Genre: Drama
Premise: An ex-Death Row worker who has since isolated himself from the world finds his life reinvigorated by the arrival of a beautiful teenage girl.
About: A lot of people chastise the Black List for celebrating scripts that already have production deals or writers who already have established careers. But baby scribe Anthony Ragnone truly is an “out of nowhere” find. Outside of some assistant work, he was just your average amateur writer trying to get noticed. He did so with “Huntsville,” which finished around the middle of the pack on the 2014 Black List. (Note: Due to some reveals in the screenplay, I would suggest you find and read this script before reading the review. A lot of people should have the script to pass around since it was on the Black List)
Writer: Anthony Ragnone II
Details: 92 pages

Michael Shannon for Hank?

If I heard that a band of eager young screenwriters were heading to Los Angeles and would be here tomorrow, and the city commissioner gave me one billboard to put up at the entrance of the city, in which I could offer any message I wanted to said screenwriters to give them the best chance at success, I know exactly what that billboard would say:

SIMPLIFY YOUR SCREENPLAY!

One of the most common mistakes I see new writers make – and it only seems to be getting worse – is biting off more than they can chew. An extremely complicated plotline following multiple protagonists with flashbacks and flashforwards where every third character’s motivations are shrouded in mystery… It certainly sounds fun from an eager young writer’s point of view. But the amount of skill required to pull something like this off is higher than you could possibly know.

And I know that sucks to hear because when you’re a young writer, you want to break the rules. You want to show why you’re different. So you conjure up some part-Charlie Kaufman, part-Aaron Sorkin, part-Scorsese screenplay that is simply too complicated to wrangle into any sort of enjoyable shape.

The scripts that I see which continue to sell or make an impression on the industry are often simple stories with a slight complication or two. If you look at the latest Black List, Catherine the Great (the number one script) is a very simple story following a woman who rises to power. The only complication is that it doesn’t take place in one continuous timeline. My favorite script on the Black List so far, The Founder, is even simpler. An ambitious man tries to create a fast food empire. There are no bells and whistles. Just the necessary conflict he endures while trying to achieve his goal.

The Brian Duffield script, The Babysitter, which finished 3rd on the list, follows a kid with a crazy baby sitter. The Wall, which finished sixth on the list, is about a one-on-one battle between two snipers. Achingly simple. The first script on the list that I would categorize as “complex” would be “Mena,” which uses an overly complicated 40 page montage before it gets into its core story. Not surprisingly, I think it’s the weakest of the scripts mentioned. Reading it was a struggle.

This brings us to today’s Black List script, which is, yet again, a simple story. It’s about a 40 year old man, Hank, who lives a boring isolated life. His job is to watch the local high school parking lot so that aspiring Ferris Buellers don’t try to play hooky. For fun, he occasionally goes fishing at a local lake. Other than that, he takes care of his turtles, and enjoys a drink or two.

Everything would’ve continued on this way had Josie not arrived. A smoking hot punky 17 year old, Josie isn’t who she seems at first. She’s actually thoughtful, sweet, and cool. She pushes Hank to open up, get out of his comfort zone, and actually go out and have fun. Within a few days, the two are practically best friends.

And that’s when Marcus gets involved. Marcus is one of those kids who would ditch school every day if it wasn’t for Hank sitting in that parking lot busting him every time he sneaks out of school. Marcus hates Hank, and that makes things very awkward when Marcus starts dating Josie.

Josie jumps back and forth between spending time with the two, and you get the sense that something here is going to break. It’s just a question of who snaps first. Of course, if that’s all there was to the story, there wouldn’t much to talk about. There’s something in Hank’s past that he doesn’t like to talk about, and it may be the thing that undoes them all.

