Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: A look at the people who created the world’s first atomic bomb, within the top secret 1944 program known as, “The Manhattan Project.”
About: Sam Shaw was a writer on Showtime’s Masters of Sex. When WGN America read his pilot script for “Manhattan,” they dropped everything and immediately ordered 13 episodes. This is another reason why writers are falling in love with TV. Even the old pilot paradigm is changing, leading to more “straight-to-series” orders, which can turn a “nobody” writer into a somebody overnight. That’s the kind of thing that used to happen back in the feature world in the 90s.
Writer: Sam Shaw
Details: 69 pages (really? From a Masters of Sex writer?)

I don’t know what I should feel about the movie business currently. On the one hand, global box office is heating up which would imply a healthy future for cinema. On the other, it’s looking more creatively bankrupt every week. Godzilla looked like a movie desperate to bust out of a committee-driven narrative. Besides a few fun flourishes, it was about as assembly-line as it gets.

It’s almost every week these days that a new writer or director or actor comes out and says, “TV is sooooo much better than movies.” In one of John Favreau’s recent “Chef” interviews, he claimed to be bored when he goes to the movies these days because “I know everything that’s going to happen.” Watching stuff like Game of Thrones, now, is enthralling to him, because he has no idea where the story’s going next. That’s becoming less and less true at the theater.

Halle Berry, promoting her new CBS show, Extant, says all the actors are talking about how the exciting stuff is in television now, and more and more are coming over as a result. Is it true that Brad Pitt is being signed up for the next season of HBO’s True Detective? Cause if Brad Pitt is coming over to TV, you know something’s missing on the film end.

I’m not saying that movies are boring audiences out of the theater. Hollywood’s proven that even with subpar scripts, they can get audiences to show up. What Hollywood needs to worry about is all their talent fleeing. If more and more writers move to television, that means worse and worse scripts, and there will come a point where even Middle America says, “Dude, that is stupid.” And when that moment comes, it might be too late to right the ship.

So if Hollywood wants to continue to thrive, they might want to entice writers back with more creative freedom. Maybe not giving them free reign on a blockbuster or anything ridiculous like that. But giving them free reign on something.

Which brings us to Manhattan, a prestige period show that’ll allow WGN America to play more dress-up. Let’s see if it takes full advantage of its creative freedom and gives us something great.

It’s spring 1944, towards the end of World War 2. We’re in the middle of the Los Alamos desert, where an impromptu city has been created. Geniuses are coming in from all over the country to participate in an exciting endeavor, despite none of them knowing what that mysterious endeavor is.

Although it’s hard to pinpoint a protagonist in this somewhat choppy pilot, there are two men who share the majority of the screen time. 42 year-old Frank Winter, one of the more prominent scientists in the city, and Charlie Bell, a young Jewish man with a 180 IQ and a photographic memory. Charlie just showed up yesterday and, like many others, is trying to figure out what this is all about.

What follows is a lot of West Wing-type scenes where we speed through halls of the facility, catching glimpses of bomb diagrams and meeting new scientists and soldiers. We meet so many people in Manhattan (sometimes four at a time), that unless you’re keeping score with a notepad, chances are you won’t remember any of them.

Eventually there’s an indication that someone may be a spy for the Germans, with the military police believing it might be Frank, but there’s zero evidence to indicate that this is even remotely true and the thread dies out quickly.

Meanwhile, back at his new homestead (a military style pre-fabricated home in the desert), Charlie must fight his wife, who’s flabbergasted as to why he would ever want to be here. Her father has a cushy job for him back in New York, where they can raise their twins in a normal environment like everyone else. Charlie wants to be part of something bigger though, and the Manhattan Project is just that.

Eventually Frank gets Charlie and five others together and lets them know that the bomb they’re making is unstable, and if they don’t figure out how to stabilize it soon, the Germans are going to beat them in the race, and bye-bye goes freedom forever. These 7 men are the smartest in the United States. So if anyone’s going to figure out how to put this bomb together, it’s going to be them.

Manhattan, sadly, just isn’t very interesting. The big issue is that there’s zero drama. What I mean is that there’s no attempt to create problems that de-stabilize the characters’ world and force them to act. Look at Lost. A plane crashes (problem). They need to find everyone who’s still alive then figure out a way off the island.

Breaking Bad. Walter White gets cancer (problem). He must figure out how to support his family after he’s gone. Walking Dead. A zombie apocalypse breaks out (problem). Everyone must figure out how to survive.

I kept waiting for some problem in Manhattan so that the drama could begin, so that the characters could start acting, but it never happened. This was more of a straight-forward setup of the project and all the characters involved. And you know what happens when you give the audience a straight-forward setup? Boredom.

