A rare treat. An extremely solid amateur script! But will not owning the rights to the material doom the screenplay??
Next week is a SPECIAL WEEK here on Scriptshadow. It’s WEIRD SCRIPTS WEEK. I’ll be reviewing five really strange scripts, saving the weirdest and oddest for Friday. Your life will never be the same after you hear about that last script, I promise you. This means there will be no Amateur Offerings this weekend. So check out Damn Nation instead. It’s a good script!
Genre: Horror/Action-Thriller
Premise (from writer): Five years after a plague has overrun the United States, turning most of the nation into feral vampiric creatures, a Special Ops unit from the President’s current headquarters in London is sent back into the heart of the US in a desperate attempt to find a group of surviving scientists who claim to have found a cure for the disease… but not everyone wants to see America back on its feet.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I believe screenplays are evolving. With the advances of technology in the last couple of decades such as the internet, computers, ipads, smartphones, etc, screenplays can be more than words on paper, they can be visual and even interactive experiences. I’m not the first and I won’t be the last person to integrate artwork into my screenplay, but I think this approach, if done right, can add a lot of value to a project. Integrated artwork is just the tip of the iceberg though. I believe soon people will be adding a lot more elements, such as photo references, storyboards, video, sound effects, music, and other audio-visual components embedded into their scripts. The possibilities are endless. — However, I know that my view on things is going to be vastly unpopular right now. I think most people will have an old school attitude and believe that writers should write, leaving the fancy bells and whistles to someone else. — With that said, I do believe nothing is more important than the words themselves. Above all else, I hope my script is judged on the words, not the images. Everything else I’ve added is just a bonus.
Writer: Adam Wax (Based on the comic, “Damn Nation,” written by Andrew Cosby and illustrated by J. Alexander)
Details: 110 pages
I guess you could say today’s entry is a little controversial. We don’t usually review adaptations on Amateur Friday. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with writing one. I know some people get upset by it but as long as you give credit where credit is due, which Adam does, it’s fine.
As far as whether it’s legal to adapt something you don’t have the rights to – it’s perfectly legal. If you went and wrote your own Fifty Shades of Grey script tomorrow, nobody’s going to come knocking at your door. The only time it becomes illegal is if the studio buys it and turns it into a movie without obtaining the rights. And even then, it’s not you who gets sued, it’s them.
Wax has also decided to infuse artwork from the comic into his script. As I’ve stated before, I have no problem with this either. I think, under the right circumstances, art can enhance the read. I just wasn’t a particular fan of THIS art. I’d prefer art that actually gives me a clear idea of what’s going on. This art here is almost the opposite – as evidenced here.
The setup for Damn Nation is pretty straight forward. Five years ago, a lost Russian tanker wanders into U.S. waters, full of dead bodies. When a group goes to inspect the ship, they find that these “dead” bodies aren’t as “dead” as they thought. We cut to five years later, where we learn that that event was the beginning of a fast-acting virus that took down the entire United States.
Back in Britain, where the remainder of the United States government now resides, they receive a signal from Buffalo, New York, with a simple message: “We have the cure.” The Americans and the Brits put together a team of about a dozen soldiers and send them off to Buffalo to see if there’s any truth to this message.
The team is led by the always cynical Captain John Cole. He’s joined by the non-shit-taking Lieutenant Emilia Riley, a Brit who’s not a huge fan of the American way. The two command a group of both Americans and Brits, and head into Buffalo where they immediately find our scientist with the cure.
Except that’s where shit starts going wrong. A sub-division of the team turns on them, killing everyone within sight. They try and kill Cole and Riley, who just barely escape with the doctor, a few other soldiers, and the cure. We eventually learn that the Brits, the Chinese, and the Russians, like this new world where the U.S. is no longer a player. And if there’s a cure, that puts the U.S. back in the mix.
Cole and Riley are thrust into a dangerous country where these… things lurk around every corner. They’ll need to come up with a plan not only to avoid them, but find a way to safety, and find someone who actually wants to use this cure to save the United States.
