Hey guys. Quite a few of you e-mailed to say you wanted a forum to discuss my new favorite script, Hot Air, which I reviewed in the newsletter. Since discussing awesome scripts was what this site was originally made for, how can I deny you that opportunity? Here’s some Hot Air. What did you think??

Genre: Drama
Premise: New York’s most hated conservative talk-radio host has his world turned upside-down when his 16 year-old niece shows up at his doorstep.
About: I heard about this script a couple months back. Someone told me it was really good. I read the logline and thought, “That sounds abysmal,” and have forgotten about it ever since. Going back through my files, I spotted it, rolled my eyes, and said, “Okay fine, I’ll give it a shot.” It was hard going at first, but the script keeps getting better and better til the very last page. This is Reichel’s BREAKTHROUGH script, believe it or not. He got representation off it at The Gotham Group and CAA.
Writer: Will Reichel
Details: 112 pages

At first he might seem like an odd choice, but looking back at Gangs of New York, I think Daniel Day Lewis would love to play this character.

My friends, welcome to the number 1 Black List script of 2014. But Carson, you say, how can you possibly know what the number 1 Black List script is six months before the Black List comes out!? Well, I knew The Imitation Game was going to run away with it two years ago, didn’t I? And then last year with Draft Day I knew… well, okay, I had no idea that Draft Day was going to win. But that’s beside the point. Hot Air has great characters, it has the whole political slant going for it (The Black List loves it some politics), and it has echoes of past Black List winners, like Juno.

Oh no! you’re now saying to me. Not another Juno! Let me ask everyone, when did you all start hating Juno? Because all during its script run, everyone loved it. Then all during its movie run, everyone loved it. And then all of a sudden, everyone hated it. Actually, none of that is important. Hot Air really isn’t that much like Juno. That’s what’s great about the script – it doesn’t quite feel like anything you’ve read before. Or Juno. Man, I hated that movie.

I have never listened to Rush Limbaugh, but my impression of Lionel Macomb, our hero, is that he’s a unique cross between Limbaugh and Howard Stern – he’s a conservative New York shock jock who gets angry for the people, who’s tired of these damn liberals for giving out all these free rides, dammit!

His topic of the month is border hoppers, or more specifically, illegal aliens and their children. Should the children get U.S. citizenship or should we send them back to Mexico? You can guess where Lionel comes down on this issue. “Send ’em home!” he tells his audience, who’s most assuredly pumping their fists in agreement.

The thing is, not as many people ARE pumping their fists for Lionel lately, as they’re moving over to the hot new show on the block, Garret Whitley. Whitley is also a conservative, but his strategy is the opposite of Lionel’s – he kills ’em with kindness. The worst part about Whitley’s rise? He was a former disciple of Lionel himself!

As if that isn’t enough to think about, Lionel gets the shock of his life when his 16 year-old niece, Tess, shows up at his door looking for a place to stay. Now you’d think if your homeless teenaged niece showed up, you’d give her a bed to sleep on. Except this is Lionel Macomb, who basically tells her to fuck off.

To be fair to Tess, it’s not her fault. It’s Tess’s mother (Lionel’s sister) that Lionel truly despises. Sis is a selfish drunk who’s been screwing people over her whole life, including Lionel. He doesn’t need any of that in his life right now.

But Tess is a resourceful little gal, and after a threat to get on Twitter and let the world know that her uncle is willingly sending her into the arms of the very social services sector he rails about every morning for ripping off Joe America, he relents to let her stay a week until they can figure out a more permanent solution.

While Lionel would love to ditch Tess, his lawyer points out that the more they allow Tess to traverse around New York on her own, the more likely she is to get into trouble, which could come back to haunt him. The lawyer suggests a strategy – keep Tess close so she can’t hurt you.

So Lionel starts bringing Tess to work, where she learns the ins and outs of the talk show circuit, namely that whenever someone of importance wants to take on Lionel in his coveted radio ring, they hang up on him and go to the next guy. Lionel isn’t exactly a fraud, but he’s getting softer in his old age. Tess believes that if he debated some real people, maybe his ratings would stop slipping.

Lionel is reluctant at first, but as Whitley starts to widen the gap in their head-to-head matchup, Lionel realizes Tess is right. If he has a shot at staying relevant, he’s going to have to take on his nemesis. But if he’s spent the last five years playing it safe, does he still have what it takes to hang with the big boys? We’re going to find out.

Okay, so is this yet another “broken person comes into another broken person’s life and both of them teach each other something” story? Yes. But it’s a really good one, about as good as you’re going to see. Put frankly, this is how you fucking do it.