There were some tiny attempts at drama. The military police think Frank might be a spy, but that notion is squashed so quickly they might as well have not even included it. If I’m going to invest in a show, I don’t want people who MIGHT be spies. I want people who ARE spies! I might even want one of my leads to be a spy. Now we have some dramatic irony, some suspense. Some drama!

That’s the problem with Manhattan. I kept waiting for drama to show up but all I got was setup. Setup of the location, setup of the facility, setup of the characters. Yes, you have to set up your characters in your pilot, but if that’s ALL you’re doing – if you’re not telling a story while you’re doing it – it’s snooze-central.

In Breaking Bad, we meet Walter and his family. Then he gets cancer. Then he has to start acting. Now we have shit happening! We never had “shit happening” in Manhattan.

Now keep in mind, this is coming from someone who said that nothing happened in the pilot for True Detective. One of the big differences between movies and TV that sometimes trips me up is that TV is more about the characters. Hitting plot points or throwing in plot twists isn’t as important. So maybe that’s playing into my assessment here.

Then again, I’ve been watching Walking Dead this past week and even though it’s character-driven, there’s a hell of a lot going on between those characters. I mean in the pilot, we find out that Shane and Rick’s wife have hooked up after assuming Rick was dead, leading to all sorts of drama once he makes it back to the group. There’s none of that in Manhattan. It’s all very dry and ordered and “this is our world and these are the people in our world and that’s all we’re going to tell you.”

This probably would’ve worked better if new scientists showed up to the project and were told in the teaser or the end of Act 1 that “everything the project has worked on for the past six months has been proven wrong.” They need to start over. They’re now 6 months behind the Germans. These 7 men are in charge of pulling off a miracle. What upset me was that something similar to this happens towards the end of the script, but it’s such a subtle scene that there’s no importance attached to it. This needs to be the show! Thing are falling apart and these men were brought in to be the saviors.

Regardless of that, Manhattan needs a lot more drama and a lot more personality. It felt too much like the History Channel version of this idea.

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

What I learned: Remember that a PROBLEM injects PURPOSE into the characters – like I pointed out with Lost, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead. Even in WGN’s other show, Salem, a problem is introduced into the city – witches. Now our characters must deal with it. The best way to go about writing a TV show, in my opinion, is to find some situation/world/idea that excites you, and then introduce a problem into that world that forces your characters to act. Without that, I don’t think you can write an exciting pilot.

Genre: Action/Adventure
About: The stars aligned for Gareth Edwards, a man who made the micro-budgeted “Monsters” a few years ago to show off his proficiency with special effects. The unscripted film followed a couple into a quarantined jungle where giant monsters lived. Naturally, when Godzilla execs saw what this man could do for 20 grand, they imagined pure movie-going nirvana at 200 million, resulting in the single biggest budget jump for a director in Hollywood history. The writer of Godzilla had his own megawatt rise to fame. Max Borenstein, a Yale alum, wrote and directed his first film back in 2003, called “Swordswallowers and Thin Man.” But it wasn’t until 5 years later that he was heard from again, when he landed on the Black List adapting Kenneth Feinberg’s memoir, “What is Life Worth?” He apparently landed on Legendary’s radar (the producers of Godzilla) writing the 2009 screenplay, Jimi, which chronicled Jimi Hendrix’s life.
Writer: Max Borenstein (story by Dave Callaham)
Details: 123 minutes

Gareth and Bryan

Gareth Edwards is one of the most exciting young directors out there. He’s got a directing street pass for his next five films as far as I’m concerned (I’ll be there opening day no matter what he makes).

What’s not exciting is the script he had to work with for Godzilla. Now, look – I don’t claim to know what it’s like to work on something with 30 chefs in the kitchen. There may be 3 or 4 people in that group tops who’ve actually read a screenplay before. So I get it. Script-by-committee, and an ignorant committee at that. But you’d figure someone with some knowledge of this stuff would’ve stepped in and said, “Hold up a second. This is spinning out of control here.”

Godzilla tries to show us that it’s more than just a monster flick right out of the gate, saturating the opening act with tons of “emotional” scenes. Even with Bryan Cranston acting in them, these scenes fall disastrously short of any emotion whatsoever. They actually exemplify one of the most misunderstood notions in screenwriting: that if you write people crying, then audiences will cry too.

Uhh, no. Except for rare occasions, that’s not how it works at all. Do you laugh when characters onscreen laugh? Of course not. You laugh when the characters find themselves in awkward or difficult situations, and struggle to get out of them. Watch the “answering machine” scene in Swingers, where you laugh uncomfortably for five straight minutes. Is Mikey laughing in that scene? I don’t think so.

So when we see Bryan Cranston’s character crying as his wife gets stuck inside a contaminated bay, do we cry? No. I mean, why would we? WE DON’T EVEN KNOW THESE PEOPLE! We met them three minutes ago. Why would I cry for someone I met three minutes ago?