In the spirit of being completely honest, permission-less adaptations are usually the worst scripts I read. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but my guess is, these scripts tend to come from first-time screenwriters who fall in love with a property (movie, comic book, what have you) and want to write a movie in that universe. They do this before learning how to actually screen-write, which is why the scripts are often complete messes.
My advice to writers thinking about adapting a high-profile property you don’t have the rights to: don’t do it. I can guarantee that the rights to anything you’ve found are already owned by some producer working for some studio, which means you have approximately ONE BUYER for your script. If that one buyer doesn’t like what you’ve done, you’re shit out of luck.
There is a less cynical side to the approach, though. If you write ANYTHING that’s good, whether it sells to that single buyer or not, the town will take notice. And while you may not sell this specific script, you’ll get tagged as a good screenwriter and get some meetings out of it.
I don’t know where Adam Wax is in his screenwriting career, but he deserves some meetings after Damn Nation. This script is good. The first word that comes to mind is: polished. This isn’t something that was thrown together quickly, like so many amateur scripts we read here seem to be. Rather, there’s a clear structure to the story, and Wax moves it along quickly.
We start with that great teaser – A Russian boat that’s been lost for 15 years. Inspecting that boat to find 200 dead bodies that suddenly come to life. If that doesn’t grab you, you are incapable of being grabbed.
We don’t waste any time when we jump to five years later either. We immediately jump to the “cure” signal and within pages, our team is on their helicopters, heading to the U.S. Spec scripts HAVE TO MOVE FAST. And Damn Nation eschews the Prius approach in favor of the Lamborghini.
The first big twist is maybe a little predictable (the soldiers turning on their leaders), but Adam’s such a good writer, he makes it work. And it places our characters into a seriously terrifying situation – being alone in a country dominated by blood-sucking creatures with no one to come save them.
I often discuss on this site using ideas that DO THE WORK FOR YOU. This is the kind of idea that does the work for you. Putting your characters in this kind of peril ensures that you’ll have a bevy of terrifying scenes and sequences. Every moment counts. Every wrong choice could lead to death. There’s never a moment here where the audience can sit back and relax, which is a sign of a really good story.
Some of the character stuff is really good too. For example, Captain Cole isn’t just some tough-as-nails vanilla captain. He learns that the whole reason he was picked to lead this mission is because he’s been such a terrible captain (killed two platoons in Afghanistan). He was chosen for the specific purpose of ensuring failure. Cole is going to have to dig down deep and overcome all his demons and past failures in order to prove to others, but more importantly, himself, that he can lead.
If you’re a fan of The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, or really any post-apocalypstic literature, I can guarantee you’re going to LOVE THIS. I could see this being a hit movie TOMORROW. But I don’t know who owns Damn Nation, and I don’t know if whoever has the rights plans on making the movie anytime soon. But they should. And they owe it to themselves to at least check out Adam Wax’s version.
Script link: Damn Nation
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’ll say it again, guys. A spec script NEEDS TO MOVE QUICKLY. The specs that never seem to slow down, that never allow the reader to sit back and relax – these scripts have a HUGE advantage over the slow-moving specs with stories that take forever to get going, and which spend too much time sitting around in that second act. If you can, I’m BEGGING YOU to infuse URGENCY into your spec idea. Urgency and specs go together like peanut butter and jelly.
The absolutely FREE Scriptshadow 250 Screenplay Contest deadline is just 56 days away! Make sure you’re preparing your entries!
A lot of what we talk about here at Scriptshadow comes from a reactionary place. We assess someone’s work and then discuss how it either a) worked or b) didn’t. And if it didn’t, we discuss how it could’ve been fixed, or how it could’ve been done better. This is all well and good, and we certainly learn a lot from it. But it doesn’t address one of the hardest things about screenwriting: the blank page.
Staring at a blank page is a whole different ball of wax than trying to come up with a solution to a bad scene.
There are two types of “blank page” problems. There’s the “On the fly” blank page problem and there’s the “Outlined script” blank page problem.