There are so many good things about this script, I don’t know where to start. First, Lionel is written REALLY WELL. When this guy spouts out his bullshit over the air, you fucking believe it (sorry about all the “fuckings.” Lionel has rubbed off on me).

Not only that, but Lionel is the kind of character we call “Actor bait.” I can’t stress it enough. If you want to get a script made, write a part that an actor can’t refuse, that an actor would die to play. The character of Lionel gets to spout out some of the most aggressive insane passages of dialogue any actor will get to say on screen, ever. Of-fucking-course actors are going to kill to play this part.

Speaking of, you usually want one “dialogue-friendly” character in your script. Someone who naturally has a lively, interesting way of speaking. If you write dialogue-friendly characters, you tend to get awesome dialogue. Here we have two. We have the over-the-top Lionel, and we have the clever and chipper Tess. Whenever these two say something, it’s usually interesting (i.e. Lionel: “How’d you know where I live?” Tess: “I followed the trail of fire and brimstone.”).

Then there were a lot of little things I noticed. Although the time frame for Tess’s stay actually stretches to 4 weeks, it’s constantly re-upped, giving the illusion of urgency in every section. So at first, she’s only allowed to stay for the weekend. Then it’s a week. Then, when things haven’t been figured out yet, it’s another week. This “series of deadlines” works so much better than if we would’ve said straight out, “You can stay for a month,” as that would of felt like too much time to the reader. Very clever!

Reichel also keeps the pressure on our protagonist as his ratings slip and the advertisers threaten to drop out. This keeps the stakes high during a storyline that could’ve easily felt blasé (guy sits in a booth and talks to people). Those advertiser meetings are tough on Lionel and we feel his pain as things get worse. The thing about stakes is they force your character to act. If your hero were to sit around and do nothing, he’d be screwed. Because there are stakes, Lionel has no choice but to take on Whitley in the end.

Also, Reichel takes a time-tested premise and spins it a little. Typically, in this scenario, it’s the daughter who shows up at our hero’s doorstep. But in this case, it’s the niece. Now technically this is the less compelling choice, since there’s less at stake with a niece than a daughter. But a spin is only as good as its execution, and what’s great about this twist, is what Reichel does with it. Reichel uses the niece to explore this whole complicated brother-sister backstory between Lionel and Tess’s mom that evolves in the most unexpected but satisfying way. I loved it.

Then there were the subplots. When you have a straight up character piece centering on two characters, that relationship isn’t going to be enough to carry the whole story. You have to build in subplots – meaty little conflict-laden relationships that need to be explored in their own right.

Lionel’s past and subsequent rivalry with Whitley was perfect. Lionel’s relationship with his girlfriend/publicist who was happy to fix Lionel’s public life but tired of fixing him privately was also great. And Tess’s relationship with a senator’s intern where (spoiler) she ends up getting played, was yet another awesome thread.

But when you REALLY know that you’re dealing with a hotshot is when subplots interweave with one another. Tess’s relationship with the senator’s intern actually weaves into Lionel’s brawl with Whitley in the script’s climax.

It’s so disappointing to read scripts where it’s clear the writer hasn’t put any effort into the story. When you’re deftly interweaving subplot threads with one another and making them pay off in the climax?? You’re a baller. There’s no way you’re coming up with that in a single weekend. That kind of thing takes time and dedication.

I loved this script! And I don’t even like or care about the world of conservative radio talk show hosts. If I have any complaints, it’s that maybe Lionel started to be too nice to Tess too early. I would’ve liked to have seen them spar more. And Tess also needed a little more room to breathe. Lionel is SUCH a big personality that Tess disappeared at times.

But yeah, other than that, this was awesome. Top 25!

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 25!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: A cliché can work for you IF you build an honest backstory around it. Tess walks around with an old polaroid camera, taking pictures of everything. I’m not going to lie, when I saw, “Pretty alternative girl with a camera,” I winced a little. But when we find out WHY she has the camera (it was her only honest connection with her mother, who used to own and use the camera herself), it made sense.

This is your chance to discuss the week’s amateur scripts, offered originally in the Scriptshadow newsletter. The primary goal for this discussion is to find out which script(s) is the best candidate for a future Amateur Friday review. The secondary goal is to keep things positive in the comments with constructive criticism.

Below are the scripts up for review, along with the download links. Want to receive the scripts early? Head over to the Contact page, e-mail us, and “Opt In” to the newsletter.

Happy reading!

