Genre: Crime Drama
Premise: A team of corrupt cops come up with a unique plan for a heist that involves eliminating one of their own.
About: Writer Matt Cook has been pushing his way up the seemingly endless ladder to a produced credit for awhile now. He first hit Hollywood’s radar back in 2010 with his Black List script, By Way of Helena. That’s what a lot of aspiring writers forget. The system doesn’t allow screenwriters to just barge in and start snagging movie credits. It makes them work for it, prove that they have staying power first. Then, and only then, are they given a shot at the big time. Well, Matt’s certainly making his debut count. Triple Nine will star Aaron Paul, Kate Winslet, Norman Reedus (Walking Dead), Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and future Miss Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot. John Hillcoat, the director, is best known for his gritty apocalyptic flick, The Road. The irony of all this? Matt’s script was originally written back in 2010, the same year he broke out. That’s the draft of the script I’ll be reviewing. But I’m sure they’ve since gone through plenty of rewrites.
Writer: Matt Cook
Details: 126 pages (June 22, 2010)

Pinkman’s being smart by staying within his genre wheelhouse.

We love our movies, don’t we? We love them so much we strive to bring them back to life with every script we write. Why else would JJ Abrams make Super 8 (E.T.)? Or Ben Affleck make The Town (Heat). The problem with re-writing your favorite films is that they don’t have their own identity.

One of the biggest tests for an artist, and what truly separates the trendsetters from the trendfollowers, is to let the movies of your past influence and inspire you, but never overcome you. When you find that magic balance, you become a Wes Anderson or a Quentin Tarantino, someone who was influenced by something, but not dominated by it.  In the end, what you see is a unique voice, which is what everyone should be striving for.

Triple Nine has enough Heat in it to remind you of diner conversations between De Niro and Pacino, and that Val Kilmer used to be skinny and important. But I didn’t want to see another Heat. I wanted to see something new. And as I flipped through the first 20 pages, I wondered if Triple Nine was going to give me that. Let’s find out if it did…

Chris Allen is brand new on the job. He’s come over from Venice Beach patrol to the LA gang unit, where the big boys play. He’s nervous when he’s teamed up with street-wise veteran Terrell Tompkins, a 40 year old black cop who plays by his own rules, but soon Allen’s showing Tompkins that he’s not the pushover he assumed he was.

Too bad Tompkins has a secret. He rolls with a crew of cops that rob banks, using their knowledge of cop procedure against the very institution they work for, against the very people they swore to protect.

But greed does funny things to people. Somehow, by turning this into a system, they got hooked up with the nasty Richard Lustick, a tall tanned sylista who’s pissed off that they almost fucked up his last job. So now he wants them to make up for it. They’ve gotta hit one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the city, Homeland Security. If they don’t, Lustick’s going to pluck all their little families’ heads off and feed them to the seagulls.

The crew’s fucked. How the heck are they going to get into Homeland Security? Well, one of them postulates, what if they called in a “999?” What’s that, you’re asking? It’s an “officer’s been shot” call. And when it happens, every cop in the city collapses on that area to take down whoever’s shooting cops. Which, of course, leaves the rest of the city wide open for the taking.

The crew has one last decision. Which cop are they going to kill?  You guessed it. Poor little Chris Allen. Which seems all fine and dandy at first. Until Tompkins starts liking the guy and wondering if, when the time comes, he’ll be able pull the trigger. That’s all part of the fun. Figuring out if our oblivious hero’s DNA is going to become a permanent part of the LA landscape.

Wonder Woman will be bringing her truth lasso to Triple Nine.

I was worried early on in Triple Nine. There’s no doubt Matt can write. But all I could think about while reading this was that I’d seen this opening heist before.  Like in at least a dozen movies and TV shows. It’s the “I love movies” problem all us writers have. We remember those favored passages from movies we’ve watched infinity times, and we want to do the same thing. We want to do what our idols do!