The “On the fly” problem refers to writers who are writing their script on the fly. They didn’t start off with an outline. They had their idea and figured they’d jump straight into the script. This method is notorious for leading to a lot of blank page problems. Since you didn’t outline, you have no idea where your script is headed, and when you don’t know your destination, it’s hard to map out a route to get there.
For this reason, the writer eventually runs out of scenes (curiously, they almost always peter out around page 45), and subsequently start “grasping at straws.” They write to shock, they throw a twist or two at the reader, all to energize what they perceive to be a dying story, not realizing that it’s the lack of direction in the first place that’s the problem.
To these writers I say, “This is why you outline.” You outline to destroy the blank page. If you’ve already figured out your ending, and you’ve come up with a general idea for the majority of the scenes in your script, you’ll at least come into each scene with a plan. And plans mean less blank pages.
If outlining scares you, here’s another option. Make sure that every character in your screenplay HAS A GOAL. If you give every character a goal, then every time you cut to one of those characters, you’ll know what scene to write to push them closer to that goal.
If you know, for instance, that your 5th most important character, Tracy, is desperately trying to make enough money to pay for college tuition next year, then you know to put her in a few job interviews. And if she doesn’t get hired, and subsequently gets more desperate, you know she might start doing some unsavory things to get that money.
On the contrary, if all you know about Tracy is that she’s your main character’s sister, then when she comes around, you won’t know what to do with her, and the story will drift or come to a stop when she arrives.
To use a recent example, look at Mad Max: Fury Road. The goals were clear from the start. Furiosa wanted to get back to her hometown. And Max wanted freedom. The bad guy, of course, wanted to get his five wives back. Every scene was dictated by the desires of those three characters, which is a big reason why not a single scene in that movie felt wasted.
Now if you’re a seasoned screenwriter, outlining is a huge part of your process. And for the truly hardcore, you’ve likely outlined every scene in your script (scene 1 to scene 60!). To these writers, having no idea what to write next isn’t really the problem. The problem is HOW to write what you write next.
Let me give you a real world example. A couple of weeks ago, a writer came to me needing to write a scene that took care of two things – introducing his main character’s wife, and conveying the fact that the two were struggling financially.
Notice that we know what to write, but we don’t know how to write it. I mean sure, we could take the obvious route. Our main character comes home from work, and there his wife is, at the dining room table, bills spread about everywhere, looking dire. Does the job, right? Sure.
But is it a good SCENE?
No.
Any time you give us the same scene/solution that the average Joe on the street could’ve come up with, you’ve given us a boring scene. Even the best version of that scene gives us information (exposition) and nothing more. Which puts us right back at the blank page. So what the hell do we write?
I’m going to let you in on a big secret here – the key to writing a scene that destroys the blank page. Are you ready?
CONFLICT
You want to approach your scene with the goal of injecting some conflict into it. And by conflict, I mean an imbalance that needs to be resolved. Maybe one character is mad at the other and starts yelling at them. Maybe one character is mad at the other and is passive aggressive towards them. Maybe one character is hiding a secret from another character. Maybe the two characters are avoiding talking about something. Maybe the characters desperately want to be together but can’t for some reason. Maybe the characters are fighting off a common enemy.
Conflict comes in many forms. But the important thing is that once you include conflict in a scene, you move away from merely conveying information, and you instead add an element of entertainment. Telling us that these characters are in financial straights is boring. Having one of the characters fed up that they’re in financial straights and taking it out on their partner in a passive-aggressive manner, now you have a scene.
I can already see it. The wife doesn’t NEED to have these bills out for when her husband comes home. But she wants to make a point. She’s reminding him that he can’t keep ignoring their reality. They’re in financial straights and he’s got to do something about it. He shakes his head, storms by her, and all of a sudden we have tension in the air. We have conflict. We have a scene, even if it’s a mere quarter of a page long.
But let’s say that one of the things you ALSO want to convey in this scene is that our husband and wife characters love each other very much. Having them pissed off at each other may make for a juicier scene, but it conveys the exact opposite about their relationship than what you want. Okay, that’s fine. Just shift the conflict so that it’s external.