This is only part of the problem though. The bigger issue is, why are Bryan Cranston and his wife in this movie in the first place??? (spoiler) They add zero value to the story, have less than 2% of an effect on the plot, and don’t even make it through the first act! Why are we spending so much time with people who aren’t even important enough to make it to Act 2????

Okay, breathe Carson. Breeeeathe. I’m sorry but the clumsiness of this script got to me. I mean, the trailers for this movie were awesome. I thought I was going to see a great Godzilla movie. Instead, we endure mistake after mistake that would’ve been spotted in a Screenwriting 101 class.

But I have to remember it wasn’t one writer sitting in a room with total control. It was the director, the producers, the actors, the testers, the actors’ agents, the executives, the toy people. All of these people had an effect on the script in some way. So my real beef is with that committee. But it doesn’t make what I saw any easier.

To give you a little background, here’s Godzilla’s plot: “Bryan Cranston’s Character” is a crazy scientist who works in Japan and is convinced that recent earthquakes aren’t actually earthquakes, but rather a sign that some monsters are living underground. But because he’s a kooky scientist, no one believes him.

He works at a nuclear facility, and one day there’s a meltdown which kills his wife (in a scene so melodramatic Tommy Wiseau, from “The Room,” would’ve chuckled). Cut to 15 years later and Bryan’s son is trying to distance himself from his increasingly erratic father, who’s still convinced that there are monsters under the earth.

Spoiler alert. There ARE monsters under the earth. And Bryan ends up dying when one of these monsters – a giant insect-like thing – emerges. Bryan’s son, a soldier with the U.S. army who now has his own wife and kid, tries to come to peace with never believing his father. But it doesn’t last long since a SECOND monster escapes the underground and the two start wandering about the planet, inadvertently creating destruction in their wake.

So you’re probably saying, why can’t we just blow these things up? Because they actually feed on nuclear energy. They also have an EMP bubble surrounding them wherever they go, shutting down all military equipment that comes close enough. Bryan’s son, essentially, then hitchhikes from one state to another (by boat, plane, car, train) following these beasts, as the writers desperately try and figure out a way to keep him involved in the story.

Eventually, the army realizes that the two giant insect things are trying to mate and they have no way to stop them. Enter Godzilla, whose desire to stop them is explained away in a single line: “He is trying to bring balance.” Trying to bring balance? Why? What does he care if these insects bang or not?  Government needs to stay out of the bedroom.

After that, there’s something about setting up an analog nuclear bomb (that’s different from normal nuclear bombs) to lure all three monsters into the ocean and blow them all up. But before that can happen, Godzilla will try and “bring balance,” lizard style, to these pesky oversized mosquitos. Will he be overmatched, or become the mega-monster we all know him to be?

All dressed up and nothing to do.  

Seriously though, what was the point of the first 20 pages of this story??? (Spoiler) A wife we don’t know is killed, leaving us with a husband who jaunts around for another 15 pages before he’s killed too???? I’ve never seen that before. Giving an emotional “death of a loved one” scene to a character who won’t even be around past page 30? You do that for your hero, not a one-and-done character! It’d be like giving a day player a major love interest.

As far as I can tell, the only necessary piece of information in the first 20 pages was the discovery of strange signals underneath the earth, which is something that literally could’ve been told in 30 seconds. Why not start the film with Bryan Cranston’s kid at his father’s funeral? Afterwards, he goes through his father’s old work, and finds the old recorded signal. This reduces twenty minutes down to five and gets rid of gobs of clunky insignificant nonsense in the process.

If only that were the only problem. What really killed this script was the exposition. There are certain stories that require tons of exposition, and either you figure out a way to minimize it ahead of time, or if it’s a script that requires non-stop explanation all the way through, you don’t write it. Because nobody wants to suffer through a story that’s 80% explanation.

That’s what Godzilla was to me. 80% explaining. And what happens when there’s more explanation than story in a movie?  It feels lifeless. Because it’s never allowed to breathe! The majority of Godzilla’s scenes can be broken down into 5 categories. A) Explaining what these giant animals were. B) Explaining what they were doing (where they were going and why). C) Explaining how they operated (able to use EMP and nuclear energy). D) How the army would react to whatever current thing the monsters were doing. And finally E) How to get Bryan Cranston’s son from territory to territory.

Poor Bryan Cranston’s son. This guy had NOTHING to do but wait for the plot to figure out a way to get him to the next location. “Oh, hey, uhhh. He’s our… last nuclear tech engineer… so that’s why we need him to come with us!” Never have I seen a character so clearly a pawn of the plot rather than a real live human being before. He had no life because nobody wrote him any life. Calling home to the wife doesn’t make us care about someone. Or make them feel real. How about giving this character wants, needs, a flaw, secrets, a backstory (not his dad’s backstory – HIS backstory), a PERSONALITY!. He was so generic it was embarrassing to everyone involved. This is your hero! And he’s the most forgettable thing about the film! Even his dad, who died 100 minutes ago and wasn’t even needed for the story was more memorable.

