In a fascinating display of courage, Mel Gibson brings us a hero who is the exact opposite of American Sniper’s Chris Kyle.
Genre: Biopic
Premise: The story of the first conscientious objector (a World War 2 soldier who refused to pick up a gun) to win the Medal of Honor, America’s highest award for courage under fire.
About: It’s like Braveheart week here at Scriptshadow! Mel Gibson the director is finally back and that’s a great thing. Gibson is one of the best living directors out there. He just doesn’t make a lot of movies. But Hacksaw Ridge will be his next. What’s extra cool about this draft of Hacksaw is that Braveheart writer Randall Wallace revised it! The original writer is 62 year old Robert Schenkkan, who’s probably best known for writing the 2002 film, The Quiet American with Michael Caine, although he definitely has some WW2 experience, writing for “The Pacific” mini-series a few years back. Vince Vaughn, Andrew Garfield, and Sam Worthington will star.
Writers: Robert Schenkkan (revisions by Randall Wallace)
Details: Marc 12, 2013 draft
You know, it took me awhile to figure out why American Sniper became such a huge hit. But I finally got it. The majority of modern-day war films are liberally slanted. The overwhelming message is that war is bad and it destroys the soldiers who engage in it.
That’s precisely why those movies never made money. Conservatives didn’t want to see them because they depicted war badly. And liberals didn’t want to see them because liberals aren’t interested in war.
American Sniper may not have been a “rah-rah” war film. But it definitely celebrated its subject, Chris Kyle, for killing a hell of a lot of people. Finally, conservatives had a reason to go to the theater. They were no longer being preached to that “war was bad.” And you’re never going to get more liberals to a theater than when a war film is being celebrated by conservatives.
So it seems odd amongst Eastwood and writer Jason Hall’s formula for success that Mel Gibson would bring to market the anti-Chris Kyle. We’re going right back to the liberal slant here. Desmond Doss is a man who joins the army at the beginning of World War 2 and refuses to pick up a gun.
These people are known as “conscientious objectors” and they’re actually supported by the United States government. There’d be a bit of hypocrisy if our country fought for the freedom to have our own beliefs and yet forced counter beliefs on the soldiers we sent out to obtain that freedom. The thing is, nobody actually REFUSED to touch a gun as a soldier. Nobody, that is, except for Desmond Doss.
Hacksaw Ridge spends its first act setting up Desmond’s home life back in the Virginia Mountains, with his depressed father, followed by him falling in love. The first part of the second act has Desmond training to be a soldier. It’s in this section that we see just how anti-gun Desmond is, and how he avoids violence altogether. In fact, when another soldier beats his ass, he just curls up in a ball and takes it.
Desmond’s plan, if you can call it that, is to be a medic. In his view, medics don’t need guns. Because the truth is, Desmond WANTS to be a soldier. He wants to help his country win the war. He just doesn’t want to have to kill anybody to do it.
FINALLY, after we pass the midway point, we get to the meat of the story – Hacksaw Ridge. This is a specific ridge on Okinawa Island that needs to be secured to take the island. The island is a key waypoint in the war. If they take the island, they can use it as a major launching point to attack Japan. In short, take Hacksaw Ridge, win the war (stakes!!!).
This sets up the final act, which is the star of the script by a billion. When Desmond’s company is brutally attacked by the Japanese and the rest of the company runs to safety, Desmond stays back and retrieves every single fallen soldier. All without ever firing a gun! It is for this display that he wins the Medal of Honor.
From a screenwriting perspective, Hacksaw Ridge is a unique challenge. In movies, we like main characters who DO THINGS. Who are ACTIVE. Who are BLAZING THEIR OWN TRAILS. To center a movie around someone whose key action is a negative one (RESISTING) is a tough sell.
And to be honest, that kept me from liking Desmond Doss. Nobody likes the weirdo who refuses to fall in line because of his weird beliefs. I mean seriously, remember the kids whose parents wouldn’t let them dress up for Halloween because of some weird belief?? We weren’t hanging out at those kids houses after school. And it’s also hard to root for someone who doesn’t stick up for himself. When someone tries to fight Desmond, he curls up into a ball and waits for the beating to end???
I actually found myself siding with Desmond’s superiors most of the time. When they said to him, “Just grab a fucking gun,” I was like, “Just do it!” It’s not like he had to fire it. Just hold it for appearances and don’t ever shoot it. There seemed to be ways around this issue that he wouldn’t entertain simply out of stubbornness.