Once again, we’ve got a super simple story here. A friendship between two unlikely people that’s thrown into disarray by a dangerous third party. The reason that simple stories are so effective is because it’s easy for the reader to understand what’s going on. And that’s a powerful tool as a writer. Once someone thinks they know what’s going on, you can mess with them. You can throw unexpected twists and turns at the story. You can build suspense. You can foreshadow standoffs between characters.

When everything is shrouded in mystery and hiding behind fifteen cross-cutting storylines or time jumps, the most effective storytelling tools become unavailable to you. It’s hard to be suspenseful if we’re not even sure who’s who or what’s what.

Huntsville uses a very simple device to keep our interest, and that’s an impending sense of doom. You usually only hear about this device in relation to horror scripts. But it can be used in any genre, and if you’re writing a slow-burn story, it’s pretty much a necessity. The impending sense of doom here is Marcus. He’s our bad guy who doesn’t like Hank. And the closer Hank gets to Josie, a girl he’s falling for, the more we get the sense that, at some point, Marcus is going to get rid of Hank.

Another reason I think writers are scared to keep things simple is because they equate simple with boring. To these writers, I’d say shift your complexities away from plot and into character. If you can create at least one complex character, readers will keep reading if only to try and figure them out.

What makes Hank such a good character are all these hints at his dark past. Every once in awhile, Hank will see a man sitting in his apartment, long gray oily beard in an orange jumpsuit, just staring at him. Part of the reason we keep reading is we want to know who this man is and how he relates to Hank.

But also, we want to know how far Hank will go. He knows he can’t and shouldn’t be with this girl. It’s illegal. And yet, this is the only person in the last ten years who’s reached out to him, who’s shown him that there’s still joy in life. I’ve said this before but whenever you have a character who’s fighting something within themselves, you, at the very least, have a watchable character.

(Spoilers) I’ll finish this off by saying I did NOT see this ending coming at all. It takes a lot to fool me since I’ve seen every trick in the book. But Ragnone got me good. No doubt, the ending is what got this script on the Black List. And I’ll go so far as to say it never would’ve worked had the rest of the story not been so simple.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: There’s a difference between a simple story and a simple concept. A simple story is just telling a story in a simple way, and is often preferred. A simple concept is another thing entirely. As much as I liked this script, I’m not sure I’d advise other writers to write a concept this simplistic (older guy meets younger girl and becomes friends with her). Unless you find an agent who sends it to everyone in town and it gets on the Black List, scripts like this more often fall through the cracks. I’d advise a high concept or a genre approach if you’re trying to get noticed as an unknown writer.

Genre: TV Pilot – 1 hour Comedy
Premise: When the Devil gets bored with the goings-on of Hell, he decides to pack up, head to Los Angeles, and open a bar. What he never expected was to start caring about the people in the city.
About: Born in New York, Tom Kapinos moved to Los Angeles in the mid 1990s, got a job as a reader at CAA, and parlayed that into a script sale that got Jennifer Aniston attached. The movie was never made, but the spec was read by the Dawson’s Creek folks, where Kapinos soon became one of the writers. After the show was over, Kapinos fell into the Tinsletown Purgatory but five years later emerged with the hit show, Californication, on Showtime. Kapinos has now, smartly, jumped onto the comic book bandwagon, taking the DC character, Lucifer, and turning it into a TV show which will debut on Fox, probably as a companion to Gotham.
Writer: Tom Kapinos
Details: 55 pages

Okay, so I’ve just started Season 3 of House of Cards, and I’m worried. For those planning on watching the show in the future, avert your eyes, I’m about to get into spoilers. Basically, when you have a particular goal driving a TV show, the show will encounter a crossroads when the protagonist achieves that goal. Frank Underwood’s (Kevin Spacey) goal has always been to become president. That’s why we watched for the first two seasons – to see if he could do it. Now that he’s done it, where does the story go?