So you might say, “Yeah, but Carson, the humans aren’t the real stars here. The monsters were.” Except that was a problem too! Godzilla was barely in the movie! This should’ve been called “Giant Insect Nuclear Lovebirds” because it was more about them than Godzilla. Granted, the moments where Godzilla did appear were badass (loved the blue fire), but they weren’t enough. This is supposed to be Godzilla’s movie, but there’s nary a Godzilla sighting.

Again, Gareth is an awesome director. The eye this guy has is insane. Every shot feels iconic. But if he’s going to become a great director, he needs to explore humanity more. He needs to care about his characters as much as he cares about his next shot. Or else he’s going to fall into that trap of making empty blockbusters that are all the rage for 1 week, and then forgotten forever.

Godzilla was a real disappointment. I was hoping for more. ☹

[ ] what the hell did I just see?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If every other scene in your script is centered on explaining something, you have too much exposition in your script. You need to step back, figure out what the source of all this exposition is, and find a way to simplify it. If you don’t, your script is going to read like a “How to” manual instead of an entertaining movie.

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: The Sleeper
GENRE: Political Thriller
LOGLINE: When a lobbyist’s daughter is kidnapped by a rogue group of protesters attempting to get a bill passed his clients vehemently detest, he must find those responsible before his life spirals out of control.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Something interesting? I’ll leave you with a quote from a reader on The Blacklist who recently read this: “THE SLEEPER features a taut, propelling pace that makes for a page-turning thriller, and its political themes ground the proceedings in a prescient sense of reality that prevents the story from becoming rote spectacle. Nicholas is an intriguingly flawed protagonist whose dueling desires to both rescue Alison and protect his own career create a fantastic moral quandary that makes him both endearing and morally questionable.”

TITLE: The Fearless Advocacy of the Truth
GENRE: Real life thriller
LOGLINE: The true story of a provincial lawyer seeking to uncover the truth that will ultimately bring down Britain’s biggest newspaper.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “If you do have a high BOI [burden of investment], you better have one whopper of a story” – Carson Reeves

Maybe I shouldn’t have chosen the man who owns 21st Century Fox as the villain for my first screenplay, but I think this is a story that deserves to be told. I think this is a whopper of a story.

During the summer of 2011, News International was engulfed in a fire-storm thanks to the phone hacking revelations. I became fascinated by the series of barely believable discoveries, and the actions of one man in particular – lawyer Mark Lewis. This is a script that has a burden of investment, but one which I hope ultimately makes the chain of events that lead to the revelations all the more rewarding. And if not, it also features Prince William rapping to Jay Z.

TITLE: Vampire Rabbits
GENRE: Elevated B-movie Horror
LOGLINE: A whole year after a research rabbit, genetically engineered with the DNA of a vampire bat, escapes from a secluded laboratory-facility, it returns with its spawn, looking for blood.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Because I’ve taken this premise and elevated the shit out of it… this is not your average ‘creature feature’, this is a greater work of art, taking all the genre conventions associated with ‘B’ movie horror and illuminating it into something special, something that soars, while also challenging perceptions of this maligned genre with its deeper questions, and profound execution, capturing the spirit of what horror once was, and could still be, it’s so much more about great ideas, and fantastic imagination, than the bleak human suffering we’re served up today in horror. This script is also very topical in its nature, exploring important themes of scientific responsibility, as well as our attitudes to animal welfare and what we’re willing to accept in the pursuit of this science. But of course at its heart this is a horror script, and it’s spooky as hell, imaginative at a level savant, and getting never ending mileage from its brilliant premise. It also features an exciting, volatile, chemistry from its great cast of characters, all with their own conflicting agendas and clashing personalities, this driving the story to an explosive never seen before climax. This is a script of the greatest potential, something that’s worth taking the time to read through and experience for yourself.
P.S. Here’s a cool graphic to go with the script!

TITLE: Black Autumn
GENRE: Found Footage Horror
LOGLINE: A WikiLeaks-type website reveals classified footage of a Marine unit’s horrific encounter with a vampire in the wilds of 1971 Vietnam.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ: They say found footage is dead. I’m hoping the rumors of its demise are slightly exaggerated. This is my first crack at the ff genre, and I found the format to be quite challenging. I tried my best to avoid the common pitfalls of found footage scripts, and write a story with a good mix of action and horror.

