For the month of May, Scriptshadow will be foregoing its traditional reviewing to instead review scripts from you, the readers of the site. To find out more about how the month lines up, go back and read the original post here. Last week, we allowed any writers to send in their script for review. This week, we’re raising the bar and reviewing repped writers only. The caveat is that they cannot have a sale to their name. The idea here is to give aspiring writers an idea of the quality of writing it takes to have a professional manager or agent take an interest in your work. Yesterday, Roger reviewed the Western, “Quicker Than The Eye.” Today, I’m reviewing the first comedy of May, a story about lifeguards!

Genre: Comedy
Premise: When the Chanute, Kansas public swimming pool is going to be shut down by the uppity assholes at the country club, it’s up to lifeguards Austin and Lawrence to save the day. Welcome to the shallow end of the pool.
About: Kevin Brennan and Doug Manley are managed by Chatrone. This is the second script of Repped Week.
Writers: Kevin M. Brennan and Doug Manley
Details: 104 pages

I mean, it’s like, so obvious. They NEED to make a movie about lifeguards. Public pools are bizarre never-ending parties where every demographic comes together to celebrate the gift of water. It’s 99% chaos 100% of the time. And there those life guards are, perched on top of their tall chairs like Greek Gods, seeing everything, coming to the rescue of those of us stupid enough to try the one-and-a-half flip belly flop 30 seconds after a full lunch (tried it – loved it). They’re H2O supermen. A movie about these guys seems like a foregone conclusion. So why hasn’t it been done? Well, if Kevin and Doug have their way, it WILL be done.

25 year old Austin Travis doesn’t have the commitment gene, nor is he interested in acquiring one. The guy just likes to get drunk, get laid, and do a little work in the meantime. Austin is a life guard at a local public pool. It may be the easy life, but he takes a surprising amount of pride in his job. This is in stark contrast to Austin’s best friend however, the eternally moronic Lawrence. Lawrence is your garden variety fuck-up. There was a time, long ago, when the man was the fastest swimmer in the state. Now, the only thing he’s fast at is the pre-party beer choice – you know what I’m talking about. Standing there at the convenience store, looking at all the beer choices, wondering how the HELL you’re going to decide which one to buy. In short, Lawrence is the breast stroke to Austin’s butterfly (6 years of swim classes here baby. Hellz yeah).

The carefully constructed universe these two live in is about to be thrown for a 300 pound cannonball though because the owner of the pool, Leon, DIES! In his will, Leon leaves the pool to Austin, and tells him to never let go. This pool is the one thing that keeps this community together. If it dies, the community dies… Problem is, the economy’s a bitch and Leon’s left something else with Austin – 20,000 dollars worth of debt! Since the pool’s value is 50,000, it’s all of a sudden a tempting proposition for Austin to just sell the thing and live the high life.

In fact, there’s even a ready buyer. The high rolling James Merkin and his “young preppy asshat” of a son Tyler, want to purchase the pool and make it a part of their country club. This would, of course, prevent the public from having access to the pool, and that would be bad. But if Austin doesn’t come up with the 20 grand soon, they’ll have to go into default anyway, and the Merkins will be able to steal the pool away by way of the back door. The only solution, of course, is to have the pool party of the CENT-UR-RAY!!! And raise enough money to save the pool!

Okay, first thing’s first. Cause I know you’re probably wondering this yourself. How can there be an owner of a public pool? Aren’t public pools owned by the city? Good question. And I was wondering that myself. The writers can correct me here, but I think that Leon bought the pool for himself and then made it open to the public. But that’s neither here nor there. Let’s get to the main event.

First, the good. The structure here is solid. The motivations are clear. The story is properly laid out. They’re going to lose the pool in “X” amount of days unless they come up with the money. This may seem obvious to some, but I still encounter tons of comedies where I have no idea why any of the characters are doing what they’re doing. Or, in worst case scenarios, I don’t even know what they’re trying to do. If we don’t know what your characters are doing or why they’re doing it, you’re not telling a story. This goes back to the “what I learned” section in my review of “Bad Teacher.” One of the simplest but most effective plots available to you, is to give your character a clear and important goal and have them try to achieve it by the end of the movie. And that’s exactly what Kevin and Doug do here. So far, so good.

Also, these guys bring the funny. The dialogue, in particular, is really snappy in places. And that’s probably the script’s biggest strength. Most of the scenes are geared towards the dialogue between Austin and Lawrence, and while it gets repetitive in places, it’s usually pretty good. Speaking of Austin and Lawrence, I liked most of the characters here. My favorite is probably the moronic Tyler. In one of his more classic moments, when they’re trying to figure out how to thwart Austin’s pool party, he suggests to his father that they “burn down the pool.” His father just looks at him. Did he say “burn down the pool?” Just in general, there’s a lot of funny lines like that.