But I’ll tell you what saved this script. The ending. The ending here is fucking awesome. It IS the movie. And you know afterwards why this is called Hacksaw Ridge, a seemingly insignificant title for 75% of the movie.
The ending is great because Desmond Doss finally becomes a hero. He finally DOES something. He’s finally ACTIVE. He’s not just being an annoying pain in the ass refusing to pick up a gun for trivial reasons. He’s the ONE soldier who stays back when his company is gunned down while all the other soldiers – the same ones who were calling him out for his weirdness – ran back to the safety of their camp. And he saves every single soldier who’s still alive despite an entire Japanese company dug in trying to gun him down. It’s a fucking fantastic scene.
In particular, there’s this moment where Desmond has machine gunners off to his left and a sniper off to his right while trying to get to a soldier who’s right in the crosshairs of that line of fire, and he somehow pulls it off. It’s one of the best scenes I’ve read all year.
And it goes to show, if you’re going to write 90 minutes of average and 20 minutes of great, MAKE SURE THAT GREAT IS AT THE END. Because I left this script ready to see Hacksaw Ridge. And I would not have felt that way if this had been structured like Saving Private Ryan, where the movie’s best scene was placed at the beginning.
Hacksaw Ridge shows the power of a true hero. We’re not so sure about this Desmond guy for ¾ of the screenplay, but the second he becomes the bravest man on the battlefield, we love him.
And I’ll finish with a suggestion for Mel, since I know he cares so much about what I have to say. This whole movie is dedicated to this idea that Desmond refuses to pick up a gun. So there should be one scene in the film where the SPECIFIC ACT OF HIM NOT HAVING A GUN saves him. Where, if he had a gun, he would’ve been killed. I don’t know how you do that. But I firmly believe that whatever your hero’s perceived “weakness” is, at a key point in the story, that weakness should become a strength.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Here’s a thing that you should never do in a script. Never tell us your character is “unique” or “different.” We should be able to draw that conclusion on our own. That means coming up with actions or situations or choices that SHOW us your character is unique or different. Early on in Hacksaw Ridge, after Desmond stares at a painting for an inordinately long time, the writers write something to the effect of, “And that’s when we realize Desmond Doss is very different from other human beings.” No. No. Don’t ever do that. Convey weirdness through action, through choice. Go watch Nightcrawler to see how this is done right. The early scene where Louis Bloom makes an awkward proposal to be employed by a man sells you on his weirdness. Gilroy never had to write, “Man, this Edward Bloom is really weird. We see that weirdness in everything he does.” That’s a big no-no and usually indicates that you subconsciously know your hero isn’t as weird as you want him to be. So you literally have to TELL the audience to get it across.
What I learned 2: When a potentially melodramatic scene approaches, consider going with the OPPOSITE line of dialogue than what your instincts are. For example, there’s a scene where Desmond’s father is telling him that he doesn’t want him to go to war. But Desmond has already committed to it. An amateur writer would’ve had the father say something to the effect of, “I love you more than anything. Don’t do this.” Instead, Schenkkan and Wallace have the father say: “You’re a terrible son. I hope they kill ya,” and walk away.
Is this new show FX’s answer to Game of Thrones???
Genre: TV Pilot – Period
Premise: Set in the 14th century, a former knight of the English army infiltrates his old kingdom with the hopes of destroying it from the inside-out.
About: There aren’t many writers who are doing better than Kurt Sutter. The man moved to LA in 2000 and quickly got a writing job on hit show, The Shield. After that, he created Sons of Anarchy. He married Peggy from Married with Children. His script, “Southpaw” was just turned into a movie starring Jake Gylenhaal, and now he’s debuting his new series, The Bastard Executioner, this fall on FX. In a strange twist no one saw coming, goofball crooner Ed Sheeran will be cast as a character on the show. The Bastard Executioner debuts this fall on FX.
Writer: Kurt Sutter
Details: 64 pages
Uh, you had me at “Edward the Longshanks.” Looks like Sutter is just as big of a fan of Braveheart as I am, with Bastard Executioner taking place right after Longshanks rein. And just like Mel Gibson did before him, Sutter’s plan is to take an uncompromising look at the period.
How uncompromising?