Now there are a million new story challenges you can create for the president of the United States. But no matter what you do, it’s hard to recapture the excitement of the underdog trying to become the top dog. I’m worried that the show will start focusing on plot (We must improve our relations with Russia!) as opposed to character, which is what makes all TV shows, and this one in particular, so good. Whatever the case, I’m eager to see how they solve this problem. It could lead to either some really good or some really bad screenwriting. I’m sure those who have already seen Season 3 will offer up their thoughts in the comments.  I only ask that they do so without spoilers.

How does this tie into today’s pilot? Well, Frank Underwood is a morally corrupt individual. He will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. It’s become apparent to me that these types of characters are great for TV shows. Someone who’s a little bad is so much more entertaining than someone who’s pure good. And today, we have a character who’s probably about as bad as they get. The devil himself. Let’s take a look at Fox’s upcoming show… Lucifer.

When we meet Lucifer Morningstar, he’s been chilling in LA for a good year, running his hot nightclub, Lux, and basically doing whatever naughty thoughts come into his head. The reason Lucifer has so much fun is that he’s devoid of that part of the body that actually cares about things – what is it called again? – oh yeah, the heart.

That’s about to change, though. One of Lucifer’s pet projects has been Delilah, a talented musician who debuted at his club and who has since become one of the biggest musicians in the world. However, like a lot of musicians, she makes terrible dating mistakes, and on this particular night at Lux, one of those mistakes drives by the club and guns her down.

What starts as anger eventually becomes sadness in Lucifer – a feeling he’s totally unfamiliar with. It bothers him enough that he insists on joining local hot but uptight cop, Chloe, on her investigation into the murder. Chloe doesn’t like the candid and sexist Lucifer, but she’s amazed by his Jedi-like power to get anybody to tell him what he wants to know.

The two go from Record Company owners to rap stars to movie stars as they trace Delilah’s sordid relationship past, before finally discovering that the wife of one of Delilah’s lovers got her bodyguard to do the hit. It’s a satisfying conclusion for Lucifer, who can now go back to his debauchery-laden ways. Except there’s one problem. He actually finds himself caring for this Chloe woman. Humph. Why does the real world have to be so complicated??

Let’s start off today talking about Investigation Simplicity Syndrome. 50% of the TV shows out there revolve around some kind of procedural format. Characters go on an investigation, usually to find a murderer. It’s a tried and true format where the goal and stakes are built right there into the genre.

But Investigation Simplicity Syndrome can destroy a procedural. This occurs when the investigation is too simplistic. Here Lucifer and Chloe go to a record producer, who says he didn’t do it and offers, “It was probably that rapper.” They go to the rapper, who says, “It was probably that movie star.” They go the movie star and, after talking to his wife, realize she was the one who did it.

It was so basic as to seem purposefully boring. Now when you’re writing a comedy series, which Lucifer basically is, you get a little more leeway in this area. If people are laughing, they’re not demanding Fargo-like complexity in their plot. But you have to put a LITTLE effort into the investigation.

Another problem with Lucifer is Lucifer’s key power – his ability to get people to tell him the truth. It makes things too easy! Characters throw the answers at him without any effort on his part: “Oh yeah, you should go check out that guy. He’s suspicious.” With any movie or show, you want to make things DIFFICULT on your characters – not simple – because then your characters have to struggle, and characters who struggle are always more fun to watch than characters who are handed everything.

So the combination of Investigation Simplicity Syndrome and Lucifer being handed all the information without having to work for it made for an incredibly boring investigation.

Which means I probably hated Lucifer, right? Not exactly. What Lucifer lacks in plotting it makes up for in fun. Lucifer is a funny character, throwing out punchlines faster than Mayweather throws punches (when an Angel visits his club: “Amenadude! How’s it hanging, big guy? Didn’t you see the sign?” “No angels allowed?” No? Hmm, maybe we should be using a bigger font.”)

And let’s not forget the wish-fulfillment, one of the more underrated components of character creation. We all wish we could do bad things and not have to suffer the consequences for them. That’s what’s so fun about watching Lucifer. He’s bad and he doesn’t give a shit.