My big issue with Duty is that it’s too safe and too predictable. In the very first scene, Austin wakes up in a girl’s bedroom after a night he doesn’t remember. The scene does a great job of setting up the main character (I knew exactly who Austin was after that scene), but I’ve seen that scene in movies close to 300 times before. This predictability bleeds into the character of Lawrence as well. I’d seen the goofy fuck-up who’s always striking out with the girls more times than I can count. The character didn’t have anything new to him. One of the things I loved about The Hangover was the character Zach Galifianakis’ played. I remember reading that character before the movie came out and thinking, wow, I’ve never seen the goofy sidekick portrayed quite like this before. It was different. We also get a scene with boys peeking in on the girl’s locker room. But there was nothing new to it. There were too many times, like this, where I felt “Duty” was playing it safe.

Take the aforementioned “Bad Teacher” as another example. Look at how daring that plotline was. It’s about a pissed off teacher trying to steal money from children to buy herself a new pair of boobs so she can land a sugar-daddy. I’ve never seen that movie before. That’s why it was such a fun read. And I’m not saying that “Duty” can’t get there. I just think these guys need to take a few more chances, get crazier, and do something different. They do it with the dialogue in places, but not with the plot and characters.

I also would’ve liked a little more complexity out of Austin. The thing that makes characters in these kinds of comedies interesting is their inner conflict. What are they wrestling with inside their heads? Austin is a tad too content with his life here. There’s no OPPOSING CHOICE. You want to TEMPT your character with something else to draw out the drama within him. What if Austin had a true passion, something he’d always wanted to do, but couldn’t because he never had the money to do it? Well now the sale of this pool has some serious consequences. With that 30 grand, he could finally pursue his dream. All of a sudden, your main character has something substantial going on. Help himself or help the community? And I know this is only a comedy, but I think you need complex characters no matter what genre it is. So I was hoping for a little more of that.

These guys have comedy chops. Check out some of the videos on their site for proof (see links below). What I’d like to see is more of that offbeat humor brought into this script. Throw some more twists and turns into the plot. Give us that demented version of Duty you were afraid to try. Like Trent says in Swingers: “I don’t want you to be the guy in the PG-13 movie everyone’s realllllyy hoping makes it happen. I want you to be like the guy in the rated R movie, you know, the guy you’re not sure whether or not you like yet. You’re not sure where he’s coming from. Okay? You’re a bad man.”

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

What I learned: The 70% screenplay isn’t enough. And what I mean by that is, you can’t execute your script to 70% of its potential and expect it to sell. Remember, comedy is the most competitive spec market out there because it’s one of the last genres you can still sell original material in. So you have a lot of fucking competition. For that reason, make sure to always ask yourself: Have I really made sure every scene is unique? Is my premise beyond awesome? Did I take any scenes off? Does every character in my story arc? Am I pushing the limits of comedy? Does my story feel predictable? Am I trying new things? Are there enough surprises to satisfy the reader? If you honestly feel like you’ve pushed yourself to the limit in all these categories, then get your script out there. But if you’re not, clean up the gaps until you get it right. Because I promise you, there’s someone else out there right now writing a similar script who WILL get all those things right.

Wanted to give these guys a shout out cause they have some really great videos on their website. Here’s one of my favorites.

So, I’d like to introduce you all to Matt Bird, a screenwriter and book lover who will be occasionally contributing to the site. I’ve toyed with the idea of creating a Sunday “Book Review” segment for awhile and while Matt’s schedule won’t permit him to commit a review every Sunday, he will pop in from time to time, and give us advance word on some newer properties, or chime in on an un-optioned property that’s just dying to be made into a movie. If the segment works out, I may bring in another reviewer or two to fill in the gaps, so the Sunday review can be a weekly thing. But for Matt’s introductory post, he’s going to be filling you in on six books you should be adding to your Ipad book queue. Enjoy and don’t forget to say hi to Matt.

Hello Scriptshadow readers: You don’t know about me, less you have read a blog called Cockeyed Caravan, but that ain’t no matter. I’m a big Scriptshadow fan and a working screenwriter. When Carson ran pieces by Roger and Michael, recommending books that they’d like to see turned into movies, I knew I’d found my calling, and got in touch with him right away. Carson asked if I could focus more on books that are upcoming and not yet sold. I thought that was great idea, so here goes–

My wife reviews books for a bunch of places, including her blog on School Library Journal, so I had plenty of youth-oriented Advanced Reader Copies at hand. I decided to start off spotlighting some Young Adult books that might have cross-over potential for those elusive four-quadrant movies. You’ve seen how the “Twilight” movies have intensified Hollywood’s youth obsession… well, imagine how much bigger that youth-quake has been on publishing side, where the books are an even bigger phenomenon. As a result, there are a lot of talented writers sticking a toe into this material. The hottest properties sell the movie rights long in advance, but a lot of good stuff has slipped through that net and is now approaching publication without a sale. According to IMDB Pro, there are no movies in development based on these promising properties:

The Boneshaker, by Kate Milford, comes out next month. In his piece, Roger recommended a recent alternate history adult novel with an almost identical name. This one is The Boneshaker. (The author blogs about her panic when she found out about her doppelganger here). That book used the term to describe a drill, but the term was originally a nickname for early bicycles, and that’s what it means here.