Well, let me just say that there are men, as in servants, literally wiping other men’s asses in The Bastard Executioner.
Believe it or not, what I will hereby refer to as “the ass-wiping scene,” is one of the most important scenes in all of The Bastard Executioner. In it, a Baron is sharing his tax strategy with one of his co-workers while having a bowel-movement. Afterwards, a servant rushes over to wipe his ass.
Why is this scene important? Because it conveys to the audience that this was a different time. And that immediately helps sell the unique reality that is The Bastard Executioner. If everything we saw in this show was something we saw in other shows, or in our own lives, then there’s nothing unique to take us back to 14th century England. This one scene showed us: “This is a different world.”
Mel Gibson did this too in Braveheart. In an early scene when William Wallace was a child, his father dies in battle. Afterwards, we see the family cleaning the dead body for burial on their own. It was a reminder that back then, you didn’t have funeral parlors down the street. You had to do the dirty heartbreaking work all by your lonesome. Again, it SOLD the time.
So what about the rest of “Bastard?” Any good? Will this, indeed, be the next, “Game of Thrones?”
I don’t know about that. But there’s some pretty sweet stuff here. Basically, the show revolves around this ex-English knight named Wilkin Brattle whose fellow knights betrayed him and left him to die.
Unbeknownst to them, Wilkin survived and joined a small group of Scottish farmers, content with living a “normal” life. However, when the Brits raise the taxes on the Scots, Wilkin and a small band of friends start killing the tax collectors and taking the money back to the families.
The evil Baron Erik Ventris, the very man who betrayed Wilkin (and assumes him to now be dead), starts sniffing around for who this group of bandits could be, and eventually traces them back to Wilkin’s village. He and his knights kill every woman and child there, including Wilkin’s pregnant wife (we actually get a scene where the wife’s stomach is cut open and the unborn baby’s hand hangs out, lifelessly – youch!).
An understandably un-thrilled Wilkins then assumes the identity of an executioner who just moved into town, and infiltrates the very kingdom he used to fight for. A man who’s now responsible for dishing out death to those souls the British find guilty, will presumably begin a careful campaign of destroying the kingdom from the inside-out.
Sutter seems to be a better TV writer than he is a feature writer. And, actually, this pilot reminded me just how much easier it is to be original in television writing. You could feel Sutter being confined when writing, “Southpaw,” the restrictions of the boxing genre bearing down on him until he inevitably found himself giving us yet another variation of the Rocky format.
But here, you don’t know what the fuck is going to happen (spoilers follow). Almost everyone who you think is going to be a major character on the show dies. Right there. In the very first episode!
Wilkin’s pregnant wife, for example. Dead. Baron Erik Ventris. Dead. The executioner, Gawain Maddox, who’s probably the most interesting character in the entire pilot – DEAD. And it really made this first chapter of Sutter’s show exciting.
Sutter also uses a couple of timeless writing tricks to keep us invested. First, he sets up a “rebels versus the evil establishment” storyline. The British are stealing money from the Scots under the façade of “taxes.” We can’t help, then, wanting to see the Scots retaliate. A little movie called “Star Wars” used the “rebels” approach effectively as well.
Then they have the English brutally (and I mean BRUTALLY) kill the farmers’ wives and children. This turns our need for retaliation into a need for full-on revenge. I mean, seriously, who’s not going to want to read on after that scene?
But Sutter doesn’t stop there. He knows that that the more you hate the English, the more you’ll root for his characters. So he creates this backstory whereby Wilkins was betrayed by his fellow knights and left for dead.
He also doesn’t just make Wilkins wife a wife who’s killed by the English. He makes her a PREGNANT wife. It’s a seemingly small thing but Sutter is using every little trick in the book to make sure you feel anger towards Baron Ventris and the English.
Speaking of the wife, Sutter makes the wise choice of having us get to know her before she’s killed (which happens around the midpoint). I’ve seen writers write dead wives into the beginning of their stories, or even make them backstories, but those never hit as hard as if we get to know the character first. Heck, I was convinced that the wife was going to be one of the main characters of the show. So when she was killed off, I was devastated. And, of course, I wanted revenge!
The main issue I had with Bastard Executioner was the ending. (Major Spoiler!) While killing off Baron Ventris was a surprise, it immediately removed the giant villain from the story. So there was a certain part of me that thought, “He achieved his goal. Story over.”
