Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) After losing her job and learning that her husband has been unfaithful, a woman hits the road with her profane, hard-drinking grandmother.
About: Today’s script was written by Ben Falcone, a character-actor who happens to be married to the biggest female comedy actress in the world, Melissa McCarthy, who also happens to star in Tammy. The two enjoyed working together on Bridesmaids so much (Falcone played the air marshal on the plane), that they wanted to extend that into a full-on feature. This looks to be Falcone’s first produced screenwriting and directing effort. Tammy comes out this summer.
Writer: Ben Falcone
Details: 90 pages – (undated draft)

Recently, I gave an amateur writer notes on his comedy script which, he hoped, would become a future acting vehicle for Melissa McCarthy. The general gist of my notes was that it wasn’t ready. I told him he needed to exploit the concept more, improve the co-lead, and move things along quicker. The writer came back frustrated. He had seen and read “The Heat,” McCarthy’s film with Sandra Bullock, and didn’t see how his script was any worse than that one.

I didn’t agree. The script wasn’t delivering on the promise of the premise, and the co-leads weren’t active enough until way too late in the story. But then I looked at The Heat. That screenplay wasn’t lighting the world on fire either. It was a bit sloppy. The story lagged in the middle. And while it was an above-average execution, there was nothing exceptional about it. In short, the writer had a point. “Hey, mine’s not perfect. But neither was theirs.”

This is the part of the business that frustrates me. I tell writers to write something exceptional, then something mediocre (like, say, Ride Along) gets purchased and made. And does well! I’ve seen Ride Along. I wouldn’t say it’s “bad” but it sure is generic. Which leads us back to that question: If that’s getting bought, why isn’t yours?

Well, I want to get into that. But first I should probably tell you a little about today’s script, another McCarthy vehicle. I fully intended to bring Tammy into the conversation, but it turns out this is an indie film (which are made under different circumstances) and was directed by McCarthy’s husband. So I’m pretty sure we know how it got made. So let’s get into Tammy and then we’ll get back to that troublesome question.

Tammy is a woman approaching middle-age who doesn’t have her shit together. She drives a piece-of-shit car, which she ruins when she plows into a deer. This makes her late to work, which results in her getting fired. To top it all off, she comes home to find her husband cooking a meal for another woman (her husband’s never cooked a meal for her ever).

Tammy stomps out and decides she needs to take a road trip. Where? Anywhere that’s not here. So she goes to her parents’ house to get another car, which also happens to be where her Grandma lives. Her Grandma is sick with diabetes and a major alcoholic. A winning combo. And she’s tired of being cooped up so she demands that Tammy take her on the trip.

Away they go, off to Mr. Rushmore of all places (because Grandma was supposed to go there as a kid but never did). Along the way, the grandma drinks a lot, Tammy eats a lot, and they occasionally experience some hijinks, like Tammy picking up a guy in a wheelchair only to find out he’s a total douchebag.

Anyway, things end up exactly how you’d expect them to, which is the kiss of death in any screenplay, as Tammy and Grammy come back home, both slightly better off spiritually than they were when they began. The End.

I don’t like to knock indie films because they’re more a labor of love than their big shiny Hollywood counterparts. But since we’re trying to learn screenwriting here, there’s a lot to be said about Tammy’s misgivings.

Tammy violates rule #1 in any movie, but especially road trip movies – give your protagonist a strong goal. The only goal here is to get to Mount Rushmore. But there’s no importance attached to it so it doesn’t resonate with us at all. We don’t care if they achieve the goal or not, which means we’re not onboard with anything that happens along the way.

An easy way to know if you have a good goal driving your story is to ask, “If my characters don’t achieve their goal, are they any worse off than when they started?” In this case, if they never get to Mount Rushmore, their lives are no different than if they did. That’s the kiss of death. If there are no consequences to failing, than the goal is too weak for the story.

Occasionally, these movies can survive IF their characters are great. Sadly, Tammy’s characters are only marginal. Grandma has diabetes and is an alcoholic, which provides some character depth. But it’s a pretty standard execution of alcoholism, so nothing feels very new or enlightening about it.

Tammy starts off with a vice of her own, overeating. But for some reason that stops early on and never comes back. Outside of that, the character is hard to tab. She’s vulgar sometimes. Swears a lot. Unpredictable. Then out of nowhere she’ll become really dialed back and straight-laced.  Massive unexplained tonal shifts in characters is a huge sign of amateur screenwriting.

But Tammy’s failure can mainly be attributed to two “must-haves” that it didn’t have. First, the characters in any “buddy trip” or “buddy cop” scenario must contrast. The heavier the contrast, the more entertaining their interactions will be. Almost always, one of the characters is a version of conservative, and the other is a version of “crazy/weird.”

Here, Grandma was the crazy one, and Tammy was the crazy one. There was so little contrast between them that there was zero conflict, and therefore no drama. Go watch The Heat to see this done right. Sandra Bullock was uptight. Melissa McCarthy was loose and crazy. They clashed on every decision, which made them a funny pair.

The second must-have is the central relationship in the movie. These only work if there’s a significant unresolved issue between the characters that needs to be resolved. This is ESPECIALLY important if there isn’t a strong goal, because the resolution to that conflict will probably be the only “goal” we’re looking forward to.

Tammy and Grandma didn’t have any problems. Tammy was a little concerned about Grandma drinking too much, but it was explored with kid gloves. Other than that, they seemed to be pretty cool with each other. Agreeable people going on an unimportant trip with zero consequences if they fail isn’t a movie. No matter how you look at it, it isn’t a movie.