Natalie is a 13-year old girl in 1913 Arcane, Missouri whose father tinkers with bicycles and automatons, but nothing as intricate as the terrifiying perpetual motion machines built by Dr. Limberleg, who has brought his sinister medicine show to the edge of town. Limberleg is accompanied by four inhuman assistants who each specialize in a different nostrum: nightmarish versions of phrenology, animal magnetism, hyrdrotherapy, and amber therapy that show off the author’s flair for creepy visuals. Con-men used the phrase “burn the town” back then, but Dr. Limberleg means it in more ways than one. What he doesn’t suspect, however, that he’s stepped into the middle of a battle that has already been brewing in Arcane for years, between Satan himself and a Robert-Johnson-esque guitar player.

I picked this one because it reminded me of some other properties that have attracted attention: Like Scorsese’s next big adaptation, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”, it includes some steampunk elements introduced into a real-world setting. Like “Holes”, one of the most successful adaptations of a kids book in the last ten years, it ties together many American myths into one neat little package, using real-life tragedies to spice up the mythology and add weight to the story (such as the “jake leg” scandal)

In fiction, steampunk has been an idea that has proven very popular with authors (if only somewhat popular with readers) but it’s barely crossed over into film. I think that that’s because most steampunk books (like the other Boneshaker) have been alternate histories, and movie audiences just don’t have the time or the patience to figure those out (see also: the Golden Compass movie) Give material like to this to a director like Guillermo Del Toro and I think the visual appeal of clockwork creatures and steam-powered junk science could finally make for a great movie.

Fat Vampire by Adam Rex comes out in July. Rex is a very funny writer and this book is one of many hoping to be recognized as “the anti-Twilight”. It’s got a neat central metaphor: Doug was a fat 16-year-old loser when he was bitten, and now he realizes that he’s never going to lose any more weight or become any cooler—a nice reversal of the usual “strong and beautiful forever” conception of teen vampires.

Rex’s great talent is for hilarious dialogue and fully-rounded characters (no pun intended) We cut back and forth between the worlds of Doug, his dry-witted Indian exchange student crush Sejal, and the reality TV host of “Vampire Hunters”, who is on the hunt for his first real vampire (Everyone they’ve caught on the show so far has turned to be merely non-superhuman Eurotrash). Doug, inspired by a viewing a “Lost Boys” type teen-movie, thinks that he can cure himself by killing the head vampire, a dubious quest that brings together all the players for the final confrontation. Unfortunately, the metaphor doesn’t pay off as well as it could in the end, but a good screenwriter could use this material to craft a more linear and cinematic narrative than the book provides.

By far the best book I found was actually a British book that came out over a year ago, but it’s remained merely a cult hit so far, so it still fits the “new and undiscovered” category. The sequel is about to be published here and I suspect that it’ll give this series the break it needs. The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd is a far more realistic version of “The Day After Tomorrow” crossed with “Scott Pilgrim”. It follows a snarky16-year old trying to launch her punk band as she suffers through London’s first year of carbon rationing, brought on by the increasingly extreme weather that is destroying many cities. This has a very cinematic escalating structure and a real epic scope, nicely telescoped in this one girl’s dawning awareness of the problem. It all culminates in a harrowing flood that snaps all the elements together, including a surprisingly effective low-key romance.

I hear that the sequel, “The Carbon Diaries 2017”, which I want to get my hands on, will show the punk band getting more revolutionary, putting them in opposition to the reactionary anti-rationing forces that are turning to violence across the country. Any producer who feared that Laura was too much of an observer of the problem in the first book could synthesize the two and get enough active-protagonist material for a thrilling movie.

I think the main thing holding back the first book from crossing over so far is how British it is. For one thing, it’s about a 16-year old going through her first year of college, which just seem totally wrong to Americans. Would a movie need to be Americanized to give it a broader audience? I don’t see why not, but the trend now is definitely towards super-faithful adaptations, and I think it could work in the original setting too, though you’d probably want a smaller budget, just to be safe. This could work as a smaller film, too, because it’s a disaster story driven more by strong characters than spectacle.

Don’t you want to see Carey Mulligan in punk get-up, smashing the windows of high-polluting cars? I know I do.