That alone wouldn’t have been enough though. Kapinos smartly realizes that every good TV character needs somewhere to go. If there’s nothing they’re struggling with, then they’re basically a robot. So what’s hinted at, here, is Lucifer’s growing introduction to feelings – something he never had to deal with down in Hell. Once a character must deal with consequences, their choices become a lot more difficult, and we sense that’s going to be Lucifer’s journey as a character.

The script also benefits from Protagonist Dramatic Irony. This is when we know something about the character that nobody in the story does. This typically works best with serial killer protagonist flicks (American Psycho), but here, it’s simply that Lucifer is the devil. Therefore, whenever someone challenges Lucifer, or gets in his face, or gives him trouble, our superior knowledge allows us to delight in what’s about to follow. This happens several times in the script, such as when Scrip9 (the rapper) tries to intimidate Lucifer, only to end up on the floor crying like a baby when the conversation is over.

So what Lucifer lacks in plot, it makes up for in character. And for this reason, I give the pilot a passing grade. This is television, and in television, character is king. So if you nail that, you get some slack on the plot front. Still, if Kapinos thinks this show is going to last with investigations like this, Lucifer’s going to be buying property back in Hell before sweeps week. I hope that doesn’t happen because this series has potential.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: An easy way to avoid Investigation Simplicity Syndrome is to add COMPLICATIONS to the investigation. Just look for places to make things more difficult for your investigators. They go to their next lead – but the lead turns out to be dead. They go to their top suspect, but a lawyer opens the door and says his client won’t be talking to them. The chief of police tells them to stop investigating – the case is closed. It can be anything, as long as it throws the investigation off its typical path.

Genre: Drama-Thriller
Premise: A wife and mother finds herself forced to rob banks to save her family.
About: Matt Reeves has been writing for longer than you probably know. Most moviegoers place the start of the Reeves era at the arrival of Cloverfield, one of the most famous “out of nowhere” movies the geek world has ever seen. But did you know that Reeves wrote Under Siege 2: Dark Territory in 1995, a full 13 years before Cloverfield? He also wrote on Felicity, which, of course, was a JJ Abrams show, and how the two would eventually team up for Cloverfield. Reeves would later go on to write and direct the remake of Let the Right One In, and most recently directed Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. The Invisible Woman is supposed to be a passion project of his, and something he wrote all the way back in 2007. He claims to still want to make it, but when you’re being paid millions to direct some of the biggest movies in Hollywood, it’s hard to stop the money train to make an intimate character piece. So we shall see.
Writer: Matt Reeves
Details: 116 pages (April 14, 2007 draft)

Halle Berry for Carol?

I meant to go see “Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter” this weekend, about the woman who thinks “Fargo” was real and that there really is a hidden bag of money somewhere in Minnesota, so she goes searching for it. But when push came to shove, my in-between-work obsession with House of Cards took precedence. Outside of Breaking Bad and The Good Wife, I can’t think of a show where the writing is more consistent. Every single episode is good – not easy to do when you’re essentially covering a bunch of stuffy men talking in rooms.

Perhaps it’s apropos, then, that today’s script deals with another woman obsessed with money, albeit for different reasons entirely. Carol Elmer is a regular housewife living in the suburbs with a husband and a teenage son. Unfortunately, her life is far from perfect. It turns out her husband, Gerry, hasn’t had a job in six months. And while he seems to think this is fine, Carol, who’s in charge of the finances, goes to the bank to see how they’re doing, only to find out they’re about to lose their home.

So what does she do to solve this problem? Sit down and talk with Gerry to come up with a plan of action? Pft, no way! She starts robbing banks, of course! Carol develops a cliché little system where she throws on a cheap platinum wig, then goes into banks, pretending to have a gun, and telling tellers to fill up a trash bag. The problem is, Carol isn’t very good at it. And the tellers keep tricking her – stuffing one dollar bills inside of stacks of one-hundreds, giving her a fraction of the money she needs. So Carol has to keep robbing more banks.