I guess I’m not entirely sure, then, why he chooses to sneak into the kingdom and pretend to be an executioner. I suppose it’s to bring down the rest of the English and I’m sure that new villains will be introduced as the show goes on. But as of this moment, I’m not dying to get to the next episode. And that wouldn’t have been the case if Baron Ventris had lived.
However, the “secretly infiltrate the kingdom as an executioner” storyline wouldn’t have worked if Ventris was still alive because, obviously, Ventris would’ve known Wilkins wasn’t an executioner. So part of me wonders if Sutter painted himself into a corner here. Did he so badly want this Bastard Exeuctioner storyline that he literally killed off the best part of his story to get it?
I don’t know and we’ll have to see where the story goes from here. But this definitely didn’t have that same “cliffhanger” quality that the pilot for Game of Thrones had, where we end with a brother and sister fucking and the brother throwing a young boy off a tower. That’s something where you’re desperate to see what happens next. Here, part of me feels like the big problem has already been taken care of.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Sometimes we want things so badly in our screenplays, that we sacrifice other parts of the screenplay to get them. It’s your job as a writer to step back and look at the big picture. Decide whether making other parts of your screenplay worse are worth it just to make this part better. Time will tell whether Sutter killing his main villain off in the pilot was the right way to go, but as of this moment, he may have wanted to find a way to keep him, even if it meant sacrificing how Wilkins infiltrates the kingdom.
Today we ask, why isn’t Ethan Hunt as popular or as memorable as other major franchise characters?
Genre: Action
Premise: Tom Cruise does action.
About: Tom Cruise continues to take risks, this time betting on Christopher McQuarrie to direct his latest Mission Impossible film. McQuarrie has become a sort of muse to Cruise, and vice versa. Even when he’s not directing Cruise (on such films as Jack Reacher), he’s often fixing up a script he’s working on (Valkyrie, Edge of Tomorrow). But with this being McQuarrie’s first HUGE directing assignment, the screenwriting Oscar winner chose to leave most of the writing duties to hot up-and-coming writer, Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3, Sherlock Holmes 3). Not sure why McQuarrie still got final credit but, hey, welcome to Hollywood, Drew. The film surprised many box office analysts this weekend by breaking out of the anticipated 40+ million bracket and pulling in 56 million bucks. Cruise Control is back!
Writer: Christopher McQuarrie (story by Christopher McQuarrie and Drew Pearce) (based on the television series by Bruce Geller)
Details: 130 minutes
I don’t know what it is about the Mission Impossible movies. I seem to enjoy them while I’m watching them. But literally less than an hour after they’re finished, I’m forgetting which scenes were part of which films. Was the helicopter-train chase in the first or the second film? Was the highway-bridge drone attack scene in the third or the fourth film? Mission Impossible seems to inject some sort of stealth forgettability into each incarnation.
And that’s not good with how crowded the action space has gotten. You’ve got your James Bonds, your Jason Bournes, even your Fast and Furiouses. So why doesn’t Ethan Hunt measure up to a Bond or a Bourne? I have some theories on that which I’ll get to later. But to Cruise’s credit, he seems to realize this as well, and this time out, he was looking for any way to get a leg up on his competition.
So we get the much publicized opening scene where Cruise ACTUALLY held onto the outside of a plane while it took off. No CGI. No tricks. It’s really a 53 year-old actor outside of a plane as it’s taking off. Color me SHOCKED then when I’m sitting there in the theater, prepping my popcorn tub with the perfect ratio of peanut butter M&Ms to popcorn kernels, getting ready for this monumental moment, and the shot lasted all of 5 SECONDS LONG! I don’t know if I was disappointed or just dumbfounded.
Here’s a shot that lasted only five seconds. It easily could’ve been done just as realistically with basic movie trickery. AND, the one thing nobody’s talking about, THE SCENE DIDN’T EVEN NEED TO BE IN THE MOVIE! It was clearly written in there specifically to give Cruise a chance to do this insane stunt.
All of this points to Cruise specifically doing this as a publicity stunt to sell the movie. And this means – which I can’t believe I’m writing – Tom Cruise RISKED HIS LIFE just to promote this film. Take that Vin Diesel. You ain’t jumping on planes. Need more make-up on your forehead wussy boy?