Luckily, Matt’s writing is strong enough to keep us engaged throughout this derivative section. What Matt does well is he doesn’t relegate the character development to our hero, Chris. He gets to know all the players, especially our corrupt cops.  You want to know the benefit of doing that?  Look at the beginning of this post and read the cast sheet again.  That’s why you do it.  Because the more developed characters you write, the more good actors are going to want to be in your movie.

You pull this off by remembering that individuals in a group always have their own thoughts, their own opinions.  How boring would it be if every one of these bank robbers saw their job the same way?  The oldest member of the group, Michael, looks at everything like a business decision, so he has no problems killing Chris. But the youngest member, Gabriel, doesn’t think it’s right, and battles back and forth between whether to stay involved.

The only time a group should think the same way is when it’s so big that you can’t explore everyone individually. Michael Arndt learned this while writing Toy Story 3. He realized it would be impossible to give every single one of the toys their own storyline. He conveyed this frustration to one of the other writers, who pointed out, “Yeah, outside of the big four, the toys think and act as a unit.” As soon as Arndt figured that out, everything about the script became clear to him.

Regardless of Matt’s job with the characters, though, it took way too long to get to the hook here. We don’t hear about the 999 plan until page 52. That’s super-late and should’ve come at the first-act turn at the latest (page 25-30). How do you set up 8 big characters in under 30 pages so you can get to that plot point early? Welcome to the life of a screenwriter. You have to figure it out. Because it wasn’t until we hit the 999 plot point that the script came alive, and more importantly, started to differentiate itself from Heat.

In fact, the structure then became almost genius. We have a strong line of dramatic irony pushing the central story thread. We know that Tompkins is planning on killing our poor hero, Chris, and that Chris is completely oblivious to it. Therefore there’s nothing we can do for him, which drives us nuts (and more importantly, forces us to keep reading in our desperate hope that he’ll figure it out in time).

By itself, this would’ve been fine, but Matt adds an extra layer by having Chris’s uncle, another cop, investigating the opening heist. As the movie continues, he gets closer and closer to finding out it was these cops, which gives us hope that Chris can be saved. This wisely added a sense of urgency to everything.

After the 999 introduction, the only thing that bothered me was the action writing. Action writing needs to be laid out differently than standard description writing in order to visually show that time, on the screen, is moving differently. The problem with Triple Nine was that whether we were describing a character or running down a hallway while being shot at, every paragraph was written the same – in three lines.

So for example, you’d get something like this (my version).

Here’s how that action probably should’ve been written (my version).

The first choice may not seem terrible. But imagine an entire page of that. It would slow the read down to a crawl, which is the exact opposite of how you want the script to read during an action sequence. Of course, every situation will be different, which means there are some scenes where bulkier-written action may work, but the second example is generally how you want to approach it.

Triple Nine wears its influences on its sleeve (Heat, Training Day), but it’s got just enough of a unique take to stand out on its own. And I’m sure the script has only gotten better with time and rewrites. Congrats to Matt for finally getting his ‘produced credit’ wings.

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

What I learned: One of the top reasons I see writers using lots of big paragraphs during action scenes is to lower their page count. Don’t do it. It isn’t worth making your action slow and boring just to hit a low page count. Use other established methods for cutting pages instead (get rid of unnecessary characters, combine characters, combine scenes, etc.).

Genre: TV Pilot (Fantasy)
Premise: In a distant post-apocalyptic future, a young man in a mountain community begins to wonder what life is like outside his closed-off world.
About: Not much is known about this one other than AMC has shot the pilot and, presumably, will bury him this weekend. It’s being produced by Ridley Scott, which is a great sign, and written by long-time TV writer Jason Cahill. Cahill’s worked on a lot of big shows, including E.R., The Sopranos, Fringe, and AMC’s newest hopeful, Halt and Catch Fire.
Writer: Jason Cahill
Details: 54 pages – 3rd Draft (September 27, 2013)

Fast-rising actor Alex Russell will play Aethys’ best friend and rival, Roman.