In the meantime, Carol’s awkward teenage son, Christian, is failing music class. It’s gotten bad enough that the music teacher, Mr. Shaw, believes Christian needs a tutor. Carol is somewhat creeped out by the guy, but she can’t have her son failing school, so she agrees to the tutelage.

The problem is, Mr. Shaw stumbles upon Carol’s secret. But instead of turning her in, he offers to help, and becomes a sort of impromptu getaway driver. This leads to Mr. Shaw falling in love with Carol, and the two begin an illicit affair. The thing is, when Carol gets the money she needs to pay off the house, she plans to go back to her family life. But it doesn’t look like Mr. Shaw has the same plan in mind. Needless to say, this is all heading towards disaster.

I’ll start out by saying this was one of the more unpleasantly written screenplays I’ve read in awhile. Besides the extreme overuse of ellipses, Reeves has a strange tendency to underline the most random words in dialogue. I think underlining is fine if you do it two or three times a script and you underline relevant words. But it honestly felt like Reeves was using a random underlining generator. There was no rhyme or reason to anything he underlined.

Here’s a real line from the script: “Mrs. Elmer…! I’m sorry! I really do think it’s important we talk! I mean, I know you’re probably thinking, oh, it’s only band — !” I suppose you may be able to make an argument for underlining “sorry.” But “do?” And “oh?” And this was the case with almost EVERY line of dialogue. It was nuts!

This practice forced me stop at every underlined word to deem its significance, which gave the script a start-stop quality that destroyed any semblance of rhythm the script might have had.

That kind of stuff is easily taken care of though. Not underlining words literally takes 1 second to fix. The bigger issue I battled with was the concept. I kept asking myself, “Is this a movie?” The whole time, I kept waiting for some big twist to occur to give the story gravitas. But it really was just about a woman who robs banks because she needs money.

I guess the stakes are high (she’s trying to save her family). And there are adequate complications thrown in (she starts having an affair with another man). But I feel like in this day and age, you need more for a movie. The competition is fierce so you need to come to the table with a bigger idea.

The exception to this rule is if you’re telling the story with a unique voice. Your voice, then, becomes the “hook” that makes your screenplay different. Silver Linings Playbook is essentially a romantic comedy. But David O. Russell brings such a unique voice to the story that it doesn’t feel like any romantic comedy you’ve ever seen before.

I kept waiting for a daring choice to happen in The Invisible Woman, but everything pretty much happened how you’d expect it to. Take Mr. Shaw, for instance. The guy is presented as a creeper who’s infatuated with Carol. I thought, then, when he found out that Carol was robbing banks, that he was going to blackmail her into sex to keep quiet. That’s what I mean by a daring choice. Instead, they just became lovers, which didn’t even make sense since she didn’t like him.

If you want a movie, you need a concept. You have to come up with some cool hot hook that feels larger than life. I’m reminded of the book (and movie) A Simple Plan, where two brothers from a small town find a bag of 4 million dollars in a crashed plane, take it, and kill a man who finds out about their secret.  They spend the rest of the movie trying to keep authorities from finding out the truth, and the whole “simple” plan goes spiraling out of control.  That feels like a larger than life idea to me.

If all you have is character, you’re probably better off turning your idea into a TV show. That’s what this feels like to me. In fact, it has a sort of “Breaking Bad” quality to it – a woman constantly breaking the law to feed her family. I don’t know how you extend it past the first season but this certainly feels more comfortable in that space than as a film. In short, my entire Invisible Woman reading experience amounted to me wanting more. I never got it, unfortunately.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Movies are becoming more and more of a concept-driven business. Everything is big and flashy so you have to come up with a big flashy concept of your own to stand out. If you’re writing character driven stuff, ask yourself if it can be turned into a TV show. Obviously, there are still smaller channels like straight-to-digital that will support character-driven films. If that’s where you want your finished film to end up, that’s fine. But chances are, a character-focused project is better off in the TV space.