But seriously. That is either really impressive or incredibly dumb depending on who you talk to. But it did net MI:5 (I think we’re on 5, right?) a 56 million dollar weekend. Which, while not Bourne 3 (70 million), Skyfall (87 million), or Furious 7 (147 million) numbers, it’s still pretty solid.
MI:5 involves a twisty-turny plot that basically goes like so. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is trying to find this evil organization known as the “Syndicate.” He meets this shady mystery agent named Ilsa who helps him. Meanwhile, Ving Rhames and an out-of-nowhere hilarious Jeremy Renner, are trying to keep Ethan’s location a secret from the CIA, who want to disband the Mission Impossible Force. They all eventually meet up together, however, and mission impossible their way into the Prime Minister’s lair to stop this “Syndicate” business once and for all.
Okay, so, was this any good?
What’s unique about Mission Impossible is that Cruise seems to be approaching it from the old school way of filmmaking, which is to sit down, think up a bunch of cool set pieces (hanging on planes, riding on motorcycles) and then build a script around that.
That USED to work. I don’t think it works anymore. If you look at these other much bigger franchises, they’re building involved and continued storylines into their franchises. Their movies aren’t one-offs. They’re connected. And, as such, they feel less vapid. They feel like less of a roller coaster ride and more like full-on stories. Like the things that the characters do actually matter.
You’ve seen that lately with Bond, which has become more story-driven. You see it with huge hits like The Hunger Games. The Marvel Universe is interconnected. Bourne. The next round of Star Wars. The one exception is Fast and Furious. Their movies feel like standalone films.
But here’s the difference between Fast and Furious and Mission Impossible. THE FAST AND FURIOUS CHARACTERS STAND OUT. From Dominic to Brian O’Connor to the whole car-stealing team. Those guys are memorable identifiable characters.
Mission Impossible, however, still feels like you’re watching Tom Cruise. And again, this is a throwback mentality to the star-driven days where people used to show up just to see their favorite movie stars do crazy shit.
That’s not happening as much anymore. The success of franchises like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games and Avatar, and all those films I mentioned above, prove that people are coming to the theater to see characters and stories.
Never was that clearer than half-way through “Rogue Nation” when I asked myself, “Who is Ethan Hunt?” I don’t know! What does this guy stand for? What does he represent? What kind of person would his best friend call him? I know James Bond is a debonair playboy who confidently gets the job done. I know Jason Bourne is the amnesiac screwed over by his former organization who now has a chip on his shoulder. I even know Dominic Purcell is a family-first guy who will do anything for his friends.
Who is Ethan Hunt? Is he the guy who will always do the “impossible” thing that nobody else will do? Is that supposed to be his identity? I don’t know. To me it seems more like he ends up in those situations than seeks them out. Which makes his character even harder to pin down.
And I truly believe this factors into the box office. People don’t know who Ethan Hunt is supposed to be. So it comes down to, “Do you want to see Tom Cruise this weekend?” And the publicity of the airplane stunt got in enough articles that people decided, “Yeah, sure.” And I was one of them! I plunked down my money too. So kudos to the whole Mission Impossible team for pulling that off. But I’m definitely going into the next film more skeptically. I don’t want to watch yet another standalone adventure that has no connective tissue with anything that happened before it.
As for the rest of the script, I’ll say this. While it was your standard, “He’s got the data drive with the secret on it and we need to chase him all over the world to get it” storyline, unlike previous incarnations of Mission Impossible, the writers were more committed to helping you keep up with the plot.
I remember watching Mission Impossible 2 and they clearly didn’t give a shit about making sense. The plot points here have actually been thought through. And on top of that, they actually took the time to remind you what those plot points were.
I call this “hand-holding” and it’s SUPER important during complicated plots. This is even MORE important when you have a lot of double-crosses and twists and turns. I have seen many an amateur screenwriter leave their reader behind as they’ve assumed the reader knows just as much as they do, despite the writer giving us barely anything to go on.
There seemed to be a handful of scenes in MI:5 where one character reminded another character what they were going after. “We need to get [x] from [Frank] before he leaves town or he’ll disappear forever.” A lot of writers are scared to include these moments in fear of being deemed an “Exposition Eddie.” But when the plot’s complex, the reader/viewer appreciates them.