Miss Scriptshadow and I have finally bit the bullet and started watching Game of Thrones. We realized our failure to get past five episodes in our last attempt had to do with us trying to “surf and watch.” Game of Thrones isn’t a “surf and watch” show. You have to be paying 100% attention 100% of the time or you very well may miss that Feargor is Tybo’s cousin, married to Calgo, whose dead wife, Sheeba, was a Tragdorian, and who’s brother Lingnotro is the secret heir to the throne of Six Whistles. If you don’t know that, it’s impossible to appreciate the show. And thusly, we’ve had no choice but to become hardcore viewers.

This segues idyllically into today’s pilot because, just like Thrones, there’s an extensive mythology and a lot of weird names and family connections to keep track of. We even have a giant page of character breakdowns before the script begins. Indeed, there’s quite the burden of investment required to enjoy Galyntine, but if you keep your sneakers on and fight through the thick bush, you eventually come upon a beautiful view.

Welcome to Mount Galyn, where a “large” community of 500 residents resides. The year? Who the hell knows? But we get the feeling it’s far enough out from the 21st century that little of that world remains.

The people of Mount Galyn are all about living off the land. You know those annoying cis-vegans that make you feel bad for even looking at a cheeseburger? These folks make them look like dog-butchers. They pick berries, they pick leaves, they hunt. But that’s it. You’ll never find the Galyns farming or processing anything. These are simple people who stick to a strict lifestyle.

Enter 23 year old Aethys, who’d had a rough life. As in something chopped off his arm when he was a kid. You’re not too desirable to the ladies if you can’t hunt. And so Stumpy must watch everyone else have the fun while he wonders if there’s a better life out beyond the mountains.

Aethys’ best friend, Roman, is his polar opposite. He’s big, strong, handsome, and routinely brings back the biggest elk. Their alliance is an unlikely one, but they’re both outsiders in their own way (Roman was an orphan).

The one thing besides Roman that keeps Aethys going is Wylie, his forever crush. And despite not being able to Facebook flirt in this world, it’s looking like he might actually get her. Maybe good guys DO finish first. Pfft. Yeah right!  When Roman is shockingly rejected by Aethys’ sister, Essyn, Roman surprises everyone and takes Wylie instead! Ouch, talk about putting a damper on a bromance. Wylie the hell did he have to do that?

That’s the last straw for Aethys, who finally decides to get off this mountain. But even his first steps into this foreign land are met with shock. Something is down there. Something big and complicated and advanced. Maybe Aethys didn’t think this all the way through. But before he knows it, it’s too late. The new world makes its first bold move, changing Aethys forever.

Sometimes you read things where you know right away, “This writer knows what he’s doing.” There are people out there who will say that’s not true, that everything’s arbitrary. “One guy will hate your script and another will love it,” they argue. That’s not true. There’s a bunch of gunk filling up the Hollywood sewers that everyone can agree is terrible, stuff written by people who don’t know the craft. Only after that do you get to the arbitrary choice level.

Galyntine is the perfect example of a “some will love it some will hate it” script. I can see people reding this and going, “What the faaaahhhh??” And others going, “Holy shit. Genius!” But whether you like Galyntine or not, you walk away knowing Jason Cahill knows what he’s doing. I didn’t know anything about who wrote this beforehand. I didn’t know if he was a 30 year veteran or a first-time writer. But after a few pages, I knew this guy could write.

This is the next level of “taking a chance” TV. They said a zombie show was risky for a TV show. But people knew what zombies were. They said a big fantasy epic was risky for a TV show. But we’ve seen versions of Game of Thrones before (Lord of the Rings). In all these other “risky” shows, there were at least reference points. There’s no reference point for Galyntine.