Keep sharpening your Scriptshadow 250 Contest entries.  Your competition is only getting better with Amateur Offerings feedback.  Here are this week’s contestants, which include werewolves, cults, serial killers, and, of course, Harrison Ford.  Enjoy!

Title: Canine
Genre: Action
Logline: A special forces K9 unit, searching for an international terrorist deep in the Afghan wilderness, find themselves hunted by an ancient tribe of werewolves.
Why you should read: Carson is always encouraging his readers to take a genre and put a fresh twist on it. Which got us thinking… when was the last time we’d seen a kick-ass werewolf action film? Underworld? The Wolf Man? There’s definitely a gap in the market out there. Hopefully we can fill it. And even if you disagree, we’d love some feedback from the Scriptshadow community to help us take the script to the next level.

Title: To Dust
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A brainwashed young woman, conditioned to track and kill the remaining members of her parents’ cult, must outwit a relentless small-town Sheriff and regain her true memories before she kills her next target – the man she loves.
Why you should read: I submitted my last script, The Dark Parade, to Amateur Friday almost a year ago to the day. Whilst I had some great feedback and insight from the SS community (and the script got a few manager reads) – no one was gonna would splash down $150m on a VFX-heavy vampire spec from an unknown writer.

Title: The Rift
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Logline: When a soldier suffering from PTSD is told his symptoms are the result of an impossible space/time experiment, he seeks out the renegade scientist responsible, but being living evidence of the experiment’s success, a black agency is quickly on his trail to appropriate the technology.
Why you should read:”Get your work out there!” is often heard advice. “The Rift” started because one of the writers did exactly that. On a slow weekend with no AOW he posted the first 15 pages of an Industry Insider challenge entry that didn’t make the cut for feedback. Another writer read it, liked it, retouched and extended it, and send it back to the original writer for critical feedback. Countless emails over 8 timezones later “The Rift” was a fact. — “The Rift” is a complete screenplay that wouldn’t have existed if not for that first step: to put your work out there for the world to see. If you keep it for yourself, no one will know it exists, no matter how good it is. And so, as a logical extension of how the script came to be, we put it out there where it originated, on AOW, to see what might happen this time around.

Title: Vickie
Genre: Drama
Log lien: A seemingly docile nurse in Texas morphs into a serial killer of patients where she worked, after personal set-backs push her over the edge. BASED ON A TRUE STORY
Why you should read:  I’m Randall Alexander. I’m on the cusp of 40, and live in Texas. I’ve long been fascinated with the story of Vickie Dawn Jackson, who was not only a nurse in Texas, but also became a serial killer. We don’t hear a lot about female serial killers, mainly because they don’t usually exist. What makes a person go there? I envision it was a slow burn that teetered right under the surface, that needed some nudging here and there and then WHAM!…it got that final shove, and then erupted into a fire that Vickie could not contain. And that’s the way I wanted my script to play out. Looking for feedback! I think you should read my script, because I followed your advice, in regards to writing a FIRST PAGE that grabs the readers attention.

Title: Adventure Has A Name
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a fan accidentally receives Harrison Ford’s lab results in the mail, the fatal prognosis sends him and his friends on a desperate journey to find Ford and deliver the script they penned to win him his long deserved Oscar.
Why you should read: This script’s life depends on Harrison Ford. While my first concern is his well-being, his near fatal plane crash today also reminded me that life is too short to keep shelving my projects because someday I’ll wake up and it will be too late. I was holding off on submitting to Script Shadow 250 hoping I could get some feedback from amateur Friday (as you suggested), so here it is – a script about three guys trying to stop Harrison Ford from freezing himself. Been working on it a long time, but it’s not the years Carson, it’s the mileage.