TITLE: BROKEN
GENRE: Sci-fi/Disaster
LOGLINE: When the human race is forced to evacuate earth for the moon, it leaves behind a crusty old engineer who finds new purpose in the company of a mute nine-year-old girl.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I’ve had a dozen different writers read this script and give excellent, detailed notes on it–which of course called for a complete rewrite. A month later, this beauty’s been retooled, buffed and polished; she purrs like a tigress, 95 pages of lean muscle, just itching for baptism in the fiery crucible of the AOW. Hm, was that a mixed metaphor? …Nah.

Other interesting facts? At one point the protagonist is trapped in a bunker while an earthquake rips it apart, while performing invasive surgery on himself, WHILE conversing with a hallucinatory version of his former girlfriend.

And by the end of this script, I hope you’ll have fallen in love with a bitter, grouchy, hateful, suicidal old man. Who doesn’t save any cats. Thanks for reading, and enjoy!

TITLE: Barabbas
GENRE: Historical Action
LOGLINE: In 30 A.D., a charismatic stonemason bent on revenge leads a band of guerrilla rebels against the Roman occupation of his homeland.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: This is the story that led up to the biggest trade in human record. It is Braveheart meets Gladiator, with characters on a collision course that splits history in two. Come for the battle, the intrigue, and the epic. Stay for the sacrifice, the betrayals, and the passion that drives a man to darkness.

As co-writers, we work from 3,000 miles apart. Yes, we have two of the WASPiest names imaginable. No, they’re not pen names. We’ve been polishing this script to a trim, accelerative tale that strengthens, weaves, and deepens with each choice our characters make. The ending is the most difficult we’ve ever worked on, but the feedback on the resolution has been powerful. We have to earn the effect we want a story to have, and with this script we aim to challenge, to provoke, but most of all…to entertain.

TITLE: THE SORCERER
GENRE: Mystery, Bio-Pic, True Story
LOGLINE: When brilliant-but-forgotten inventor Nikola Tesla dies mysteriously at the height of World War 2, a couple of FBI Agents race to discover the whereabouts of his final creation – a devastating and world-changing death ray – before it falls into the hands of the Nazis, and along the way put together the clues that reveal the deepest mystery behind Tesla’s life: what drove him to madness.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Tesla’s life was fascinating. He came from nothing and rose to the height of his profession, battling it out with Thomas Edison and JP Morgan, becoming friends with Mark Twain and George Westinghouse, and electrifying the world…only to die penniless and alone after seeming to lose his mind. He’s also a man relatively few people know about when compared to his peers. If you like mysteries without easy answers, smart and ruthlessly powerful men pioneering the future, and/or underdogs who never stop going for their dreams, you can find something for you in this story.

TITLE: Finishing Last
GENRE: Comedy romance
LOGLINE: A third generation car salesman attempts to transform his nice guy personality to save career and in doing so finds himself attracted to a quirky woman who loathes the new him.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: It’s a feel good comedy romance, which has the following:
No sex… well maybe a small amount. In fact, I’d hardly call it sex, more like a reference to it. No gratuitous violence… I don’t think a kick in the nuts is gratuitous? Maybe mild violence at the most. No bad language… Okay a few F-words, but you’d have to be a saint to be offended by that.

I don’t think I’m selling this very well?

It’s a low budget… no, that just makes it sound cheap. It’s a story of unrequited love… that sounds better… and written for the sole purpose of having an amusing story that couples could go and see together. It does not pretend to be anything but a humorous love story with some oddball characters… I’m rambling now. I’m really not selling this. I’ve been told it has some charm… God; it just comes over as being smug.

Anyway, I think you might like it.

TITLE: Reeds in Winter
GENRE: Historical Adventure/Love Story
LOGLINE: Forced to leave the family he loves, a man who misused his wealth to move his family across the country with the infamous Donner Party must do whatever it takes to rescue them from freezing, starvation and cannibalism.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: If I were to say I wrote a script about the Donner Party, I think I could feel your eyes roll to the back of your head. While the backdrop of my story includes the Donners, they are not the main focus. There were many families who traveled on that infamous journey, and one family, the Reeds, overcame very tragic events and survived intact. I worked hard to keep the bits that I felt would make a great movie, and, if you’re interested in history, look them up because that shit really happened. The story made me think about what lengths I’d go through to ensure the safety of my family. I don’t know if I could ever do what James Reed had to do, and I hope I never find out.

Newsletter has been sent! If you have Gmail, make sure to check your promotions folder as well as SPAM. If you still don’t see the newsletter, e-mail me. If you want to sign up, by God do it now. And you definitely want to get a hold of yesterday’s newsletter, as I reviewed, what I believe, to be the #1 Black List script of 2014.

