behind after all…
I’d say all the way up to page 45, I was tagging Hexen as a double-worth-the-read. I thought the setting was scrumptious, the conflict was original, the suspense (something we’ve been obsessed with all week) was off the charts. And even the one thing that, if the writers master the other stuff, they eventually fail at – the character development – was strong. All the characters here had rich and intriguing backstories that added sweetness to an already sugary story.
And I’ll tell you the exact moment I knew I was dealing with something good here. It was the introduction of Christian. We see him through a child’s eyes. Jenny, the daughter, spots him butchering a still squealing pig for the compound’s food supply. I’m a huge believer that you sell a character not through what they say or what they look like or what they’re wearing (although those help). You do it through action. Meeting Christian butchering this pig immediately set up who he was.
Alex continued this throughout the script. For Thomas, the half-retarded brother, we see him playing with a group of young girls. When Jenny pricks her finger and it starts bleeding, the other compound girls say, “Lick it and make it better.” So Thomas looks both ways, sticks her finger in his mouth to “stop the bleeding,” and pulls it out, blood free. Whenever a writer is looking to convey character through action, he’s ahead of 80% of writers out there.
And then there was the suspense. It’s almost like Alex went forward in time to read my Pay-As-You-Go article, then went back and wrote this script. There were so many mysteries about this compound, about the people in it, about our heroes’ own histories, about what these compound people were going to do to our heroes. With all these unanswered questions, we had no choice but to keep paying.
In fact, Alex was so good with suspense that even when I stopped enjoying the script, I STILL had to see what happened next.
Wait a minute, Carson. You were so excited about this script a second ago. What do you mean when you “stopped enjoying it?”
Here was my problem with Hexen. It started out strong. But then it got sloppy. Once the script brought in the drug angle, and characters started hallucinating, the strong and sure hand of the writer seemed to get replaced by a genetically engineered jello man afflicted with Parkinson’s. It was almost like Alex stopped trusting himself. It was one drug-induced scene after another. Lots of hallucinations. Lots of “did that really happens.”
And don’t get me wrong. A good drug-induced vision can kick ass. The Rosemary’s Baby drug-induced group-rape scene is one of the most memorable in film history. But when you’re doing it over and over again, it starts feeling sloppy. And I know Alex built the drug-culture into the story. So these visions were motivated. But I can’t support a choice that deliberately makes a script feel sloppy. I just can’t.
And with the last 40 pages of this script reading like this, I had to concede that a script that started off destined to win Best Amateur Friday script of the year, left me feeling frustrated and confused.
This is a tough one. Hexen is like one of those relationships where the two parties fight all the time but still love each other. Those relationships are worth fighting for. I’m just not sure Alex is interested in bringing this script to the place it needs to be to get industry people interested.
He says in his “Why I Think You Should Read” that he’s finding it difficult to get industry pros to see outside the box. That’s the wrong way to think. It’s not up to anybody to see outside the box. It’s up to you to make the world outside the box so alluring that the industry has no choice but to see outside of it. If people are having trouble getting something from your script, take it upon yourself. Never put it on them.
Part of the problem is that Alex won this contest. That’s validation that what he’s done is right. So it’s natural to think nothing should be changed. But I know exactly why this script won that contest despite being imperfect. Because Alex is a good fucking writer. He knows concept, he knows character, he knows dialogue, he knows description, he knows suspense. The average contest-entrant is lucky to know one of those things.
But just like being a great singer doesn’t always equate to releasing a great song, being a good writer doesn’t mean you’ve written a great script. I think Alex needs to take a long hard look at this decision to make the second half of his script one giant drug-trip. He’s right. It’s different. But as I’ve said a million times before, different doesn’t always mean “good.”
I’d advocate for a cleaner and clearer second-half structure. What about you guys? Did the drug-trip second half work for you? If not, why? What can he do to fix it?
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me (but first half xx worth the read!)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re resting on the black-out move a lot, you’re probably not trying hard enough. The black-out move is when your character gets hit over the head and wakes up later. This is considered sloppy because it’s an easy way to get your character from one setting to the next without having to do the hard work of figuring out the transition. Alex uses versions of the black-out move nearly a dozen times here. I’d suggest re-watching The Wicker Man. That movie is similar to this one, and they never once use a black-out move. It’s possible. It just takes more effort.