So that’s the state of upcoming teen books. Of course any production company that chases after hot ARCs quickly learns that it’s a tough way to make money—the most cinematic books have the most bidders, and many producers who pre-buy a book based on hype find themselves stuck with a dud after it comes out and fizzles. It always surprises me that prodcos don’t spend more time tracking down forgotten literary properties. As Roger and Michael did before me, I’ll spotlight a few of my favorites. Of course, as you can probably guess, I’ve been unable to interest my own managers in adaptations of these books, but I still think that they’d make great movies:

Michael covered “High Rise”, but here’s the J. G. Ballard book that I’ve always thought would make for a great cheap indie thriller: Concrete Island. It’s such a beautifully simple premise and a great metaphor for modern malaise: “Robinson Crusoe on a traffic island.” It’s that simple.

Robert Maitland is an asshole architect is driving back and forth between his mistress and his wife, both of whom have gotten used to his absences, when his car flips over a highway divider, stranding him on a large traffic island in the middle of a massive suburban highway interchange. He thinks that he’ll get up the steep embankments surrounding the several-acre ditch easily, but he’s injured and nobody zipping along the highway can see him down there. Days pass and each plan for getting out fizzles. Then, just like his literary predecessor, he finds another set of footprints. Eventually, Maitland comes to see that the highway makers bulldozed over an older neighborhood and the basements of various businesses are still there under the surface. He identifies his own his own nightmare-version of “Friday”, a brain-damaged homeless man, but he also finds a young woman living there who doesn’t want anyone to ever leave the “island”.

Obviously, the first half would be plagued by the same problem that any survival-drama has: the lack of anyone to talk to. This would probably have to be solved through narration, but there are other solutions too, such as the personified volleyball in “Cast Away”. Or you could just compress that half of the novel and get to the interpersonal conflict sooner. The movie needs to get made simply because it’s the ultimate high-concept: everyone who hears the one-line pitch gets an instant smile from picturing this situation and the metaphor it implies. Someone can take that seed and grow a great movie out of it.

“Concrete Island” shouldn’t cost that much to option, but you can get off even cheaper if you can find something in the public domain that’s ready for adaptation. Of course, since it takes almost a hundred years these days for copyright to expire, those savings usually disappear because properties that old demand super-expensive 19th-century-set adaptations, right? Well don’t tell Spielberg, who made some nice money on “War of the Worlds”. So what else could get the same treatment?

I’ve always been shocked that they’ve never made a movie of G. K. Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday”. It’s over a hundred years old, but its premise could not be more edgy: in a terrified city rocked by anarchist bombings, a young cop is assigned by his secretive boss to infiltrate a terrorist cell, whose members are named after the seven days of the week. He follows a nightmarish path into the catacombs of the city to find the leaders. He eventually becomes the new Thursday, but as he confronts his fellow terrorist one by one, he finds that each one is also an undercover cop, or at least thinks they are.

The book’s resolution is probably too surreal for an updated movie adaptation, but, just as they’ve done with all those Phillip K. Dick adaptations, a screenwriter could convert this concept into a more traditional, but still head-trippy thriller— something like “The Adjustment Bureau”.

Another upcoming adaptation that has passed through Scorsese’s hands is “High and Low”, which has the cachet of being based on Kurosawa film, but guess what? Kurasawa’s film was based on an American crime paperback that nobody over here had spotted the value of. This still goes on, with the French selling “Tell No One” back to us after we couldn’t get the movie made ourselves. The novel that “High and Low” was based on was “King’s Ransom” by Ed McBain, one of 56 books he produced about the detectives of the 87thprecinct, a series that only recently ended with McBain’s death in 2005. Instead of watching different A-list directors fight over who gets to direct the remake of the one art film that was already made from this material, why not pick one of the other lean, mean novels in this series and find the value in it, just like Kurasawa did?

In the final ten years of the series, McBain introduced a new detective that quickly became a fan favorite: Fat Ollie Weeks was a crude racist slob who drove the more conscientious detectives crazy simply by being too good to fire. In two of the best books from this period, “Money, Money, Money” and “Fat Ollie’s Book”, McBain started the painfully awkward process of turning Ollie into a better person. After uncovering a CIA front-company run amok in the first book, Ollie decides to fictionalize that story into his own debut crime novel, in which he’s replaced himself with a sexy-young female supercop. After his terrible manuscript is stolen from his car, Ollie realizes that the only way he can get it back is to find the criminals who are now trying to recreate the impossible crimes he’s described. Meanwhile, he’s shocked to find himself falling in love with a young Latina street cop who sees past his surface vulgarity. McBain is widely acknowledged as one of the all-time great dialogue-writers. With the introduction of Fat Ollie, he was able to invest his neat little police procedural plots with a bigger emotion payoff.