TITLE: Firewake
GENRE: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Thriller, Animation
LOGLINE: An uptight detective unicorn and his rookie partner must fight corrupt bosses and deadly minions when their loved ones are kidnapped by a psychotic mastermind on a quest for world domination.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: I miss the heydays of the action cartoon, and the non-superhero action movie. It’s my dream to create something full of kick-butt action, or at least help others to do so. This is an attempt at doing just that (and I’ve got others down as well, including an unrelated animated pilot that scored a 7 on the Black List).

Yes, it’s a movie about talking unicorns. Wait, don’t go just yet! It’s a movie about talking unicorns that fight a psychotic and godlike villain – and his numerous minions – while rescuing loved ones. In the course of the rescue, not only do they use awesome spells, but also laser guns and flying cars. The weakest of the minions are robot wolves, to boot.

Ambitious? Yes. Maybe a little too much. But it’s a script I absolutely loved working on, and a script I loved revising. I learned quite a bit while writing this, and hope to learn even more from you and Scriptshadow commenters.

Something tells me this guy isn’t ready yet.  

Knowing when you’re ready to take that step into the professional world of screenwriting is important. Over time, you will accumulate contacts and relationships in the industry (even if it’s just a friend of a friend of a producer). And the last thing you want to do is burn those contacts by giving them a script that sucks. Every writer I know has done this (I’ve done it several times myself) mainly due to impatience. We want to sell a script NOW NOW NOW. The devastating thing about this mistake is that you usually lose that contact for life. No matter what you do, you can’t change someone’s mind who thinks you’re a shitty writer.

Now I don’t like to use that term (shitty writer). I prefer “writers who aren’t ready yet,” which is the theme of this post. How do you know if you’re ready? Well, we’ve talked about this before, but I wanted to get into a little more detail, since understanding where you’re at in the process is nearly impossible to be objective about. Everyone thinks they’re ready TODAY. And I hope you are! But if you find yourself agreeing to a few of these statements, you may need to spend some more time in the minor leagues before you’re called up. Below are ten signs that you’re not ready for a professional screenwriting career just yet.

1) You’ve never showed your script to anyone – I’m surprised by just how many writers haven’t shown their work to anyone (friends, fellow writers, family). One of the biggest keys to writer improvement is feedback. People knock the development system all the time, but the development system lets the writers know what’s working and what isn’t. You need that help as well.  I guess I understand the fear component here. Writers are terribly insecure people. “What if I’m bad?” they wonder. “What if they tell me my script’s unreadable?” But that’s the wrong way to look at it. Screenwriting should be seen as a continual learning experience where you’re always getting better. The sooner you know what you’re doing wrong, the sooner you can correct it. So send your script to a friend, to another screenwriter, to me. But in order to really move forward with your screenwriting, you have to take that first step.

2) You’ve only written one script – People who only write one script don’t really learn screenwriting. They learn how to write one script. Every script you write is unique and expands your skills and knowledge as a storyteller. Many of the things you learn from successive scripts, you’ll be able to apply back to your earlier scripts, creating a “kill two birds with one stone” scenario. Plus, the more screenplays you have, the more marketable you are as a writer. Every once in awhile, you’ll see an exception to this (Craig in last week’s Amateur Friday), but man are those exceptions rare.

3) Screenwriting is something you do casually – Recently, I met this producer who had an insane work ethic. He was always reading a new book, flying to a new festival, optioning a new script, setting up a new TV show. I was amazed by this and asked him what his secret was. He said that when he first got here, he hung out with a really successful producer who never sat still. And he asked him the same question. The producer pointed out that it’s so competitive in this industry, that unless you are giving 110% at all times, you will be crushed. That’s when he realized that only the strong survived. It’s the same thing with screenwriting. You’re competing against tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of other writers. You have no choice but to outwork them if you’re going to survive. True, not everyone has an infinite amount of time, but if you’re serious about breaking in, you better be using all of your free time to write, read, or study.

4) You’ve entered at least four contests and haven’t placed in any (and by “place,” I mean top 5%) – If you don’t place in a single screenplay competition, you can chalk it up to you and a reader not seeing eye to eye. Four competitions though? That means your writing isn’t up to snuff yet. To add some context, the biggest screenwriting competition in the world, Nicholl, has 7000 entries. 5 of those win, and rarely do any of them go on to sell. That’s less than .1% of the entries. Which aren’t even good enough to compete in the Hollywood market. So if you’re not in the top 5% of a contest, you still have work to do. But don’t fret. Again, think of screenwriting as a constant learning process. Expand your screenwriting knowledge, read more screenplays, watch more movies, then write more scripts. Don’t fret. You WILL continue to get better.