Maybe our husband gets home, and the neighbors are, once again, playing their music loudly. As our couple work out which bills they need to pay first to stay above water, the music only seems to get louder, until the husband can’t take it anymore. He storms over to the neighbors and tells them off.
Remember, the most boring scenes in any script are the scenes where nothing’s happening. And “nothing’s happening” is universal code for “No conflict.” So always look for an angle into the scene where some kind of conflict is taking place, even if it’s subtle. Assuming that you know what needs to happen next in your script, the right level of conflict could be the key to busting past that blank page.
Genre: Action (Superhero)
Premise: When superheroes start inexplicably losing their powers, Batman realizes that a secret project of his is the cause.
About: Before George Miller made Fury Road, he was going to make a Justice League movie back in 2008. That would’ve been right after Spiderman 3 and Superman Returns, but before any of the Marvel movies. The cast had someone named D.J. Cotrona playing Superman, Armie Hammer playing Batman, Adam Brody playing The Flash, and Common playing Green Lantern. Factors such as the writer’s strike and the studio being gun shy contributed to the project’s implosion, but there will be a documentary about the almost-film coming out next year.
Writers: Michele and Kieren Mulroney
Details: 127 pages – 2007 draft
Ever since George Miller reminded everyone that, yes, he does still know how to make awesome movies, everyone’s been talking about two things. The sequel to Fury Road and the aborted Justice League script Miller penned seven years ago.
Miller’s particular attention to detail (storyboard-fu!) tells us his Justice League would have looked amazing. But what about the script he was working from? Marvel still hadn’t hit the scene yet and superhero films, at the time, were on the decline. People weren’t sure how to make them anymore.
Did Miller’s writers infuse the genre with the same freshness he added to his post-apocalypse film? Let’s find out…
Justice League begins when someone named the Martian Manhunter(?) comes down with a bad case of being on fire. Since I’d never heard of the Martian Manhunter before, I didn’t know if this was a good thing (his superpower?) or a bad thing. I went with “bad thing” and hoped for the best.
Later we meet Aquaman, who’s all of a sudden afraid of water, and then Green Lantern, who’s temporarily gone blind. The world’s superheroes realize they’re being targeted, so the king of them all, Superman, suggests that they run off to his Fortress of Solitude where they’ll be safe.
Joining up with Wonder Woman and The Flash, the still-healthy heroes start trying to figure out what’s happened to their crime-fighting buddies. Little do they know that back in Gotham, Bruce Wayne is fiddling around with his secret pet project, a satellite called the “Brother Eye,” when he realizes that someone has gotten a hold of it and is using it for no good!
Here’s where things get a little confusing. Somehow, Brother Eye has sent down an army of nano-bots to earth and is using them to invade the orifices of superheroes so it can take away their powers. When Batman realizes this, he heads to the Fortress of Solitude to fess up about his experiment-gone-bad (hey, this is starting to sound a bit like that other superhero movie that came out earlier this summer).
Superman is pissed at Bats, but they don’t have time to argue. They must formulate a plan to stop this evil Satellite-Nano thingy from killing them off. They eventually tie the satellite malfunction to a pissed-off dude named Maxwell Lord, who’s seriously upset that when he was a little kid in need, none of the superheroes came to save him. Talk about holding a grudge.
Once the superheroes arrive, Lord enacts his final plan, which involves a biker gang infused with his nano-tech. Biker Nano Tech Unite become what sound like versions of that Spider-Man villain, Octopus, and start beating our superhero team’s asses. Our caped crusaders will have to draw on every last remaining power they have to defeat Mr. Lord. But with mind altering nano-tech coursing through their brains, they’re soon fighting against each other, leaving the future of super-humans, and earth itself, in doubt.
In all fairness, to do this script justice, it really should be reviewed by a comic book geek. I like myself a good superhero movie, but the geekier and less realistic they get, the less I’m on board. This one had me scratching my head early on, and I never quite caught up with the premise. I felt a bit like a grandparent watching their grandson play with an Ipad for the first time. Like, “Whoa, what is that??”