Unfortunately, despite all the money on the screen (and there really were some cool moments – I liked the motorcycle chase), I just couldn’t connect with the film. Due to the “non-continuous-story” approach of the franchise, I felt like it was going to dissolve into sand the second I left the theater. And that’s kind of what happened. The third act is already slipping through my fingers….. :(
[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Your main character has to have an identity. He has to represent something that’s clear and identifiable. It’s very common in an action movie to just generalize the main character as ” the action star.” But you can’t treat him that way. As you’ve seen from the above examples (Bourne, Dominic, new Bond), adding history and an identity go a long way. Go ahead and study all the classic movie characters who have stuck around for a long time and you’ll see this is the case. If you want proof, go to the most popular character in movie history: Sherlock Holmes. I’m sure every person here can tell you exactly what kind of person Sherlock Holmes is. Can you do the same for Ethan Hunt?
What am I doing?? I just gave you two extra weeks to get your Scriptshadow 250 entries in and now I throw an Amateur Offerings post up? I might as well title this post, “Please Procrastinate!” I guess I’ll leave it up to you guys to use this post responsibly. Talk soon!
Title: Unearthed
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: Two young brothers search for buried treasure with hopes of helping their struggling family, but when they uncover an otherworldly artifact with mysterious properties, they find it may have far greater value than they imagined.
Why You Should Read: This is my sixth screenplay and I’m still realizing, “Man this writing stuff is still hard!” Several months ago, I received two rounds of notes from Carson and after each round, I sucked it up and made the necessary cuts and addressed the dreaded “more character development” notes. Now I hope to get another round from the SS faithful. Carson described this as Stand By Me meets E.T. I thought that was a great comparison, and basically what I was aiming for. No big explosions. No black ops military assaults. No zombies driving fast cars. Just kids on an adventure. Period. Hope you enjoy it. And it chosen, I will definitely be around and interacting in the feedback if I’m lucky enough to have anyone read it.
Title: Reap What You Sow
Genre: Thriller
Logline: When her homecoming ends in tragedy, a desperate single mother spins
a web of lies to protect the family nursery from a ruthless property developer.
Why You Should Read: Dilemma. Textbook definition: A situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives. According to the book “Screenwriting is Storytelling: Creating an A-List Screenplay That Sells” by Kate Wright, “The moral dilemma of a main character is one of the least understood critical elements of story.” A genuine dilemma forces your main character to make choices that will have escalating consequences your script must explore. One dilemma leads to a downward spiral of decisions that exploit your protag’s weakness.
My goal was to explore the main character’s dilemma in the most entertaining and efficient way I could. All too often, I’ve found myself obscuring story elements, because I thought it would create an air of mystery. Since then, I’ve learned that all it does is alienate and confuse readers that are trying to help me. This is my attempt to combat that ambiguity. I also think a Thursday Screenwriting article about the “Art of the Dilemma in Screenwriting” would be an epic topic for your blog. Thanks to the SS250 deadline extension, I’m beyond thrilled to go for this chance to workshop my script with the generous Amateur Offerings readers before the contest starts.
Title: Patsies
Genre: Comedy
Logline: After actually pulling off a daring art heist, a gang of knucklehead thieves discover that they’re patsies in a forgery scam run by their porn tycoon boss. While hunted by the tycoon’s hit man, they evade a LAPD dragnet, death, and their own dysfunction to clear their names and turn the tables on the tycoon.
Why You Should Read: After taking time off to try our luck again in animation where we had a bit of success prior to writing the AF submission “Mad Dogs,” (BTW —Thank you everyone who sent us notes on that script. They really helped.), we’re back with character based comedy. It’ll be interesting to see if our sense of humor resonates with the Scriptshadow folks. The inspiration of this film comes from watching A-List studio heist flicks and how in most of them, like the remake of “The Italian Job,” the crooks spend a shit ton of money just to set up the robbery. If they have that kind of cash in the first place why don’t they just freakin’ buy and retire to a tropical island? PATSIES is a character driven lo-fi comedy version of a studio heist film. Also, it explores the types of dysfunctional characters who would turn to stealing to make a living, i.e. the down & out, the desperate-for-a-break, and the not-too-bright.
Title: Rogue
Genre: Spy/Action/High School/Fantasy
Logline: On his first day at his new high school, a student wakes up in the nurse’s office with amnesia, a bomb implanted in his chest, and a masked man who gives him a mission: assassinate every member of a clandestine terrorist cell operating within the high school by 3:30 PM or the bomb in his chest will be detonated.