5) You’re driven only by money – Writers who are driven by money tend to write hollow scripts. The reality is, this isn’t the 90s anymore where writers ruled the roost and got a million bucks for a logline. The market has cooled down considerably. Truth be told, most of the writers who give up are the ones who were driven by money and, after writing three Taken or Hangover clones that didn’t sell, convince themselves that the industry is run by nepotism and hightail it back to Oklahoma. The reality is, the people who tend to make it are people who love movies and love telling stories. They are people who want to say something about the world, but say it within the confines of a marketable premise. What I find is that a lot of people come here wanting to sell a million dollar spec, then somewhere along the way, fall in love with the medium and want to learn everything about it. Usually, when they make this mental transition, is when they start to succeed. Do we hope one day to make a living writing? Sure. Would it be nice if the profession helped us buy a house in the hills? Of course. But that shouldn’t be why you’re writing. You should be writing because you can’t think of any other thing you’d rather be doing with your life.

6) You don’t believe – I just did an entire article about this. If you don’t believe in yourself, you are perpetuating a self-fulfilling prophecy which will result in you eventually giving up. I promise you. In many ways, the key to success in any field is belief, because without it, why would one press on? Sometimes I’ll encounter a writer who bitches about lesser writers having agents or who complains that the industry is rigged. I have to remind them not to focus on that nonsense. It’s all noise and has nothing to do with you. The industry is no different from life. It is what you make of it. If you believe that it’s rigged, you’ll focus on getting screwed. If you work hard, dedicate yourself, continue to create, and are positive and respectful towards others, opportunities will present themselves. I promise you!

7) You’re a comedy writer who hasn’t studied screenwriting extensively – Comedy scripts signify the epitome of how the outside world views screenwriting. They think screenwriting is easy. And they think being funny is easy. Therefore there is little to no effort from these writers to actually LEARN THE CRAFT. Comedy screenwriting is a lot like stand-up. It LOOKS easy. But that’s only because the people who do it have been working at it so hard. Jonah Hill, who I think is one of the funniest actors around, had to do stand-up for Funny People. He said he was TERRIBLE. He rambled. Nothing he said got a laugh. He realized that there’s a real craft to setting up and executing jokes that takes time to hone and perfect. The same thing is true for screenwriting. To those genuinely funny people out there who want to write comedy scripts – I promise you – If you dedicate your life to learning the craft of screenwriting (structure, character empathy, character flaw, character conflict, escalating tension, sequencing, stakes, purpose, urgency, theme, etc.), you will be unstoppable. There are so few genuinely funny comedy writers out there who know how to write a good story. The ones who do come up with stuff like The Hangover. The ones who don’t come up with stuff like Jack and Jill.

8) You don’t yet understand what “show don’t tell” means – “Show don’t tell” is one of the first things you learn in screenwriting. Instead of characters saying things, you use actions or images to convey those things instead.  If you don’t master this technique, you’ll receive one of the worst critiques a writer can hear on their script: “It all felt so… on-the-nose.”  It starts with dialogue. Instead of a character saying “I think we should break up,” have them standing by the door with their stuff packed up in suitcases holding out their apartment key. “Show don’t tell” also extends to descriptions. I can’t stand reading lines like, “Joe is elated.” This is boring, sloppy, and un-cinematic. Show us this feeling instead! For instance, Joe could pump his fist or high five a random stranger. And did you know you could even use dialogue to “show don’t tell?” For example, instead of Frank, who has a crush on Mary, telling her, “I’m nervous,” you could have him babble on nonsensically about how he adores penguins. The ACTION of babbling implies nervousness, so he doesn’t have to say it directly. Pro writers are way more adept at showing actions, and therefore this is one of the easiest ways to distinguish amateur from professional screenplays.

9) You focus more on the surface of your script than what’s happening underneath – Flashy description, mystery boxes, surprise revelations, clever dialogue, unexpected twists. These things are all great, but they’re all surface level. To provide a truly rich reading experience, you need to focus on what goes on underneath the surface. Show your hero battling something internally (an inability to love due to fear of rejection), your characters conveying their feelings between the lines (subtext), make a statement about people or life via a recurring theme (“Seize the day”– Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). Understanding plot is incredibly important. But it’s just the first part of the journey. Your scripts really start to resonate once they say something about your characters and about the world they/we live in.

10) You’re not confident in your writing – Have you ever heard someone say, “Wow, the writing in that script was so confident?” It’s kind of intimidating. “Well wait a minute,” you ask. “Do I write with confidence?” Typically, if you’re asking that question, the answer is no. That’s okay. It just means you haven’t developed your writing method yet. A writer’s method is born out of all the screenwriting books (or sites) he’s studied, out of all the scripts he’s read (what he’s liked, what he’s hated), and out of all the trial and error that’s gone into his own screenplays. He uses this knowledge and experience to develop a method (an approach) that works best for him. Once a writer has a method, their scripts really take on a confidence that was previously absent. This is why the combination of reading, writing, and studying is so powerful.