Genre: Comedy/Drama
Premise (from writer): A gambler wins millions on a crazy bet, yet is unable to
 tell anyone. Instead, he resolves to secretly use the money to improve the 
lives of those closest to him, and win back the love of his long-suffering
 wife.
Why You Should Read (from Carson): This script faced off against last week’s “Down to the Wire,” in the Amateur Offerings round-up. Much controversy arose when Down to the Wire got a lot of early love in the comments section then “Chain,” got a lot of votes late. Were those early votes from people in Wire’s writing group, some wondered? According to the conspiracy-obsessed Grendl, yes, although I have no idea if any of that is true. In the end, it’s Evian under the bridge, as “Chain” gets its shot today. Everybody wins! Yay!
Writer: David Braga
Details: 116 pages

Martin Freeman for Steve? (oh yeah, I know my British actors)

Breaking the Chain has become a well-known script over the past few weeks. Grendl has been raving about it ever since he read it a few months ago. And since Grendl hasn’t raved about anything since 1975 (the year Jaws came out), that’s a pretty big endorsement.

The problem is, for some reason, it keeps finding its way into the Comments section, derailing on-topic conversations. Which is fine. I don’t mind, as long as we’re talking about screenwriting, but man, so much has been built up about this script, I’m worried my expectations are going to be too high. Part of me feels like since Grendl doesn’t like anything, that anything he DOES like must be really REALLY weird.

When you combine my devastation over learning that Harrison Ford broke his ankle on the set of Star Wars 7 last night and there’s ZERO information about how bad it is and how it’s going to affect the shoot, you could say I’m in a pretty emotionally fragile state at the moment! I mean does Harrison have to be sitting down in every scene now? Will the climax of the film be a yelling match during family dinner? Forget the Death Star. Try the Death Stir Fry. May the fork with you.

Steve is a small town guy with a big time gambling problem. Poor Steve would like for nothing more than to quit gambling, but the thing with being an addict is, well, no matter how much you want to stop, you can’t. Even if it’s ruining your marriage. Which it is. Steve’s perfect wife, Sarah, an actress at the local theater, is sick of playing the asshole, having to question her husband every night he comes home from work late. Did you do it? Did you gamble again?

After attending a local support group, an old gambling codger tells Steve the trick to quitting is to bet on the worst odds possible. That way, you’re guaranteed to lose. And after a steady diet of losing, you won’t want to play anymore. Steve takes him up on the advice, making the dumbest bet probably in the history of gambling.

He then goes home, where Sarah asks him, yet again, if he was out gambling. No, he lies. He’s quit. For good. This seems to appease her, which is great, except for one little problem. The next day, Steve ends up winning that bet! 3 million pounds!

Of course, he’s ecstatic. But then he realizes if he reveals his winnings to Sarah, it would confirm his lie. So he decides not to tell her or anyone else.

After getting the money, Steve anonymously buys up the floundering general store he works at, then anonymously buys up the playhouse and forces the director to give Sarah the lead in the play! Soon, Steve is trying to solve all the town’s problems with money.

Of course, we know how these things usually end up. As if on cue, Steve’s evil nemesis and Sarah’s ex-boyfriend, Craig, wins the lead role opposite Sarah in the play. Steve tries to puppeteer Craig’s ouster, but it’s fruitless, and soon Craig and Sarah are spending a lot of time together.

Could it be? Steve thought this money would solve all his problems, but it only seems to be making them worse. Will Steve find a way to make it right, or will he have to come clean to the town about his financial secret?

“Breaking the Chain” had a really tough act to follow. Last night I read my favorite script of the year, “Hot Air” (about a talk show host who gets a visit from his teenage niece). The thing about that script was it was really in your face. Edgy. Intense.

Breaking The Chain was more of a “feel-good” script. It was warm and fuzzy around the edges. You knew everything was going to be all right in the end. And I don’t see anything wrong with that. Cameron Crowe and Richard Curtis made a living off these films. But when you go from a script where everyone’s acting realistically to one where everyone isn’t, it’s a hard switch to make.

Let me give you an example. There’s this character, Martin. He’s a bad alcoholic. Both us and Steve learn this in the very first scene. Later, Steve needs a business manager for his newfound wealth. All the other interviewees talk over his head. But when Martin comes in, he’s dumb, but down to earth. So Steve hires him.

That moment, where Steve hires Martin, is funny. I laughed. But after the laugh was over, I sat there thinking, “Is Steve really dumb enough to hire an alcoholic?” I mean he’s a gambling addict. He should know better than anyone how unreliable an addict is. And he’s now trusting him with his 3 million pounds? It didn’t make any sense other than to get that quick laugh.