This world is part futuristic, part ancient, part magic, part fantasy, part apocalyptic. Weird creatures. Futuristic nano-machines. It’s weird stuff.

In one of the early scenes, there’s an elaborate hunting sequence where our mountain hunters have set up pre-established trampoline-devices so they can catch the high leaping mountain elks. It’s like an operatic ballet, the way it’s described. And I know, just off that sentence, how goofy it sounds (Miss Scriptshadow: “That sounds stupid”), but Cahill makes you believe it.

Once we get to this “town,” the specificity in how this world is described – the rules behind hunting and foraging and weaponry construction and how to live off the land without destroying it – you can feel the depth here. You can tell Cahill has thought endlessly about this world.

In fact, the mythology was so specific and so extensive, I had to look up what material the script was based on. I was shocked when I googled it and NOTHING CAME UP. Galyntine is completely original. This has to be the most extensive mythology I’ve ever seen in script form that hasn’t been based on a book. I’m betting that Cahill’s been working on it for years. I bet you this was turned down everywhere until the TV boom arrived.

But Galyntine isn’t a slam dunk. Whenever you’re talking extensive mythologies, you’re talking about a burden of investment. You’re talking about setting up shit and describing shit.  When you write a sci-fi, fantasy, or period pieces, you’re allowed to be extensive when describing this stuff.

In fact, it’s encouraged. Galyntine doesn’t work if every action paragraph is one line (i.e. “Hunters prepare for their prey in the forest.”) It’s the specificity of the writing that brings the world to life, that gives it depth. Here’s the paragraph that Cahill chooses instead…

You can see how much more you gather from this description.

With that said, you can’t overdo it.  Writing in fantasy is not a license to go description-crazy. You must find balance. Personally, I find that the more words a writer uses, the more insecure they are about what they’re saying. They’re using their paragraphs to figure their thoughts out, and therefore the paragraphs come off long and unfocused. Screenwriting is about finding those perfect “power” words that say what twenty words couldn’t.

“The top of his leg pale and sickly, the open wound discards his fluids haphazardly,” isn’t as good as a simple “His severed leg GUSHES blood.” We get “gushes.” I could have some friends over and engage in a 3 hour discussion about what “discards his fluids haphazardly” means and not come to a conclusion (note: I’m actually read that phrase before).

But getting back to the story, the idea with sci-fi or fantasy is you have to get to something identifiable sooner or later. We’ll give you some time to set your world up. But if you don’t give us something relatable at some point, we’re checking out.

At its core, the Galyntine pilot was a simple story about a boy who wanted a girl. His best friend then betrayed him and took her (something else we identify with) and he became frustrated with his lot in life (something else we identify with) and wanted to see what the world was like outside of this bubble (something else we identify with).

The reason to create identifiable and relatable situations in a fantasy story is because everything else is so foreign. I’ve never lived on a mountain. I don’t hunt elks with trampolines. I don’t understand weird “land” politics about where I can or can’t walk because the ground is sacred. But I know what it feels like to be rejected. I know what it feels like to want something more. That’s why that character stuff is so important to get to in your pilot.

Galyntine is a hell of a unique property. It’s so different that we’ll have no idea if it works until we see it. If it’s shot like Revolution, cheesy and cheap, it’s doomed. But if the production is approached with the same level of love and passion the script is written with, it could be incredible.