Wow, that list is kind of intense. So let me be clear. I’m not saying you have to be 10 out of 10 here. But if you’re looking up at this and going, “Oh boy, I’m guilty of most of these,” then you probably want to take a step back and study screenwriting for six months. Dedicate yourself to being a scholar of the medium. There are so many books out there, and a lot of them are so good (including my own!), there’s really no excuse not to educate yourself and put your best foot forward.

Oh, but there’s one last question I wanted to address. What if you’ve already done all this? What if you’ve been writing for 10-15 years and you’re still struggling? What’s the plan then? Well, first, look in the mirror and ask yourself if you still love writing. As long as the answer’s yes, there’s no reason to stop. Writing is one of the most convenient extracurricular activities you can do. So there’s no reason to stop unless you hate it.

The next step is being honest with yourself about a harsh reality: WHAT YOU’VE BEEN DOING SO FAR ISN’T WORKING. Once you’ve accepted that, my advice would be to knock down the house and start all over again. I was reading Peter Bart’s comments over on Deadline this week and he noted that when TV started to pull away market share from movie theaters in the 60s, the studios were freaking out. They realized they were delivering the same old crap and the audiences weren’t buying it anymore. So they basically tore down the whole industry and said to its creators, “There are no rules anymore. Go do what you want.” And that’s how we ended up with the second Golden era of cinema with all those great innovative 70s films. You need to do the same thing. You’ve studied screenwriting long enough to understand all the tropes. You know the formulas. So you’re probably the most qualified to break away from them and try something different (or, if you’ve been trying something different all these years, maybe it’s time to try a more traditional approach). Good luck to you. And good luck to everyone else pursuing this heart-wrenching but wonderful craft. Every day you write, you’re one step closer to the finish line. ☺

Genre: Drama-Comedy
Premise: In a dimension where turtle people are movie stars and miniaturized people fight to the death, a speed-addicted alcoholic gambling private investigator must find out who kidnapped a miniature pop star.
About: This script was on The Black List all the way back in 2007. Since then, co-writer Tom Kuntz has gone on to be one of the most successful commercial directors in the business (he did that famous Old Spice ad with the guy walking around without a shirt). He also directed 2008’s The Onion Movie. Currently, I can’t find anything on co-writer Griffin Creech. Hope he’s still around!
Writer: Griffin Creech and Tom Kuntz
Details: June 8th, 2007 draft (126 pages)

Devito for Turtle Man?  I think so!

Turtle Man!

Half-turtle. Half man.

That’s all you need to know going into this one.

Actually, that’s not true. FWIW, I read The 37th Dimension 6 years ago. Believe it or not, it was once in my Top 25. Of course, back then I hadn’t read many scripts, but still. It was different. It was weird. It was the kind of script you still thought about after you put it down.

But the kinds of scripts I respond to today are different. I’m less impressed with flashy gadget-y scripts with a bag full of tricks and nothing else. I need some meat. There was this script called Fiasco Heights, for example, that wowed the reader out of me, purely because of its writing style. But that doesn’t happen much anymore. These days I need depth, I need character, I need something to dig my teeth into. Always a challenge in the minimalistic writing arena that is a screenplay.

So, naturally, I was curious what this new Carson would think of The 37th Dimension. Especially because I spend most of my time in this lame-o 7th Dimension. Take a trip with me 30 floors up, will you?

TOP 40 (that’s the name of a character by the way) is a beautiful pop star who just happens to be 10% the size of a regular person. Upon making a private appearance with a Japanese businessman, the businessman starts masturbating, leading to her trying to escape. But all of a sudden the lights go off, and when they come back on again, Top 40 is gone.

Enter Smith Dangerous Smith, a talented private investigator who see-saws between speed and booze to make it through what his more optimistic brethren refer to as “life.” He’s brought into Top 40’s music label to handle the case. See, it appears that whoever kidnapped Top 40, is now demanding a 20 million dollar ransom for her. Since Smith owes 700 grand to a gang of Haitian bookies, he agrees to the case faster than Selena Gomez breaks up and gets back together with Justin Bieber.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Turtle Man, an advanced age half-turtle, half-man, who also happens to be a great actor. Well, WAS a great actor. Now he’s lucky to get a car dealership commercial. So upon backing his car up, ironically, into the van of those Haitian gangsters, he finds himself the recipient of the wrong kind of attention. They follow him home, try to kill him, only to see him duck into his turtle shell. Such is the goings-on of the 37th Dimension.

Also occurring in this dimension are 10% super ultimate fighter fights. This is when these 10% mini-people fight each other in a match to the death. J.T. Monahan, a Texas billionaire, carries the best of these fighters, Champ, around in a bowling bag. They’re so close that he even lets Champ watch him have sex (from his bag), which his lady friends naturally find kind of weird.