There were plot choices that didn’t make sense to me either. For example, the first thing Steve does after he gets the money, is anonymously buy the store he works at before it can be sold off. I couldn’t figure out the logic behind this. He hated this store more than anything. Why would he want to buy it to continue working at it? I understand he must keep appearances up that he’s poor, but he doesn’t need to go through the hassle of buying and secretly running a store to do that, does he?

If any business was going to be on the verge of dying with Steve saving it, shouldn’t it have been the playhouse, since that’s where the real stakes were? His wife’s happiness?

Then there was Craig, who became a bigger part of the plot as the script went on. The problem with Craig was, he was so thin as a character, it was hard for me to see him as anything other than a cartoonish persona. When a character is too thin, the reader starts to see through him (call it “reader x-ray vision”) to the hand manipulating him underneath.

The more screenplays I read, the more I learn that every character in a story should have his weaknesses AND his strengths. Craig didn’t have any strengths, any redeeming qualities. And since the last 40% of the script depended heavily on him, it was hard for me to keep my disbelief suspended.

Now I don’t want to discredit what David’s done here. There’s a lot of good stuff in this screenplay. I loved his use of dramatic irony – We know our main character is manipulating everyone, is living a high-stakes lie – but nobody else does. And it was fun seeing if he was going to get away with it.

But I don’t know if I ever truly bought in to the premise. The thing with these scripts/movies is that the reader’s either going to buy into the premise, they’re not going to buy into it, or they’re going to straddle the line. If they don’t buy into it, you’re screwed. Nothing you write afterwards will matter.

But if you keep them on the fence, you have a shot at converting them. That’s where I was through the first half. I wanted to be pulled over. But once the Craig stuff took over, I just couldn’t commit. There was something too inauthentic about his character to me.

Still, I can see why this got recommended by The Tracking Board. It’s better than a ton of the amateur stuff out there. Everything just felt a little too loose, like the glue hadn’t hardened yet. The dad ending up in the hospital late, for example, didn’t seem like it had an appropriate setup. I saw in the comments section that David implemented some suggestions from the Scriptshadow community over the week. So maybe that’s the reason? He didn’t have time to solidify all this stuff? I’m not sure. I still like David’s writing. This one didn’t quite grab me the way I hoped it would, though.

Script link: Breaking The Chain

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

What I learned: Make sure your third-act climax is a payoff of your theme or your main character’s flaw (most of the time, these will be the same). The climax here focused on Steve’s worry that Sarah was going to cheat on him. That’s not the story we signed up for. The story we signed up for was a character who’s lying to his wife, and who then uses money to manipulate her (and the town’s) happiness. His lack of trust in Sarah was never mentioned anywhere until the final act, which is why the sudden focus on it didn’t make sense. – To make this work, you’d probably want Craig to represent the opposite of Steve. He would represent truth and trust, the things Steve hasn’t been able to give Sarah. That way, this ending stays on-theme. As a bonus, that would make Craig a more interesting character – if he’s actually a good guy. Or at least appears to be.

Today I want to talk about opening scenes. You guys have heard over and over again how important the opening ten pages is. That’s true. But I would actually scale it back further to the very first scene. Let me tell you why. Not only does the first scene have to engage the reader, but this is when the reader’s “are you any good” antennae is at its most sensitive. They’re looking at every little word, every little comma, every little detail, to see if you know what you’re doing. The more errors they see, or the more something feels off, the less confident they get in your ability to deliver. For example, if they see this sentence…

How you doing Jake?

Instead of this one…

How you doing, Jake? (with a comma before “Jake”)

…they get worried. Or if a writer uses some weird formatting structure they’ve never seen before, they get worried. If someone doesn’t know basic punctuation or screenplay formatting, how much effort have they really put in to learning how to write? Don’t worry, today’s article isn’t a glorified quiz on Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style.” I just want to point out that every little detail matters. What I really want to focus on is writing an opening scene that PULLS THE READER IN.

Remember, a screenplay isn’t like a novel, where the reader goes in knowing they have to put in some groundwork to get to the good stuff. A Hollywood reader expects to be entertained right out of the gate. This doesn’t mean that all scripts will be like this. But the vast majority are.

A lot of writers hear this directive and fight it. “Well what if I’m writing a slow-burn drama?” they ask. “What am I supposed to do then? Start with a car chase that makes no sense within the context of my story, just so the reader pays attention?” No, that’s not what I’m asking here. To be honest, starting with a car chase can be just as boring as starting with two people talking, if it’s not constructed properly. What I’m looking for out of an opening scene is something that’s DRAMATIZED, something that pulls you in via the design of the scene.