These books could become two movies or one. The best American adaptation of an 87thPrecinct book was the good-but-not-great Burt Reynolds movies “Fuzz”. That movie made the smart move of drawing on multiple books in the series. After all, if Orson Welles could pull together all of Shakespeare’s Falstaff scenes into one movie for “Chimes at Midnight”, there’s no reason that a few novels couldn’t be stitched together to make the ultimate Fat Ollie movie.

TITAN WEEK 3 OF 5

Day 1 we brought you Shane Black. Day 2 we tackled questionable titan David Benioff. And now on our third day of Titan Week, we bring in the two highest paid writers in the business, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman! This oughta be fun. :)

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A widowed social worker receives a strange message that forces him to reevaluate what happened the day his wife was murdered.
About: How can you have a Titan Week without Kurtzman and Orci!! The two most beloved and respected writers in Hollywood!? Heh heh. You knew I had to pull these guys out. They’re the highest paid and most sought-after writers in town. And absolutely nobody thinks they should be but the people who hire them. Kurtzman and Orci first came on the scene in 2005, when they wrote Michael Bay’s “The Island.” They followed that with the second Zorro film, Mission Impossible 3, Transformers, Star Trek, and of course, the single greatest movie to ever be made, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. But “Tell No One” is the script they wrote before all that success, all the way back in 2002. Now some of you may already be familiar with “Tell No One” as a French film that made some waves on the independent circuit in 2008 (it was released in France in 2006). I didn’t see it because I’d been burned too many times by supposedly groundbreaking French Films which turned out to be mind-numbingly horrible. I don’t think there’s anything worse than sitting through a bad French film. I’m glad I ignored it, because it allowed me to have this amazing reading experience. Now a few of you have probably noticed that the dates don’t quite match up. How can Orci and Kurtzman have adapted a 2006 film in 2002? Simple. Orci and Kurtzman have a time machine. It’s what allows them to know what we’re going to like before we like it. I’m just kidding. Or am I??? Actually, the French film was an adaptation of a novel written by American writer, Harlan Coben. I’ve never read a Harlan Coben book before, but people tell me “Tell No One” was one of his lesser efforts. Anyway, Kurtzman and Orci adapted the book before the French did. The French just beat them to the theaters. I still think this deserves the Hollywood treatment though. It’s a can’t miss baby.
Writers: Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (based off the novel by Harlan Coben)
Details: 122 pages (5th Draft, 2002)

Warning: If you know nothing about this script or this movie and you like thrillers, stop now, download the script, and read it. You’ll thank me.

At Transformers premiere. “Proud” is not the adjective I’d use to describe these expressions.

Uhhhhh, can someone tell me WHERE THE HELL THIS SCRIPT WAS HIDING??? What a freaking gangbusters screenplay. I haven’t flown through a story that fast since The Cat In The Hat. And I thought The Grey was a good thriller. This is the executive suite of thrillers. 3000 square feet. Sweeping views of Vegas. TVs that pop out of the floor. Tell No One? Tell everyone!

But I’ll get to that in a second. First, we gotta deal with Orci and Kurtzman.

Every burgeoning writer in town cites these two as the oozing puss-filled sores of the screenwriting world. They point to the Transformers movies as their main argument. Anybody, they say, responsible for writing those movies, cannot be a good writer. And I will say this. The Transformers movies are two of the most incomprehensible mainstream movies I’ve ever seen, especially the second one. The thing is, the fault doesn’t lie squarely with them. These guys were brought in to realize a vision from a director who has no interest or understanding of story, to plug in characters that the toy company forced them to, to come up with a believable scenario by which aliens came to earth taking the form of transforming motor vehicles, to integrate pre-existing action sequences into a story that hadn’t been written yet, and to push all of this together in a few weeks, due to the writer’s strike (on the second one). In short, they were set up to fail. Any single one of us would’ve failed as well. It’s hard enough coming up with a good script when NO ONE is telling you how to write it. But when everyone is? And in a few weeks? There’s no way.

However, I’m not here to try and convince you to like Orci and Kurtzman. I was simply curious about reading a screenplay of theirs before they hit the bigtime. These are the scripts that usually GIVE these writers a shot at the big time, so it’s interesting to see what warranted that shot. And holy shit, this shot hit the bullseye.

David Beck and Elizabeth Parker are in love. They have been ever since they were 12 years old, doing the whole “carve the initials in the tree” thing. There’s only one issue affecting their otherwise bliss-filled relationship. David has seizures. Intense full-on blackouts where he doesn’t remember a thing. And one day, not long after the two are married, David is hit by something, triggering a seizure, and he blacks out. When he wakes up, he learns that his wife has been brutally murdered – the only thing he’s ever loved, stolen from him forever.