To me, the best superhero films are the ones that have a clear and simple story (Iron Man). Where superhero films have run into trouble is when they try to do too much. This problem is magnified in these “Group Superhero” films. The movies seem to be less a natural unfolding of events and more writers desperately trying to wrangle together 20 different ideas.
As we all know, the most boring part of any movie-going experience is exposition. When the script stops for 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, to explain what’s going on, that’s 3, 5, 10 minutes where we’re not enjoying a story.
And if you have to set up 8 different superheroes, you’re going to have a lot of those moments. One of the reasons the Marvel movies have been able to thrive is because they’ve taken care of all that exposition in their standalone films, so that once the heroes come together, they can just get on with it.
At least with this version of Justice League, that’s not the case. And the Mulroneys do their best under the circumstances, but when you’re saddled with setting up a man who lives under the sea and rides on dolphins, that’s going to take some time. And then after that, you have to explain why a man looks like a rock-person from Mars. And then after that, who this Wonder Woman chick is.
But even when the script isn’t setting things up, it’s still struggling to move. The Mulroneys make the curious decision to have the superheroes run away to the Fortress of Solitude. Should superheroes really be running away from anything? That doesn’t sound very super-heroic like (although I guess Mad Max and Furiosa ran away the whole movie and that worked).
Even if you cut the script slack there, though, once they’re at the Fortress of Solitude, they stand around for an entire 25 pages(!) discussing what might be wrong with them. A 25-page talky scene with superheroes?? Shouldn’t superheroes be out there superheroing? Isn’t that what we’re expecting when we’re coming to a superhero all-star movie? From the man who brought us the longest chase scene in the history of cinema, you’d think he’d be on board with that.
In the writers’ defense, I don’t know many screenwriters who could have done better. These kinds of projects are screenwriter traps. They seem like they should deliver pure awesomeness. But the formula is working against the screenwriter almost from the get-go – having to set up tons of very unique people and build a non-cliché superhero “end of the world” storyline while it’s happening to boot.
It’s so much easier to build a story around a single superhero. This is what movies do best (work with a single protagonist) and any time you try to get cute with that formula, you can expect problems. Unfortunately, Justice League wasn’t able to avoid these problems and ended up being a lot of exposition, a lot of standing around, before a final climax that was big on action but short on originality.
For the geeks out there, I can pass along a few interesting tidbits. Flash has sex with his wife by vibrating at a really high frequency and then invading her body. Superman fights Wonder Woman as well as “Green Superman,” which comes from Green Lantern’s ring. And after Batman kills our bad guy, Superman becomes furious and says, “We never – NEVER! – take a human life. It’s unacceptable.” Oh, and one of the key superheroes dies, which results in all of our superheroes wearing their costumes in pure black.
I don’t think anyone’s cracked the code on how to do these films right yet. The closest anyone’s come is Avengers 1, and it’s only because they cheated by setting up their superheroes ahead of time. I predict we’ll see these same problems play out in Batman vs. Superman, although I hope I’m wrong!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Just know that the more characters you add to your main cast, the more time you’re going to be spending setting those characters up, which delays us getting to your story. To make character set-ups less boring, try to introduce them involved in some action, or some problem they have to solve. These scenes play less like “set-ups” than, say, showing your character get ready for work with his family. In fact, if you do them well, you can trick your audience into not realizing you’re setting up a character at all.
Sorry for the late post, guys. Been on vacation. I’m actually posting this from a plane. That’s how dedicated I am to you guys! Things should be back to normal tomorrow! :)
Genre: TV Pilot – Drama/Thriller
Premise: We watch as a deadly virus slowly spreads throughout the world, changing mankind forever.
About: This is one of the hottest TV projects around, with Academy Award Winner, Graham Moore (The Imitation Game) and director Marc Forster (World War Z) set as creators. NBC knows when they’ve reeled in a good one and is going straight-to-series with the show. One of the more interesting things to come out of that Oscar win for Moore was his amazing Oscar speech. The problem was, many assumed it was Moore coming out, including GLADD!, who celebrated the speech as such. Moore had to make a public announcement to clarify that he was actually straight and his speech was just about celebrating being weird, no matter who you were.