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: Action
Premise (from writer): After learning his estranged brother is a spy, a disgraced FBI cadet becomes a fugitive to stop his sibling from detonating an experimental nuke in New York City.
Why You Should Read (from writer): In 2011, I met Shane Black. We were both waiting at a crosswalk after a lecture he gave. I dared to ask him a question:”What’s your biggest fear when you open up a script?” He thoughtfully replied: “Interchangeable action scenes that don’t affect the story or characters. I see it all the time and it saddens me. Set pieces must have consequences or what’s the fucking point.” The light changed. Shane was gone. I never forgot his words while I wrote this beast of a script. Thanks, Shane. — And thank you to all the Scriptshadow readers from last week’s Amateur Offerings. I wasn’t a regular around here, but you gave me great feedback and always treated me with respect. I’m very grateful for that. Readers here deserve a lot more back and forth from AF winners. If picked for Amateur Friday, I 100% guarantee that I’ll be here for comments. No excuses. It’s the least I can do for a community I’ve benefited so much from. I can’t wait to learn what you think of the small but key revisions I was able to make to the opening pages this week!
Writer: ThyEnemyWriter
Details: 124 pages

Poster from writer.

I gotta give Thy props for asking Shane Black a question in the middle of the street. Most writers would not have had the guts to do that. Props to Shane for, on the spot, coming back with a great answer too! The real question, of course, is did Thy execute the advice? Let’s find out.

Wyatt Crane is trying to make it as an FBI agent but fails the big field test and is sent packing. Bummed out, he heads to the bar, only to get a call from his estranged brother, Nathan, who asks Wyatt to hop on a plane and come meet him in New York. The two clearly have a strained relationship and Wyatt isn’t too sure, but what else does he have to do? It’s not like he has to show up to work tomorrow.

Once in New York, Wyatt is grabbed by TSA and questioned about his bro. It turns out Nathan’s working for the CIA, or some other clandestine agency, and is involved in a nasty plot to hurt a lot of people. Wyatt tells them the truth, that he got a call from a brother and that’s all he knows, but they’re not buying it.

Eventually, a mysterious alcoholic named Ridley rescues him, and Wyatt trusts him for awhile. But it turns out Ridley’s not who he seems. He’s working for this crazy Ukranian chick named Dietrich who’s trying to buy up the newest fad in terrorism – clean nukes – to blow up… well, something. We don’t know yet. And who is she getting these nukes from? You guessed it. WYATT’S BROTHER NATHAN!

Meanwhile, Wyatt runs into someone else who’s looking for his brother, Karen. Karen wants to find out what Nathan had to do with her father’s death, as he gave clearance to a plane he piloted that was attacked by terrorists. In order to get Karen to stick around, Wyatt pretends he’s someone else entirely. And the two race to stop Dietrich – or is it Nathan! – from destroying the world.

Thy Enemy has two things going for it. It reads quickly and it’s fun. Extremely important for an action spec. It had some fun characters too. I thought Dietrich and Mila were a hilarious duo. The running joke of Mila wanting American hot dogs had me laughing. But something big was holding this script back here, and we have to get into it. Thy, I love you, but I also want you to become the best writer you can possibly be. So I hope you take this as constructive criticism and not an attack. Let’s get into it!

The big thing holding Thy Enemy back?

Authenticity.

Instead of reading like a script where the writer intimately knew how the FBI worked, or the CIA worked, or how physics worked. It read like fan-fiction.

It’s kind of like the difference between how James Cameron treats special effects and Uwe Boll treats special effects. James Cameron goes in there and learns how all the things he’s going to write about work, even down to the plants in the jungle. Uwe Boll figures people don’t care about that stuff, and only passively pays attention to those details.

The difference in the resulting films, however, is striking. There’s an authenticity to Cameron’s worlds. Whereas you always feel like Uwe Boll is cutting corners. And that’s how Thy Enemy felt to me. There were a lot of fun sequences, but too many of them felt cartoon-like and unrealistic. And therefore it was hard for me to engage in and believe in the story.