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

What I learned: I see this a lot and it always irks me. While almost all the writing here was strong, this one line stood out to me as a no-no: “A NOISE punches the air.” A noise punches the air? What noise? What does a “noise” sound like? A noise can be 15 million different sounds! Instead of saying a “noise” is heard, tell us what the noise is! A “deep throbbing bass” shakes the ground. A “LOUD SCREECH” shoots through the hallway. A “PIERCING HIGH-PITCHED ALARM” assaults the cockpit crew. Noises need to be described.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: When a woman’s autistic son uncovers a half-century old UFO conspiracy, her life spirals out of control.
About: Writer-director David Mamet’s latest will star Cate Blanchett in the lead role. Mamet has been a writing powerhouse for 30 years. He started in plays, then came to Hollywood as a screenwriter, and eventually moved into writing-directing. He has two screenwriting Oscar nominations, with 1982’s The Verdict and 1997’s Wag The Dog. He also has two Tony nominations with 1984’s Glengarry Glen Ross and 1988’s Speed-the-Plow. At one time, he was the highest paid script doctor in town. In other words, this man is a writing badass. Mamet flaunts the fact that he was self-taught. “My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room.” Mamet even has a type of dialogue named after him (“Mamet-speak”) where characters viciously and cynically talk over each other.
Writer: David Mamet
Details: 124 pages (October 2013 draft)

The Mamster. Mammogram. Manjambo.

I don’t know if I’d call myself a Mamet fan. But I love reading scripts from anyone who’s been a powerhouse in the industry. In the 90s, if you needed a script polish before production, this was the guy at the top of your list. You threw 2 million at him without blinking. And that wasn’t by accident. He brought the goods.

That doesn’t mean he’s infallible. The 90s were all about dialogue. Tarantino, Rodriquez, and Shane Black made sure of that. And Mamet’s dialogue could hang with any of those guys. So it made sense that they’d bring in a writer who specialized in that world.

These days, movies are more about story and character. Drama and action take precedence over a snappy comeback. Which is possibly why we haven’t seen much of Mamet lately. But this is the snazziest and most mainstream concept he’s come up with in awhile, so if there’s going to be something that puts him back on the map, this would be it. Let’s check it out.

40 year-old Janet Mitchell has just lost her grandfather, photographer Edward Mitchell. Edward was a big deal. His most famous contribution to history was manipulating a World War 2 newsreel film to make it look to the Nazis like thousands of Allied ships were heading to Boulogne instead of Normandy. Many people think that fake-out won the Allies the war.

Janet’s flown to California with her young autistic son, John, to clear out her grandfather’s home, but gets more than she bargained for when her checks stop clearing. You see, Edward’s been sending her money for the past 20 years, and under the Trust agreement, she’s supposed to keep receiving those checks. But now that he’s dead, the checks have stopped.

As she tries to figure that out, John digs around Edward’s house where he finds that his great-grandfather had an unhealthy obsession with UFOs. At first it seems like Edward helped manipulate photos to create the illusion of UFOs, but the deeper John looks, the more evidence he finds that UFOs are real, and that Edward has proof. Somewhere.

John isn’t the only one interested in Edward’s records. The army is as well. And when they get the sense that Janet and John might know something, Janet’s life starts getting weird. First, she’s framed for arson. Then that’s used against her to take away her son.

She realizes that the only way to get her son back is to locate the UFO proof that John found. But where could it be?

Soon Janet is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, going to UFO conventions and trade shows. She eventually learns of a top-secret project called “Blackbird” that her grandfather was involved in. But the project is not what we think. It deals with, of all things, the JFK assassination. Or does it? Janet’s become so entrenched in this world of conspiracies and lies that she’s not even sure if she’s sane anymore.

David Mamet

Blackbird was a unique reading experience, I’ll say that. It’s hard to summarize my feelings about it because it’s so unlike any other script in the genre. Which is a good thing. The last thing I wanted was a remake of that awful Mel Gibson mess, Conspiracy Theory.

But Blackbird plays its cards so close to the vest that we’re never exactly sure what’s going on, and that can get tiring in a 124 page screenplay.

What Blackbird does have going for it is the Mystery Box. You get the feeling JJ Abrams would be going nuts at this premiere, the box is so prominent. We have the mystery of why the checks stopped coming, the mystery of Edward’s obsession with UFOs, the mystery of the Blackbird Project, the mystery of the JFK assassination. And all this is tied up in the mystery of, is Janet going crazy??

At the very least, that compelled me to keep reading. I wanted to know the answers.