Writer: Graham Moore
Details: 60 pages (1/4/15 draft)
Wow.
Look at how much the business has changed. Five years ago, if you said the first thing a screenwriter would do after winning an Oscar was go write a TV show, the town would’ve laughed at you. Yet that’s exactly what’s happened with Graham Moore heading to television.
If there’s a “Wait a minute, huh?” moment people are having, it’s that Moore would go to, of all places, NBC, with his show. America’s uncoolest network is fresh off of thinking David Duchovny is still relevant and believes that confusing the hell out of the audience by calling a Charles Manson show, “Aquarius,” is a good thing.
No doubt the coveted “straight-to-series” promise was the key instigator here, as that’s about the only way NBC can lure talent away from the far hipper networks.
Moore’s pilot follows three key characters, the first being Sam Culp, a 40-something FBI agent who’s just shot and killed one half of a terrorist team who anthraxed a bunch of people. Culp is celebrated as a hero, but he’s not so sure. The kid was just 18 years old. And he sure didn’t seem like a bad guy.
Meanwhile, over in the UK, Eve Allen, a wife and mother who’s trying to get back into the work force, can’t remember an interview she just went in for five minutes ago. She embarrassingly walks right back into the interview room, announcing that she’s here. It can’t possibly be Alzheimer’s, since she’s in her early 40s, leaving us questioning what the heck can be wrong with her.
Finally, there’s Michael, who’s flying to Washington, D.C. from Africa, and who’s conspicuously hiding a vial of blood in his jacket. I don’t know about you, but when people flying in from Africa are hiding vials of blood, that’s usually not a good thing. But here’s the kicker. It turns out Michael works for the CDC. Making us wonder why the hell a CDC worker has to sneak blood across the border.
All three storylines clash when we learn that the Anthrax used in the terrorist attack could not have come from the suspected terrorists, but rather came from Michael’s CDC lab. How that could’ve happened and who could’ve done it is the impetus for what will surely be a chain of events that changes the world forever.
It used to be that writers either worked in movies or television. There was crossover, of course, but not to the extent there is today. Because that was the case, writers in each medium tended to think narrowly. Their idea-subset would consist of what would work in their respective medium. If a TV writer thought of a good movie idea, or vice versa, they’d likely put it on the backburner and never get to it. Who knows how many great ideas were jettisoned as a result!
Today’s writers have a huge advantage. When they come up with an idea, they get to DECIDE which medium it’s best suited for, and write in that medium.
To understand what kind of story you have, you want to classify your ideas into “long-form” and “short-form.” Short-form ideas (movies) are typically ideas that can take place inside of days or weeks. Occasionally, you’ll have a movie that covers months, and rarer still, one that lasts years (like biopics and period pieces). But for the most part, short-form ideas take place in under two weeks. That seems to be the sweet spot.
Long-form ideas are ideas that take place over at least a year. And here’s where I think Moore and Forster hit the jackpot. The pandemic outbreak idea has really only been dealt with in the feature world, and now that I’m looking back at it, I don’t think pandemics are made for short-form storytelling. They’re much better suited for long-form.
It’s much scarier watching a pandemic spread over weeks and weeks, slowly, from city to city, across the world, than it is trying to cram a fast-acting pandemic into a couple of days. By the time you get scared for everyone, the movie is already over. To a certain extent, The Walking Dead has shown us that this formula works.
Indeed, when we come to the end of Moore’s pilot, watching as Eve Allen, our character with a memory issue, starts seizing uncontrollably in front of her husband, we can sense that we’re going to watch something terrible take place, something that isn’t completed or solved within days, but rather something that lasts years. And isn’t that so much scarier? Watching what it would really be like, as opposed to some Hollywodized version of a paper-thin fast-acting pandemic?
A pilot like this has to set up a few mystery boxes, and here Moore does a good job as well. One of the more interesting ones is the character of Michael, our CDC rep carrying the vial of blood. Michael is seated next to a Middle Eastern man, who appears to be a stranger at first, although later this man appears to be a part of a bigger plan, indicating that their entire conversation occurred in code.