Regardless of how you choose to do this, you should always try and jump into your story right away. If you’re making a movie about a killer shark, start with a shark attack. If you’re making a movie about a private investigator, give him a case immediately. If your movie’s about a killer asteroid, start with a stargazer who spots the asteroid in his telescope. You won’t always be able to do this, but you’ll notice from the movie examples I use below, almost all of them fit this criteria.

OPTION 1 – CONFLICT/TENSION
Write a scene using conflict or tension. Look at the opening of Fargo. A guy walks into a seedy bar and sits down opposite a couple of criminals. They immediately start arguing about what time everyone was supposed to be here. This argument leads into a second argument about money, which one side believes was supposed to be delivered today, while the other insists isn’t due until later. It’s a tense scene. — Now personally, I find conflict to be one of the weaker ways to start a story. Conflict works best after you’ve gotten to know the characters and understand their differences and WHY they clash. So if you’re going to use it in your opening, make sure you’re setting up your story as well. That way, you’re killing two birds with one stone. With Fargo, the opening is not only characters clashing, it’s setting up the kidnapping of our main character’s wife, which is the hook of the film.

OPTION 2 – SURPRISE
Use your opening scene to surprise the main character, the reader, or both. Look no further than Source Code and Buried. Source Code starts with our main character waking up in a train with no memory of how he got there. Same with Buried (a man wakes up in a coffin). Note that surprise can lead to mystery, which helps keep the reader hooked going forward. In Source Code, our hero has to figure out what he’s doing here, which fuels the next 10 scenes or so.

OPTION 3 – SHOCK
Using shock as a way to grab a reader can be cheap, but it can also be effective, as long as you’re not just shocking the reader to shock them, but rather setting up your story. Say we’re enjoying a family Christmas with the perfect upper middle-class family. Mother, father, son and daughter are all having a wonderful time opening presents. Then finally the dad turns off camera. “Your turn, Larry. Which present do you want us to open?” Slowly pan over to see Larry, a 17 year old retarded boy naked in a cage wearing a gimp mask, grunting strangely. Cut to black. Shock is perfect for horror films, but can be used in any genre. Maybe your star CEO protagonist who’s just closed the biggest merger in his company’s history gets called into the Board of Trustees where he thinks he’s getting a bonus. Instead, the Trustees sit him down and tell him he’s fired. That’s just as shocking. Well, okay, nothing’s as shocking as Larry the Christmas Gimp Child.

OPTION 4 – MYSTERY (CARSON’S PICK!)
Probably the best way to start a script is via mystery. That mystery can be paid off right there in the scene itself or it can be paid off later. In Back To The Future, Marty walks into Doc’s house, where we see the dog food has gone uneaten for days, there’s a box of plutonium under the bed, and Doc calls to say (in a hushed tone) he needs to see Marty later about something important. Are we going to keep reading? Of course we are! We want to find out how all those things come together. Or, you can create a mystery that pays off right there in the scene. In the above mentioned Fargo scene, in addition to the conflict between the characters, there’s a mystery as to why they’re all here. The Coens wisely don’t tell us right away, which is part of what keeps us hooked. Eventually, Carl says, “You really want us to do this? You want us to kidnap your wife?” And the mystery is answered.

OPTION 5 – SUSPENSE
There’s a little bit of an overlap between mystery and suspense, but essentially, with suspense, you set up a question then draw things out before giving your reader the answer. The more high stakes the question, the more powerful the scene will play. An obvious version of this is a pregnancy test. Show a nervous 17 year old girl sitting on a toilet. Push back to see she’s holding something under it while looking at a pregnancy test box. From this point, the suspense has started. She reads, “Wait 3 minutes,” on the box, gets up, flushes, and waits. Are we going to wait around to see what happens? Of course we are! We want to see if she’s pregnant. And we know that since she’s only 17, this is a big fucking deal. But the real fun in suspense is how you play with the scene(s) in order draw the suspense out! So maybe while our teen is waiting, her annoying MOM bursts into the bathroom. The girl immediately drops the pregnancy test in the garbage before her mom can see it. “Jesus, Mom, ever hear of knocking?” “Sorry dear, just cleaning.” Oh no! The girl watches in horror as the mom picks up the bathroom trash bin and dumps it into her trash bag and leaves! Our teenager then must wait until her mom takes the garbage out. Once she does, she races out and starts digging through the trash. Finally, she spots the test and grabs it. “You one of those freegans now?” comes a voice from behind. She turns around. It’s the hot guy from next door! She hides the test behind her. (Etc., etc. You get the idea).