The problem is, there weren’t any answers for too long a period of time. This script is what I call “backloaded,” as pretty much all the good stuff doesn’t show up until the last 30 pages. That still leaves 105 pages. If 90% of the good stuff is in the last 25% of the script, you can do the math about how entertaining the rest is.

For example, we don’t get to the reading of Edward’s will until page 45. PAGE 45! The script starts with Janet already in California for Edward’s funeral. Why, then, are 45 pages needed to get us to that plot point?

Part of the problem is repetition. We’re given the same information over and over again. I think I counted six times where we’re told John thinks UFOs are real. He keeps finding new stuff inside Edward’s house to bolster this theory. But we got it already. I don’t know why Mamet felt the need to keep telling us.

Another problem is that the majority of those first 45 pages take place inside Edward’s house. I’m all for single locations in movies WHEN THEY’RE WARRANTED. Like if our characters are stuck inside a nuclear fallout shelter because their city just got nuked, being in that shelter for a long time makes sense.

But when our characters can willingly go wherever they want yet stay in a house for 30-40 pages, something starts feeling off. Especially these days, when impatient audiences need their visuals constantly changing.

But even if you took that argument out of the equation, by keeping your characters in one location for a long time, you’re creating a static storyline. The location is still so the story stops moving.

That’s not to say you can’t keep a single location interesting. There are lots of tools you can play with like conflict and mystery. And Mamet does use these. But this leads to my one big critique of Mamet’s work, which is that his roots as a playwright hamper his efforts as a cinematic storyteller.

Being in one house for so long in a play makes sense. In a movie, it doesn’t. I remember with The King’s Speech, which was originally written as a play, Tom Hooper’s number one goal was to have David Seidler rewrite it until it felt like a movie. In a now famous exchange, Hooper first came to Seidler and said, “I love this script. It’s perfect. I want to do it.” They then proceeded to do another thirty drafts. But it was warranted. It takes time to expand three locations into thirty.

Plus, thrillers are supposed to MOVE FAST. I would never write a thriller over 100 pages, especially one with so few characters. This doesn’t hamper you as a storyteller. It helps you. Knowing you have so little space to tell your story in, you’re forced to constantly get to the point. That would’ve helped a lot here, especially in that 40 page first act. Mamet would’ve been forced to ask, “Do I really need another scene where John says he thinks UFOs are real?” And all of a sudden the script is cooking along.

Then again, it should be noted that Mamet is also directing this. Since he’s essentially writing for himself (and not the reader), he’s likely taking some liberties and overwriting stuff he knows he’s going to cut later. At least I hope that’s the case. Cause this script needs to go through the chop shop. But hey, I hope he pulls it off. I’d love to see a great Mamet movie.

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

What I learned: Beware backloading your script. Readers are not going to wait around for 100 pages for the good stuff to start. Mystery boxes are great, but you need to give us at least some big answers before the final act or we’ll get impatient and give up.

Well, the debate’s been raging for the past couple of years, and with big names like Halle Berry jumping into the TV world, one enormous question keeps coming up: Is TV surpassing film as the ‘better’ entertainment medium? In order to find out, we’ve included a knock-down drag-out battle between the two. This week’s Amateur Offerings gives us BOTH pilots and features. May the best type of entertainment win!

TITLE: No Guts No Glory
GENRE: Zom-Com
LOGLINE: When an experimental steroid turns a team of supreme athletes into super-zombies, mankind’s only hope of avoiding a zombie apocalypse is a ragtag group of fat campers.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Not another zombie script, right? Actually, this one subverts the genre in an interesting and fun way. If you give it a chance I think you’ll like it. I’d love to develop this script with a manager/producer/director and turn what I believe is a great concept into a great script.