There’s also the mystery of who lifted the Anthrax vile from the CDC center – the one that was used in the terrorist attack. As if we weren’t confused enough already, it appears that Michael has no idea how the vial got out. So the man who’s carrying secret vials of blood and having coded conversations with Middle Eastern men on planes is clueless about who’s stealing diseases from his laboratory. What’s going on here??
If there’s a knock against the pilot, it’s that it’s one level shy of “must watch.” Everything here is strong, but there’s something missing. If I had to guess what it is, I’d probably say the lack of genre. When you have genre on your side (Lost, The Walking Dead), you have a little more leniency with your twists and turns. You can have fun with them. Like polar bears on a tropical island!
But when you’re trying to show how something would really happen, you have to play by a stricter set of rules. The twists and turns can’t be too crazy, less you puncture the suspension of disbelief balloon. But outside of that one not-really-a-criticism criticism, NBC looks like they finally may have a winner here. Straight-to-series for the win.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Writers don’t spend enough time asking themselves if their idea is better as a feature or a TV show. Asking this question can save you a lot of heartache later on. You don’t want to spend a year writing a movie only to find out the story is way bigger than a feature. Embrace the type of idea you have and write towards the appropriate medium.
How many writers does it take to write one disaster pic? A lot more than you think!
Genre: Action
Premise: After a massive earthquake hits the West Coast, a rescue-chopper pilot travels across the wasteland to save his daughter.
About: San Andreas came out this weekend and bested predictions with 50 million big ones (a good 10 million higher than most estimates). I guess you could say it was an AFTER-shock to analysts. Get it? Cause aftershocks are earthquakes? The film stars the most likable movie star in the business, The Rock, and was directed by The Rock collaborator, Brad Peyton, who worked with the muscled one on Journey to the Center of the Earth 2. While Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore wrote this draft, it looks like Carlton Cuse (of Lost fame) received final credit, with Fabrizio and Passmore having to settle for story credit.
Writers: Andre Fabrizio & Jeremy Passmore, revisions by Allan Loeb (10/26/11), Revisions by Carlton Cuse (11/02/12), Current Revisions by The Hayes Brothers 7/24/2013
Details: 108 pages
Reading the title page of San Andreas is a bit like reading a screenwriting earthquake. There were enough screenwriters here to fill up a WGA screening. And I suppose that makes sense. The disaster pic, once a staple of Hollywood’s plan to steal your mid-summer money, has become the green-headed step-child, an awkward mumbler of a personality in a world where dark-colored spandex reins supreme.
So the fact that the producers felt they needed to get as many screenwriting eyes on the script as possible should probably be seen as proof of their insecurity. I mean, didn’t Guardians of the Galaxy have just two writers?
What may have given them pause is the fact that they’ve actually scaled the disaster pic back. When the Emmerichs and Devlins of the world were in charge of mass cinematic disaster, they typically chose to take down the entire planet. This approach seems to have been endorsed by Damon Lindelof, who once said, “If you’re going to play in the summer sandbox, the stakes basically have to be the entire world.”
But here’s the thing about that. If the destruction is TOO sprawling, if it covers TOO MUCH surface area, it’s tough to wrangle in a story. You only have two hours to tell a story in a feature-length movie. If you want that movie to resonate emotionally – you probably want to keep things at least somewhat contained. Which is why San Andreas had the chance to excel where all these other destruction movies failed.
The quick plot breakdown for San Andreas is that Tom, a Los Angeles rescue-chopper dude, is reeling from the recent implosion of his marriage to Rachel, who’s since moved on to the incredibly rich and seemingly perfect Patrick.
This has been hard on their 21 year-old daughter, Blake, who’d like for nothing more than to have the family back together again. To add insult to injury, Tom has to cancel a father-daughter sorority function with Blake, forcing her to go with future step-dad Patrick instead.