Four years later, David, now a social worker for abused children in Philadelphia, is trying to put the pieces of his life back together. He’s even dating a doctor, Anna, who helps some of the kids he brings in. Even though it’s not what he envisioned for himself, it’s a job Elizabeth was passionate about, and he feels a duty to carry it on. But the job is taxing, difficult, and he’s thinking about moving on to something more lucrative, something that’ll give him a cozy life, something that will help him finally move on from Elizabeth.

HUGE SPOILERS – PLEASE STOP READING NOW IF YOU HAVE ANY INTEREST IN THIS SCRIPT

And then David gets a message on his computer. He clicks a link. A live video feed. Of Elizabeth. At a park. Older. Today. Right now! Looking up into the camera!

It can’t be. There’s no way. His wife is dead. Isn’t she?

As David tries to make sense of the nonsensical, a car containing two murdered men is found in the lake next to where Elizabeth was murdered. These men were killed at the same time and with the same weapon that Elizabeth was. There are grave implications to this news. The serial killer who killed Elizabeth was thought to have only killed women. That’s why he supposedly left David alive. But if two men were also killed, why was David’s life spared? David has gone from mourning widow to number one suspect.

The worst thing about that? David’s not sure he *isn’t* a suspect. And actually, he’s not sure of anything anymore. Was the video feed of Elizabeth real? A fantasy? Could his fractured seizure-ridden mind be creating this vision to cope with the fact that he killed his wife?

Forced to go on the run or end up on the wrong side of the death penalty, David must scrape together the pieces of his wife’s secretive life, and find out what really happened to her that fateful day. Old friends, old family members, co-workers – no one can be trusted, and yet he needs all of their help to survive.

Tell No One takes its cues from the best, namely The Fugitive, and actually improves on the formula. Whereas The Fugitive has two gargantuan driving forces – the chase and Ford having to find out who killed his wife, Tell No One adds two additional mysteries: Is David the killer and is his wife still alive? With all these amazing threads going on at once, there isn’t a single sub-standard moment in the script. My admiration for this screaming fast story grew by the page because I’m so used to these things falling apart under their own weight. The twists stop making sense. The character motivations become ludicrous. The finale turns out to be a letdown. But Tell No One is the opposite. Every single story decision here is perfect. In fact, if I were teaching a class on how to write a mystery thriller, this is the script I would use to teach it. It’s that good.

And why is it that good? It’s no different than what we were talking about the other day with Taken. Tell No One gets the emotional component right. In the beginning, we see David and Elizabeth grow up together, fall in love together, get married, and start their life. So when Elizabeth is killed, it’s not just David who’s lost someone. It’s us. We watched this girl grow up. We watched her love. We watched her dream. We loved Elizabeth just as much as he did, and as a result, when she returns, we’re just as desperate for David to find her as he is. But the point is, if you stripped this thing of all its twist and turns, we’d still be pulling for these characters, because we like them that much.

As for the writing itself, it’s pretty solid. Kurtzman and Orci created a nice device that I really enjoyed. In general, I dislike unmotivated flashbacks because of their tendency to feel unnatural. Throughout the script, K and O use David’s seizures as a way to flash back to the day of the murder. It’s a little thing, but it plays nicely because it’s motivated by character (specifically – this character’s seizures). Always look for natural ways to move into your flashbacks, as opposed to just hitting us with them out of nowhere. It makes a difference.

The one thing that drove me crazy were Kurtzman and Orci’s use of underlined dialogue. Normally, this kind of stuff doesn’t bother me. But these two, for whatever reason, underline nearly every word of their characters’ dialogue (I guess to give it emphasis?). But instead of giving it emphasis, it gives us headaches, as we’re forced to change the way we read, starting and stopping so we can mentally annunciate the underlined words. It took me half the script to force myself to ignore it, and man was it annoying.

I’m sure some of you will be comparing this to the French film, and with that film nabbing a 93% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m preparing for the barrage of reasons why this doesn’t match up to it. But I’ve never seen the film, so this was a totally new experience for me, and I think they hit it out of the park. Really great script.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 10)
[ ] genius

What I learned: The “found key that leads to the mysterious lockbox” device is one of the few things you can count on to ALWAYS WORK in a screenplay. Every. Freaking. Time! Cause we’re inherently curious about what the hell could be in that box. You can never go wrong with this device. (Just try and make sure what’s inside is something unique!).