TITLE (TV PILOT): NOT SAFE FOR WORK
GENRE: Strip-com
LOGLINE: Dodd and Ollie think they’ve hit the jackpot when they inherit a strip club, but they soon find out it just might be the worst place on Earth.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I notice you’ve been doing more TV stuff lately. Tina Fey’s sitcom and then the AOW of TV dramas. Maybe it’s time for an Sitcom amateur Friday? How can you resist? It’s one fourth the work of reading a screenplay!

Now that you’re completely sold on the idea, here’s why you should select my sitcom pilot. It’s an R-rated workplace comedy designed for pay-cable or the internet. My idea was to take the typical big, dumb network sitcom and give it a cable edge. Imagine something like “Cheers” with drugs and nudity. It’s in the vein of some of my influences: Peep Show, Eastbound and Down, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

TITLE: WILDFIRE 3D
GENRE: Action/Adventure
LOGLINE: A search and rescue ranger leads a mission to rescue his daughter when the group of archaeologists she’s working with are trapped by a dangerous wildfire.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Given that we’re in the season of big budget blockbuster releases, I thought this would be a great time to try my luck with Amateur Friday. Wildfire 3D is a script I’ve been working on for a few years now. I was able recently to send it in to WME and Zero Gravity. I love writing movies. I feel bad for people who don’t write movies. It’s an amazingly challenging process, so anyone who tries it is someone I admire. And Scriptshadow? What can I say, I wish I had discovered this blog years ago. Reading Carson’s work here is just fun.

TITLE (TV PILOT): Marble Falls
GENRE: Mystery/Thriller
LOGLINE: Two young boys are brought together and controlled, one through fear and the other through deceit, to assist in the wicked biddings of a mysterious entity that manipulates the citizens of a small Texas town during the early 1950s.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Pick up any pilot right now and I’ll bet the lead character is an adult, usually male, occasionally female. Not Marble Falls. Here it’s the kids who take center stage, something that is rarely the case (minus the laugh track shit on Disney and Nickolodean.) Think Goonies, but with a Twin Peaks vibe.

Marble Falls delves into the sins of a small Texas community and a mysterious entity, the “invisible hand”, who uses the weakness of kids to help him manipulate and wreak havoc. It’s homage to who I consider the master of storytelling, Stephen King.

But the best reason for reading Marble Falls is: you have two boys who you sympathize with, who you care for, who you fall in love with, who will murder people.

TITLE: Momo
GENRE: Drama/Foreign
LOGLINE: After a mysterious foreigner appears in her life, a dedicated Japanese housewife finds her world changing as her means turn to goals and vice versa.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: So you’re big in Hollywood. But then again, so is your neighbour, and your neighbour’s neighbour. Now, if you’re wondering where you could possibly go from here, ask yourself: are you BIG IN JAPAN?

Delicately crafted to both appeal to Japanese traditions and sensibilities and to accomodate for western themes and values, “Momo” is an opportunity to rise to ocean-spanning acclaim as well as distinguish yourself amongst peers and neighbours alike.

The elevator pitch: “The Piano” meets “Brasil”…IN JAPAN

(Anyone got a caption for this photo?)

Hot dogs on the grill.  Fireworks.  Michael Bay.  Scriptshadow Newsletter (it’s in your mailbox. Did you check your spam?).  It’s the Fourth of July.  Which means there’s no Scriptshadow post.  But in true Scriptshadow fashion, I’m still leaving you a screenwriting tip.  Try to write “crossover characters.”  These are secondary characters who are part of more than one storyline.  So instead of giving your hero a friend he pals around with at the bar and another friend he jokes around with at work, make the friend at the bar ALSO the friend at work.  Make him cross over.  I can’t begin to emphasize how much cleaner your scripts will be once you master this practice.  Want 500 more screenwriting tips?  Grab the Scriptshadow Screenwriting Book, which is only $4.99 at Amazon.  That’s less than the cost of a pack of cherry bombs.  Plus 3% of each sale goes towards defending America.  That’s not true, actually.  But I want it to be.