The two head up to San Francisco, when the first quake hits, pinning Blake inside her car. So what does Patrick do? He gets the hell out of there, saving himself! Blake’s able to call her father and let him know where she is, and after The Rock, I mean Tom, saves his wife, the two head up to San Fran to save their daughter, and hopefully, their marriage!
The first thing I noticed about this is that they changed the names of the main characters. Here in the script, the parents are Tom and Rachel. In the script, they’re Ray and Emma. I’ve heard that changing character names is a trick writers use to improve their chances of getting final credit, since it appears to the WGA arbitrators as if more has changed than actually has.
I’m not saying that’s what happened here. It could just be someone didn’t like those names. But with the original writers usually favored to get credit, and Fabrizio and Passmore not getting it here, it is a little curious.
As for the script, I have to say, it’s not bad. I mean, this isn’t going to win any Oscars, but if there was an award for “best execution of a standard story,” I’d put San Andreas up there with any other screenplay this year. Every beat of this script hits like the heart of an Olympic athlete, which makes sense, since The Rock’s headlining it.
What you’re always running up against when you write a pure action flick is trying to find the emotional core of the story, which of course takes place with your characters. To this end, San Andreas does a solid (unlike the earth in the film) job.
We establish that Tom and Rachel are broken up, but there’s still a spark there. This is a nice dynamic to set up because it gives the reader hope. “Maybe,” they think, “They’ll get back together.” And if there’s a “maybe,” there’s a reason for the reader to keep reading.
Also, when you’ve got a marriage or a relationship that’s fallen apart, you want there to be an origin to that rift. In other words, you don’t want them to just be broken up because you, the writer, need them broken up for your story. There needs to be a reason.
Here, we find out that Tom’s other daughter died five years ago in a rafting accident. Tom wasn’t able to save her, and it destroyed them. Death of a daughter/son is one of the biggest reasons for couples splitting, so it makes sense here. This also buoys the action in the main plot, since we know that Tom isn’t going to let another one of his daughter’s die.
As far as covering this backstory in your script, it’s up to you. Some writers like to add that scene where the hero tells someone what happened. Some writers (Robert Towne in Chinatown), choose not to tell the story at all. It’s also up to you whether you want to tell the whole story or just a sliver of it, leaving it up to the audience to fill in the gaps (something I favor). But the important thing is that you, the writer, know it, so that the story beat feels authentic.
Here, the writers do something interesting. They give the explanation of this backstory to a third party, Blake. She tells it to a guy she’s running around the city with. This is favorable. When the character himself (what would’ve been Tom) tells the story of how he “couldn’t save her” (or whatever the story is), it comes off as overly melodramatic, even cheesy. By having someone else recall it, it feels less manipulative, and a bit more realistic.
From a structural standpoint in San Andreas (sorry, I had to go there), you could practically see the problems the writers dealt with as the script evolved. I’m willing to bet this story was originally relegated to Los Angeles, with Tom on one side of the city and Blake on the other. But the writers quickly realized that the story’s not going to last very long if all a helicopter pilot has to do is fly from one end of Los Angeles to the other.
So they added this storyline where Blake goes up to San Francisco, extending the earthquake all the way up the state. It’s choices like this that aren’t noticed by the average movie-goer and really what screenwriters get paid for. Cause the choice is a 2-for-1. It not only extends the distance between rescuer and rescuee, allowing for a more difficult challenge, but you now get to have the earthquake hit two cities, which doubles the entertainment value of the film.
Look, I’m not here to tell you that San Andreas is the best screenplay ever. But for what it’s trying to do, it does a really good job. I’d definitely recommend it to any screenwriter who’s writing an action script. Read it if you can find it!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When you’re writing an action movie (or really any “genre” type movie), don’t worry about being too “proper” with your prose. The read is supposed to be easy and light, so your prose should reflect that. I loved the way our resident seismologist’s office was described when we first meet him: “Roger’s sitting behind a desk. Tech shit and books everywhere.” Is this going to fly in a Harvard English Literature class? No. But all that matters in a script is that it tells me what I’m looking at. And I know exactly what this room looks like from this sentence.