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A group of strangers must band together in Moscow after a mysterious alien force invades the city
About: This project has been in development for awhile and, as far as I can tell, is waiting for someone or something to breathe new life into it. The original draft was written by M.T. Ahern & Leslie Bohem four years ago, and now Spaihts has given his take on the material. Spaihts, for those who don’t know, wrote the Avatar-sounding space thriller, “Shadow 19” back in 2006, which won the admiration of Keanu Reeves. Reeves (no relation) then hired Spaihts to pen “Passengers,” his weird idea about a guy who wakes up early on a 100 year space journey. The script wowed Hollywood and finished Top 3 on the 2007 Black List. Suddenly Spaihts was a big name and interviewing for all the big sci-fi assignments. That’s when he landed this job, rewriting “The Darkest Hour” for controversial director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted). That in turn landed him a writing assignment for Disney’s “Children of Mars,” and of course, the biggest deal of his career so far, the Alien reimagining for Ridley Scott.
Writer: Jon Spaihts
Details: 118 pages (November 30th, 2008 draft)

When you look at the writers out there today, there really isn’t anyone who’s churning out consistently good sci-fi, which is probably why Spaihts (a name I couldn’t pronounce with a blaster to my head) surprised everyone by landing the Alien reboot. But is it that surprising? Roger definitely loved Shadow 19. And Passengers is one of those scripts it seems like everyone loves (except for one person, notably). So I decided to momentarily forego all this touchy-feely Sundance fare and finish up the Spaihts trifecta. Let’s get our hands dirty with a little sci-fi, shall we?

Rex Halley is an American entrepreneur trying to take advantage of Moscow’s new influx of wealth. Or, at least, Moscow’s new influx of wealth two years ago, when this script was written and people had wealth. Equal parts eager and naïve, the 27 year old Trump aspiree cracks the deal of a lifetime, making him a millionaire within seconds, only to have it sucked away when his company’s board of trustees, all Russian, unanimously vote to fire him. A few minutes later and he’s just as unemployed as the guy who stands in front of your local Jack In The Box.

In the meantime we meet Natalie, an American abroad looking for some fun, Vika, a waifish 16 year old Russian girl, Sean, a dorky American video game developer, Skyler, a dickhead lead singer for an American metal band, and Matvei, a “don’t fuck with me” Russian policeman as big as the horse he rides on. Each is experiencing Moscow in their own way, working in it, enjoying it, enduring it. None of them know each other yet, but they will.

Cause on that very night, small golden meteor type rocks start falling from the sky, crashing all over the city. Emerging from these meteors are alien beings called “Spooks.” Seemingly driven by light and energy, these evil E.T.s are nearly invisible except for the dense glow they give off when moving around. As everyone spills outside to see what this strange phenomena is all about, the phenomena starts ripping them to pieces. These “things” are made up of a bunch of small furiously rotating metallic shards. These shards are to a human being what a juicer is to an apple. And let’s just say that after that night, Moscow could supply enough apple juice to make sure Mott’s would never have to plant another apple tree again.

We slam forward a few weeks to see our heroes, who have found each other and are nestled up inside a makeshift bunker, jumpier than a trampoline full of kangaroos. The entire city is dead, 28 Days Later style. No electricity. No society. Not another soul in site. Their days have been relegated to scavenging for water. But most of the stores have been ransacked, and leaving the bunker is always risky. There are spooks around every corner. These guys are somewhere around Plan W. They’re running out of alphabet.

Luckily a beacon of light appears halfway across the city – a highrise with an entire floor lit up. The revelation confuses and excites them. Someone else is alive! But why are they broadcasting their location to the Spooks? Could it be a trap? They decide to take a chance and go to the building because…well, because what else are they going to do? The owner of the highrise is Sergei, a Russian Einstein who’s a whiz with electronics. He’s figured out that the Spooks don’t see like we do, so as long as you protect your place with lead lining, you can run as much electricity as you want and they won’t spot you. Sergei is the first sign of hope for this desperate group. Someone who sounds like they actually know what they’re doing.

But the party is short-lived. A greedy Skylar uses the opportunity to steal all of Sergei’s food. As he sneaks out the door, the knucklehead leaves it open. This alerts the Spooks to their location, and pretty soon the Spooks are upon them producing more Spook Meat. Hmm, I don’t know why but that sounded dirty in a weird way.

Anyway, only a few of members of the group survive, and now they’re worse off than they were to start. They’re stuck in the middle of the city with nowhere to hide. Will they live? Will they die? You’ll have to read to find out.

It’s funny. You can see Timur Bekmambetov’s influence on the material right away. I’m guessing this was originally set in an American city. But Timur moved it to Moscow, most likely because of familiarity. Even though that choice came from a selfish place, it actually ends up really helping the screenplay. We’ve seen the American-City-gets-invaded thing a billion times before. By throwing these Americans into Russia, making *them* the aliens to this country, it adds a whole new dynamic when the invasion hits. Anyone who’s been away from home when something bad happens knows how alienated you feel, how unfamiliar everything becomes, how desperately you pine for home. Watching Rex and Natalie and Sean and Skyler creep through this foreign land, it’s not just about coming out alive, it’s about getting back to where they belong.