Smith, in the meantime, vacillates between getting utterly blasted and following up leads, which typically lead nowhere. From the Japanese man Top 40 did a private show for, to the little people collector, J.T. Burnham, to a plastic surgery doctor who’s so good he does his boob jobs in the back of his Bentley (which has built-in anesthesia) – everywhere he looks turns out to be a bust. When the music company bumps up the pressure and the Haitians start threatening death, it’ll be up to Smith Dangerous Smith to work a miracle and save Top 40 before it’s too late.

Depp for Smith Dangerous Smith? Double thinks so!

This is how you do crazy.

A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed “The Lobster,” which was a mess from its pincher-shaped beginning to its crustaceous end. The rules were murky. The urgency was non-existent. It wasn’t even clear what our main character was trying to do other than stumble around his hotel and avoid getting in trouble.  That’s not how you do crazy.

The best way to do crazy is to add non-crazy. In other words, you need a “normal” spine to hang crazy on. If you try to hang crazy on top of crazy, the spine won’t hold. There’s too much weirdness and everything buckles.

So yeah, even though we have a turtle man, Top 40, fight-to-the-death little people matches and weird Haitians (delightful bad guys, who are asked by Turtle Man, “What are you doing here?!” when they break into his house. Their answer? A polite, “Clearly we have gained unauthorized access to your dwelling.”), it works because they orbit around a stable narrative: Smith Dangerous Smith is trying to find and rescue Top 40.

Had Smith been, say, an alien, who ran around the city collecting butterflies, none of this would’ve worked. We needed him and his plotline to be normal so that everything else could be batshit insane.

With that said, I think the non-Smith elements of 37th Dimension could’ve been even crazier. Once you have that solid spine, you have to take advantage of the wacky rules governing your universe. There were really only two anomalies here – a turtle man and 10% people. And Turtle Man was, sadly, killed off early (R.I.P. Turtle Man). Two is such an odd number. At minimum you have to have three (everything comes in threes). And I’d probably go even further. Have other animal people. Have people who can perform magic. Do weird shit with the weather. This is the 37th Dimension. Not the 9th Dimension. Let’s get loopy!

Dimension was also way too long (126 pages). Maybe the writers thought for every extra dimension they got to write an extra page, but that’s not how it works.  For these kinds of stories, it’s 110 pages tops. We ain’t watching William Wallace conquer England here.

I’m kinda sad that these guys split up, because I’ll see this a lot when talented writers first start out. They have a ton of weird ideas, which make their scripts memorable, but they haven’t yet learned the basics of structure – how to cut useless characters out, how to get rid of unimportant scenes, how to combine scenes, how to keep scenes focused so they don’t run on 2 pages too long. Cause if you write three scenes in your script that each run 2 pages long, that’s 6 extra pages you’ve added. That’s how you get up to 126 pages.

Over time, you learn how to curb these mistakes and your scripts get tighter, until you’ve segued from a “script that gets people talking” to a “script people want to buy.” Sadly, many writers don’t stick around that long, quitting before they figure out the magic code.

There’s a moment early on here, for example, where the music label brings in Smith to give him the info on what’s happened to Top 40. Afterwards, there’s a nearly identical scene where the police tell him what they know. These two scenes should’ve been combined, or the police scene should’ve been eliminated altogether. You could have easily fed in the info from the second scene into the first and cut out 2 pages.

Also, later in the script, a detective rails on Smith for being so inadequate. He keeps saying the same thing over and over again (that Smith’s inadequate) in several different ways. It takes up an ENTIRE PAGE. He could’ve easily gotten his point across in four lines, which means you’ve saved an entire page of screenplay real estate. True, there are times when you need your character to say more than 4 lines to get their point across, but those moments need to be big and worth it, which this one wasn’t.

Despite those problems, I think this could’ve been a movie. I don’t know if it can now because I don’t think these writers work together anymore and this would need a rewrite. But it’s different enough that I think it would bring in a big indie audience and possibly even break through into something bigger, especially if it got someone like Johnny Depp involved, who seems to have been created by the acting Gods for this kind of film.

We can only hope!

R.I.P. TURTLE MAN!

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

What I learned: John Favreau was doing an interview for Jeff Goldsmith’s podcast, and Favreau was asked about his propensity for letting his indie films “breathe.” Why, Goldsmith wanted to know, didn’t he do the same for his bigger films? “Because audiences don’t like breathing,” Favreau replied, one-quarter joking. He went on to say that in a studio setting, they want the script to be tight. They want you to get to the point. In indie films, you can play around a little bit more. – There’s no right or wrong way to write a movie, of course. But if you want to get studio money, you have to learn to tighten your scripts. If not, the best you can hope for is a writing sample.