OPTION 6 – UNCERTAINTY
If all else fails and none of these methods works for you, just come up with a scene where something is HAPPENING (characters are acting or being forced to react), then create a sense of uncertainty about what’s going to happen next. In Star Wars, a weird black-clad character in a cape sucks a tiny ship into his super-cruiser then invades the ship looking for something. Here, we have elements of mystery, of suspense, we’re meeting characters on both sides of the fray, but most importantly, everybody is acting or reacting. You see this same thing in the opening of The Matrix.

The biggest mistake I see in opening scenes (and really, opening acts) is writers SETTING UP their story instead of DRAMATIZING IT. The first few scenes will set up the town, the main characters, the rules. A lot of time, these openings are beautifully written, but they’re boring as hell because NOTHING’S HAPPENING. And by “nothing’s happening,” I mean there’s no drama. It’s just a bunch of description (of people, their lives, their places, their things). You have to introduce your world in a dramatized way if you want the reader to keep reading. In general, be wary of opening with any scene that has characters sitting or standing around talking. Preferably, they should be acting, trying to obtain something or going somewhere to do something important. Give them a purpose so that we’re immediately engaged in their pursuit. If you do want to start with people standing or sitting around, create a big mystery or use a lot of conflict. If you don’t, you could be in trouble.

Of course, there may be some things I’ve forgotten here. Anyone else have suggestions on how to open a screenplay? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

note: Been having trouble moderating. Some comments might not appear for awhile but they WILL appear at some point, I promise.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: After nearly dying in a car accident, a mechanic is given an experimental drug while in a coma. When he awakes, his IQ begins to skyrocket.
About: This is not the first Eric Heisserer/Ted Chiang collaboration. For those of you who get the newsletter, you’ll remember when I reviewed their previous collaboration, Story of Your Life (about an alien visitation that requires a linguist to help communicate with the ETs). The project has since secured Amy Adams for the lead role (she’s perfect) and Denis Villeneuve to direct. You may know Villeneuve as the director of another big spec script, Prisoners. Heisserer previously wrote The Thing remake and Final Destination 5. He’s since moved into directing, last year helming the Hurricane Katrina thriller, Hours, which starred Paul Walker.
Writer: Eric Heisserer (based on the short story by Ted Chiang)
Details: 116 pages (undated)

Ruffalo for David?

One of my favorite scripts from the last couple of years is Story Of Your Life. It took a big idea and approached it from a very intimate place. Sort of like M. Night’s “Signs,” but way better (and more original). As a screenwriter, this strategy is one of the best ways to get noticed, as you’re giving producers two things they want – a big concept and a story that can be shot on a reasonable budget.

But they’re not easy to write. Because of the tiny scope, the writer often ends up running out of engaging material. Look no further than one of the WORST movies I’ve seen this year, 2008’s Pontypoole (caught it on Netflix). It’s about a zombie outbreak that takes place entirely inside a radio DJ booth. Somewhere around minute 30, they ran out of stuff to do, and the rest was just, well, awful (they eventually figure out that the zombie outbreak is spread though…VOICE! So just by talking, the DJ is spreading the zombie virus! I’m not kidding!).

If you can prove yourself in that realm (your movie actually gets made), that’s when the gatekeepers trust you with a bigger budget. Which leads us to today’s script, the oddly titled, “Understand.”

30-something David Miller is a lowly car mechanic who, you get the feeling, hasn’t ended up where he thought he would. The one thing he’s got going for him is his beautiful wife, Lauren. One day after work, he picks her up and the two drive home like they always do.

Except before they get there, they get rear-ended into an icy river, where poor David watches his wife drift away. Three months later, David wakes up in a hospital room from a coma. He’s been told by his doctor that in order to get him out of the coma, they had to use an experimental drug.

As the days pass, David starts to feel smarter and starts craving knowledge. But this newfound intelligence comes with a price. The doctors won’t let David leave. Whatever this drug they injected him with is, it’s less about helping him and more about making him their lab rat.

The great thing about being super-smart though, is that you can outsmart the dumbos. And David’s able to escape with minimal effort. Once out in the wild, his intelligence continues to grow, allowing him to do things like learn Taekwando in the time it takes to check your e-mail and fly a Cessna plane with a three-minute prep course.

David quickly realizes why the doctors wanted to watch him so closely. David isn’t just becoming smart. He’s becoming a weapon.