I’ve talked about this before but writers always think they can take the shortcut and “fool” the reader. If you’re going to write about the FBI, you need to learn how the FBI works. If the CIA is going to be a central component to your story, you need to learn how the CIA works. Having only a cursory understanding of these bureaus based upon other movies and TV shows you’ve seen isn’t enough.

I try to explain it this way. Take your job that you have now. Do you think that a writer who’s never done your job before would be able to write as convincingly about it as you could? Of course not. They wouldn’t even come close. Because you know all the little details that make that job REAL. The only way to even the playing field, then, is research.

If you looked into the Sony e-mail leaks, you might’ve seen an exchange between Amy Pascal, head of Sony, and Aaron Sorkin, the writer of The Social Network. Pascal was trying to get Sorkin to write Flash Boys, based on the book about computer trading. Sorkin denied the request specifically because he knew how much insane research he would have to do to get the story right.

This is what the big million-dollar-an-assignment writers do. This is what separates them from amateur writers. They know that if they commit to something, they’re going to have to do the work.  Just being an appreciator of film isn’t enough. Throwing big scientific words out without any real context isn’t enough. You have to give us details that the average person doesn’t know. Not details that the average person just saw in Captain America: Winter Soldier.

It comes down to suspension of disbelief. If all the action set pieces feel cartoonish, born solely inside the writer’s imagination, there’s no way I can believe in the story. I need to feel that authenticity, those real world details that make me think that I’m seeing something that’s really happening.

Unfortunately, the story itself was in line with this approach. It felt too simplistic and too cliché. Things happened because they needed to happen to fit the action-thriller paradigm, not because they’d happen in real life. Take Karen, for example. Why is she in this story other than the need for a female lead? I didn’t see why Wyatt needed her at all. She had way less information on where his brother was than he did. Yet he tries to keep her around. Also, her reason for finding Nathan amounted to a curiosity – why did you exchange some paperwork to put my dad on a plane that was attacked? I’m not sure I’m willing to get shot at and risk my life to find the answer to that question. You need to be more convincing on why these characters are involved in the story.

The script is also 125 pages when it shouldn’t have been a page over 110. The section where Wyatt first gets to New York and looks for his brother takes FOREVER before it gets to the next story beat. We just keep talking to people and asking people where he is. At one point, Wyatt calls his parents asking for Nathan. They say they don’t know where he is. Then he goes looking again. Then, a couple of pages later, he calls them and asks them again! It just seemed like there wasn’t enough thought put into it.

Finally, I didn’t understand the significance of the big weapon of the story – the clean nuke. From what I understood, clean nukes leave no radiation. Doesn’t that make them LESS scary? Less effective? Lingering radiation is what kills all the people who weren’t killed in the blast. To eliminate that seemed to make the weapon less dangerous. Therefore, I was never that wowed by the attention the clean nuke was getting.

What Thy has here is a desire to write a kick-ass fun action movie. And I admire that. The problem is, writing a fun movie is often never fun. I hate to be the one to say it. But it almost always takes a level of deep commitment to do the work – as far as research, as far as character development, as far as everything making sense – to create a fun finished product. That commitment wasn’t made here, which is why Thy Enemy didn’t resonate with me. I wish Thy the best though. I hope he benefits from these notes and from any other notes he receives in the comments. Good luck, man.

Screenplay link: Thy Enemy

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When writers come to me with a movie idea centered around the FBI or CIA, I tell them, don’t you dare write a word until you’ve read three books on the FBI (or CIA). I can tell within one scene whether a writer truly understands how the FBI works or if they’ve just watched a lot of movies before. And the second I determine they don’t really know that world, I give up on the script. Right there. Which may sound harsh but I’ve read enough scripts where I know the entire rest of the story is going to feel fake.