Elevator Pitch: If John Hughes had said, “I’m going to loosely adapt The Borne Identity with my new best friend Terry Gilliam and I want to set the entire thing in a high school,” you’d have Rogue.
Why You Should Read: I laughed to myself during Weird Week when you said that every writer should try their hand at a go-for-broke-disregard-the-rules-sure-you’ve-only-got-a-slim-chance-at-pulling-it-off-but-what-the-fuck-let’s-go-for-it-anyway-script. That’s the sort of screenplay this is. This is my attempt at a Marvel Movie and it’s so idiosyncratic and funky that I can’t not be proud of it.
Title: Triggered
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: A hapless college student who’s in trouble with local drug dealers and a freewheeling ex-spy who’s on the run from his former employers cross paths one night and discover they are the answers to each other’s problems.
Why You Should Read: Triggered is a hard-R, gloriously un-PC action-comedy about how a computer science nerd with girlfriend problems and a profane, amoral ex-secret agent find common ground through a night of wild encounters with gang members, cops, drunken frat boys, and enemy agents. Triggered is part college comedy, part spy thriller, done in the style of classic buddy films.
The Scriptshadow Newsletter is OUT. It should’ve reached your Inboxes this morning. Make sure to check your SPAM and PROMOTIONS folders if you didn’t receive it. My guess it that it’s in there. Hope you enjoy!!!
Genre: Action-Thriller
Premise (from writer): When every major city across the United States is attacked by an overwhelming paramilitary force, a Special Ops team has less than 24 hours to breach the war zone of New York City in a last chance attempt to retrieve a device that could turn the tide of war, before the US government takes drastic action and initiates the ‘Endwar’ protocol.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Hey everyone! I was recently inspired by a similar type of script that was recently featured on Amateur Friday with it’s use of artwork, so I’ve decided to do a similar thing myself, featuring the images on standalone pages, rather than behind/beside the text (so don’t freak out at the page count, it’s not as long as it might look). I have long had a fascination with war stories, but where this is different is that it takes place on American soil (something only very few films have explored in the past). The script was kind of an experiment in going big, unlike my previous scripts which were much smaller in scope. I want to take this script to the next level, with your notes Carson, and with the notes of the SS community. Thank you to everyone who can help.
Writer: Mark Ducass
Details: 147 pages (although artwork-heavy – so not a true 147)
It’s a good time to be writing a straight action spec. The studios haven’t bought one in awhile, and while a lot of people might think that’s a reason NOT to write action, I see it differently. If they haven’t bought an action script in awhile, it means they’re going to buy one soon. It’s not like action is going out of style.
But action is a funny beast. The writers who are good at it tend not to be as good at the other stuff. The characters, the emotional beats. Even the plotting suffers at the opportunity to inject another gun fight, another explosion, another car chase.
Finding that rare writer who can write both action AND emotion? You locate that guy and you’ve got yourself a professional screenwriter. Does Mark Ducass fit the profile? Jump in my jet, hop over my explosion, engage me in a brutal fist fight, and let’s find out!
Endwar starts out strong. The opening scene shows Air Force One being attacked from both the inside (one of the president’s security agents opens fire) and the outside (one of the accompanying jets lays down fire on the enormous plane). We’ve seen this kind of scene before, but there’s a clean and exciting visual style to Ducass’s writing that elevates this scene above the competition.
Meanwhile, Manhattan is falling apart. Someone’s hacked into the stoplight grid and made all the lights green. As a result, everyone’s crashing into each other.
From there we jump to an aircraft carrier stationed off the Atlantic coast. It’s here where we meet our Delta team. The “haunted” Commander Eisner. Newbie Edward Calvin. Party boy Phillip Vance. Hot as hell Kira Simmons. And immovable object “Bear” Walters. The group has just gotten back from a mission when a nearby ship – an American ship – starts attacking them.
The team realizes that something is very wrong here, and after dealing with the ship, they’re sent into Manhattan to see what’s going on. Unfortunately, things there have gotten worse. Random people are just picking up guns and shooting everyone they see. Like Chicago now but not as bad. Apparently, some sort of sound pattern is being broadcast over the airwaves and turning everyone into deluded soldiers.