Soon, David learns of a previous recipient of the drug he was given, another escapee named Vincent, who is a month ahead of him in the trials. Being one month ahead means having 30 additional days of intelligence growth. David may be a genius. But Vincent is the equivalent of 20 geniuses. David’s purpose shifts from eluding his pursuers (which now include the FBI) to stopping Vincent, who appears to be prepping an attack that could be the precursor to the end of the world as we know it.

“Understand” is a unique and entertaining piece of material. It’s sort of like Limitless meets The Bourne Identity meets Transcendence meets The Matrix meets Highlander. If there’s a hiccup in the script, it’s just that – it may be trying to do too many things.

For me, the script seemed to set itself up as an intimate thriller, possibly something that took place entirely in the hospital. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, it becomes a traditional “man on the run” Liam Neeson vehicle. It was during this section that I began to lose interest, since we’ve seen a bajillion of these thrillers already. The fact that the rapid-intelligence thing had been done fairly recently in Limitless didn’t help either.

But then Chiang and Heisserer start to get trippy, with David’s intelligence becoming so advanced that he can actually calculate where bullets are going to go before they’re shot, allowing him to dodge them (or, in some instances, deflect them with a knife blade).

However, once Vincent (the other super-smart guy) becomes David’s nemesis, the script almost becomes a super-hero movie, with the two fighting on top of buildings with super-advanced sparring skills. Heck, they eventually get so smart that they can move things with their minds, throwing yet another influence, Star Wars, into the mix.

What’s happening here is not a unique problem. Sometimes, for a reader to buy into a world, it requires the writer to slowly take us through the steps. In other words, it would be stupid if David could use telekinesis right away. But after we’ve seen him “level up” several times, it makes sense.

But if you take too long before introducing the REAL story (in this case, the emergence of Vincent and his diabolical plan), the reader can become confused. Oh, they say, I thought this was about a guy running away from the government. But it’s actually about a battle between two genius super-heroes.

The thing is, I mostly run into this problem with inexperienced writers who haven’t yet learned how to keep a consistent plot thread going for an entire script. They want to throw in new bells and whistles to keep your interest, not realizing that each one takes us further away from the original story we thought we were reading.

That’s not the problem with Eric’s script. He still knows what he’s doing so he makes it work. I just thought it felt a little unbalanced, with Vincent becoming this huge story agitator too late in the game.

The only other major observation I had was David’s job. David is a mechanic, which I thought was an odd choice since it had nothing to do with the story. There was ONE major payoff of him being a mechanic (he disabled the bad guy’s car), but if David is as smart as we’re led to believe, he should’ve been able to figure this out anyway.

We writers do this a lot. We absolutely LOVE a good payoff. But sometimes we love them so much that we’ll keep the setup to that payoff even if changing it would improve everything else in the screenplay BUT that payoff.

So say I was writing a comedy about an airplane pilot who can’t tell a lie for one day. The reason I made my main character a pilot? It’s a setup to an awesome payoff late in the script where my hero escapes the bad guys by hijacking a plane! Sure, that’s a nice payoff, but if I made my character, say, a lawyer instead, the setup would be a lot more ironic and lead to ton more funny scenes (Liar Liar). So you have to ask yourself, is keeping your main character a pilot so you can have that plane hijack scene really worth it?

I don’t think David being a mechanic is milking the irony of the situation enough. Flowers for Algernon (another “turn to genius” story) made its main character mentally retarded so that the irony level was high when he became smart. I don’t think that’s right for this particular script, but maybe they could do what Good Will Hunting did and make David a low level worker at a place known for the high intelligence level of its employees, like a giant bank or a huge trading firm.

By no means is going with a mechanic a bad choice. I just think if you can milk the irony of a concept, you do it. As a screenwriter, you don’t want to leave any stone unturned when you write a script. Always try to get the best out of every single element.

Anyway, “Understand” was a little schizophrenic but extremely well-written and moved at a speed-train like pace. The weird second half turn did throw me, but it also kept me off-balance, so I didn’t know what would happen next. I’d recommend this one if you can find it!

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

Number of times I checked the internet during read: 7

What I learned: Ahhh, I do not like numbered montages.

1) Frank works at his desk.
2) Frank and Sara sit at home, reading.
3) Frank goes fishing with his buddies.
4) Frank back at his desk, working.

I’m a big believer in keeping the writing as invisible as possible. The idea is to make someone forget they’re reading so they’re always immersed in your story. Anything you do to disrupt that reminds them it’s just a big fake made-up story. So seeing montages (long ones at that) that were numbered here, took me out of the screenplay. I was more focused on the “shot number” than the images themselves. With that said, Eric may be directing this or writing it for a director. In that case, maybe he wanted to know the specific shots he would have to get.