I also really liked the aliens. While they weren’t perfect, they were at least original. They’re not bug like or reptile-like, the kind of aliens I see in 99% of the scripts I read. They’re a mix of light and energy and metal. And that weird combination inspires all sorts of questions. Why are they built that way? What are their needs? What are their intentions? It was a cool choice and one I thought worked well.

Unfortunately the final act takes a bit of a nose-dive. It makes that mistake of trying to do too much in too little time. How can you take down an alien race in 30 minutes when in the opening 90 pages you haven’t killed a single one? This results in a lot of rushing, a lot of warped logic (i.e. “Well if we do *this*, then they’ll go over there and then we can bomb all of them together!”), an entirely new location we have to learn about, new characters we have to file. In fact, the final act has so much going on that you could conceivably build an entirely new screenplay out of it.

But there’s easily enough stuff here to make it worth the read. It’s a fun script that tackles an age-old story from a slightly different angle

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

What I learned: Spaiths does a perfect job describing his characters. Like any good writer, he has a hierarchy for his descriptions, cluing us in on which characters are here for the moment, which are here for a few scenes, and which will be key characters in the story. If I have a pet peeve, it’s writers who don’t have any system for describing their characters. For example, they’ll describe their main character with a single word: “cool.” Then describe a waitress in scene 48 who has one line as, “dripping with sex, the waitress wears a uniform that’s several inches too high. Her lips are naturally ruby red, and her eyes are caked in mascara. An exotic beauty.” I’m expecting that woman to be on every page of the screenplay! So be smart in how you describe your characters. If it’s a main character, give them 2 or 3 lines of description. A secondary character, 1 line of description. A minor character, a couple of descriptive adjectives is fine. And if it’s someone only making an appearance in that scene, simply give us their profession or describe them in their name (ie. “Waitress” or “Asshole Lawyer”). Let me give you an example of why this is important. Matvei, the horse policeman, appears early on in the script, but only for a moment. He won’t appear again for another 40 pages. However, since Spaihts took two full lines to describe him, I knew he was going to be a key character later on, so I paid attention. You don’t necessarily have to have *this* description hierarchy system, but you should have some system.

Here’s Roger with the first review of Big Money Week! To say he gets things started is an understatement. I’m going to have to read this thing!

Genre: Historical Adventure
Premise: The reclusive “Father of Modern Magic”, Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, is called upon by the French government to debunk an Algerian sorcerer who is using his feats of magic to spearhead a civil war.
About: Penned back in ’94, this script was part of a fierce bidding war that involved Disney, Tri-Star and Steven Spielberg (people really really wanted this script). Andy Vajna’s Cinergi Pictures bought the script for $1 million dollars (1.45 million adjusted for inflation). Not only was Disney able to land Frank Marshall as director, but Sean Connery was attached to the lead role. Unfortunately, Sean Connery demanded rewrite after rewrite until Frank Marshall was pulled off the project by Paramount’s Sherry Lansing because he was under contract to direct Congo (why Lord, why?). Kevin Brodie (A Dog of Flanders) was attached to direct and the project lingered in development hell until January 2000, when Catherine Zeta-Jones’ production company, Zeta Films, acquired the rights to the script. Naturally, Michael Douglas was attached to the lead role, with Catherine starring opposite him as Robert-Houdin’s wife.
Writers: Lee and Janet Scott Batchler. The husband-and-wife team who worked on Batman Forever. Other projects include My Name is Modesty and Pompeii, an epic drama telling the famous story of the destruction of that city. They also wrote a project for Paramount called Alpha, a fast-paced adventure about a team of military working dogs and their trainers. Here we have “Smoke and Mirrors”, an Original Screenplay by Lee Batchler and Janet Scott Batchler.

What I learned: This script is suspenseful as hell. But why was it so suspenseful? Every time Robert-Houdin performed, someone’s life was on the line. That’s the simple genius behind the trick. Every task your protagonist has to perform should have high stakes. And as the protagonist completes each task and moves on to the next, crank up the stakes. The stakes in “Smoke and Mirrors” have a clear ascendant progression: (1) Darcy’s life, (2) Robert-Houdin’s life (3) and collectively, the lives of Robert-Houdin, Colette, Darcy and all of the Legionnaires. Here’s the other lesson: Every overarching thematic conflict in this script, Science vs. Magic, God vs. Allah, France vs. Kabyle, Civilized Man vs. the Savage, is boiled down to the two characters who come from each side. Robert-Houdin and the sorcerer, Zoras Al Khatim. Their intimate battle of wills puts two entire nations at stake. By making your characters symbols of bigger conflicts, you widen scope of your story. It’s how you can tell an epic story but at the same time make it personal and intimate. There are many other lessons and tricks to be learned in this script, you only have to look closer to discover them.