Once in New York, Eisner and crew meet up with CIA operative Brandon Weaver and his nerdy tech assistant, Tim Emerson. After the obligatory comparing dick sizes scene (although I have to give Ducass credit for not having one of the female characters utter the line: “You guys done comparing dick sizes yet!?”) Weaver leads the group to a building where this signal appears to be coming from.
They eventually find that the bad guys are a part of the “New World Order,” a group of people who have secretly been in power for centuries but who have finally decided that they don’t like the “secret” part of their ruling approach. So they’re taking shit over public style.
Weaver and the Delts (hey, that sounds like a band name!) eventually discover some giant power sphere in the city that is the key to the NWO taking over the world. They realize if they can destroy that thing, they might have a shot at stopping the takeover. Of course, not everyone wants to help when they learn that the U.S. government has enacted the “Endwar” protocol and plans to blow the island up in three hours. Time, as they say in the military business, IS TICKIN’!
Let me start off by saying the action writing here is kick-ass. But I think it could be better. The best action scene in the movie is the opening. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good cause it pulls us in right away. It’s bad because no other action scene lives up to it, leaving us disappointed when we read everything else.
Why aren’t the other action scenes as good? BECAUSE THE ACTION SITUATIONS AREN’T AS GOOD. What’s great about that opening scene is that the objective – or what’s going on – is interesting. They’re trying to take out the president both inside AND outside the plane. There were a couple of dimensions going on there. And the stakes were sky high (how do stakes get higher than protecting the president? In the sky!?).
As far as the rest of the action scenes (with a few exceptions) they were quite basic. Someone comes to fight them. They fight back. They didn’t have the same depth or variety as that opening scene. And as a result, they felt kind of generic. And generic action is death in an action film.
I mean, this is the highlight of your script, right? Action is what you’re showing off. So if you’re not consistently giving us something different in that arena, what’s the point of even writing an action movie?
Moving on – just because this is an action movie doesn’t mean you can’t have slow intense moments between your characters every once in awhile. Die Hard is considered one of the greatest action films of all time. Yet it has that intense scene between John McClane and his wife early on where they fight about the state of their marriage. It has a scene where the cop who helps John confides in him that he killed a kid while on duty once.
If you don’t give us those emotional moments that connect your characters, we’re not going to see your characters as real people. We’re going to see them as cardboard cut-outs. I know it’s scary to slow an action movie down. But you need to do it sometimes.
Moving on to the plot, I’ll just say this. It’s too generic. This reminded me of the kind of plot I’d see in a video game. Like a bad cut-scene type video game from the early 2000s. And the thing is, I liked how it started. I liked the signal. I liked innocent people attacking our Delta team. But the plot fell apart the moment “NEW WORLD ORDER” was uttered.
The New World Order is such a generic been-there-done-that early 2000s solution to this problem that after it was announced, I couldn’t take anything seriously anymore. If I were you, I’d drop that nonsense and come up with your own mythology for this takeover.
Also, introduce more plot into the story. It seemed like we went WAY TOO LONG between major plot points. It wasn’t until page 72 when we learned who the bad guys were. I just felt like there weren’t enough interesting things happening frequently enough. I’m not saying you should do this but maybe one of their team is secretly a bad guy? Or maybe the signal starts creeping into their ranks. So these guys start turning on each other. Anything to add more VARIETY to the plot. Because that’s Endwar’s biggest problem. It’s too generic. You need to mix it up.
And you can do it. You’re a good writer, Mark. This script may not have been for me, but if a producer asked me what the last thing I read was, I’d say, “You know, the script was a little generic. But the writer had a lot of talent. Especially for writing action.” So go in there, improve on the stuff OTHER than the action, and you’re going to see your scripts get a lot better.
Script link: Endwar
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me (but the writer is definitely someone to watch out for)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Beware SKIM-DESIRE. Skim-desire is the desire for the reader to start skimming. And it occurs when a script is boring, repetitive, or not making sense. In the case of Endwar, there was too much repetition in the action. Scene after scene was straight action with no variation in pacing or plot development. If you do too much of this, the script takes on a repetitive nature, and the desire to skim is strong. Which is what happened to me. I got hit with action scene number 7 in a row and I just thought, “There isn’t a whole lot happening here other than action, so I’m probably not going to miss much if I start skimming.” To prevent this from happening in your next draft, vary the plotting and tempo of your story.