I’ll circle back to the original question now. If your script is just as good as an average Hollywood movie, why doesn’t it sell? I don’t think Tammy can help here, since the writer/director is married to the star. But what about The Heat or The Other Guys, two movies with imperfect plotlines and hit-or-miss jokes that didn’t always stay story-relevant?

The answer to this question is extremely complicated, but I’m going to try and simplify it for you.

Say a producer knows that Seth Rogen just went on a canoeing trip and had the time of his life. And the next day, he hears about a canoeing script from an agent friend. He reads it. It’s not very good. But he knows how much Seth loves canoeing, so he sends it to him. Seth’s a good writer and knows the script’s lame, but the bones of the structure are there and there’s a few funny scenes. He can easily buy the script then hire some guys to rewrite it and a year or two later, have a project ready to go.

There are also times where a studio is dying to make a certain kind of movie but doesn’t have a script for it yet. So say Warner Brothers needs to fill that vacancy left by the Harry Potter franchise. And they find a script about a young girl who goes to a Ghost Academy. The script is average, but they see this filling that same Harry Potter demo, so why not take a chance and develop it into something good?

Then of course there are actor attachments. A big actor likes a script and attaches himself to it. At that point, the studios can’t say no because any project an A-list actor is in has the potential to make money. The catch is, the script sucks. Maybe because the actor’s ability to judge material sucks. Maybe the actor loves the character he’d play, despite the rest of the script sucking. Maybe the script was written by one of his friends. Who knows. But that’s the scenario. In those cases, a studio will almost always buy the script because it comes with the potential of a movie that will make them money.

Here’s the problem with these scenarios. First, this almost exclusively happens to people who are already repped, which you aren’t. Why? Because those writers have agents sending their scripts out to a wide berth of people with buying power. You, on the other hand, have nothing. You don’t have any control over something like that happening to you.  Second, bad-to-average scripts selling are almost always luck-based, a script getting in the right hands at the right time (like Rogen’s canoeing scenario).  And unless you know what everyone in Hollywood wants at every moment, selling a script this way is a crap shoot.

So forget these scenarios. Put them out of your mind. Never think “I’ll write something as good as that average movie I saw and then sell it” because you’ll have a better chance at winning the lottery. Seriously, you will.

The world you’re operating in is much different. You’re competing against all the guys trying to break into Hollywood. And because there are between 50,000 and 75,000 scripts being written a year, an average script isn’t going to stand out. You’ll have to write something much better than average. Typically, if you look at every year like a giant screenwriting contest, you have to finish in the top 30-40 of those 75,000 to get a SERIOUS look from Hollywood (the kind of look that leads to a script sale).

If you’re writing something that’s just “okay,” nobody will care. EVEN if it’s as good as a movie that made 40 million at the box office last weekend, like Ride Along. I know that thinking sounds backwards, but that’s the reality. Like I always say, the only thing you can control in writing is writing the best script you can possibly write at this point in your life (not 60%, not 70% not 80% – but 100%!). If you’ve honestly done that, you’ll have a shot. If you’re writing anything less than that, you shouldn’t expect much.

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

What I learned: If you’re writing any sort of road trip movie, build conflict in one of two ways. 1) If your characters already know each other, create a deep unresolved problem between them that they need resolved by the end of the movie (Little Miss Sunshine). 2) If they don’t know each other, create a deep fundamental difference in their philosophies on life (Due Date, Rush Hour). If the opportunity presents itself, do both (Sideways).

This is your chance to discuss the week’s amateur scripts, offered originally in the Scriptshadow newsletter (although the newsletter hasn’t gone out this week – we’re working tirelessly on it – it might have to wait until Thursday). The primary goal for this discussion is to find out which script(s) is the best candidate for a future Amateur Friday review. This week is a bit different – we have a couple ‘comeback’ scripts from writers who are determined to show off new and improved work! If you’ve been featured on AOW before and want another chance, email carsonreeves3@gmail.com explaining what changes you’ve made and why you deserve a second chance! :)

Want to receive the scripts early? Head over to the Contact page, e-mail us, and “Opt In” to the newsletter.

Happy reading!

TITLE: Static Town
GENRE: Comedy, Coming of Age
LOGLINE: Fed up with the overuse of social media, a teenager purposely causes a power outage in his town in hopes to win over the new girl at his school.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: A little blurb: I miss the John Hughes days of teen films. Here’s a poster I threw together. http://imgur.com/gvgoefV

TITLE: THE WALK-ONS
GENRE: Comedy, Sports
LOGLINE: A disgraced high school baseball coach is hired by a local college that’s lost all it’s players, and must build a team entirely of walk-ons, including a group of hard partying players he coached in high school.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: First off, I want to say that I love sports movies, and yet it’s a genre that has been hurting for over a decade. This script is about the growing lack of interest in baseball, while at the same time rediscovering how the sport can make a great setting for a movie. I myself never watch more than a few pitches before looking for the remote, yet anytime one of the baseball classics come on, Major League, A League of Their Own, The Natural, Moneyball, I HAVE TO WATCH. Whether you love baseball, once loved baseball, or never played but enjoy a good comedy script, THE WALK-ONS is for you.

TITLE: Primal
GENRE: Horror
LOGLINE: After survivors of a recent hurricane relocate to a quiet Louisiana bayou town, a creature goes on a nightly rampage of terror and carnage. Convinced it is the legendary werewolf known as loup garou, an intrepid teen vows to discover the beast’s true identity and destroy it.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: This script is my take on the classic monster movie. The story moves quickly, is filled with colorful characters and contains a truly badass werewolf. It’s placed well in a couple smaller contests and now I want to see how it fares in the AOW thunderdome.

~ COMEBACK SCRIPT ~
TITLE: Facade
GENRE: Drama, Noir, Mystery
LOGLINE: Set in the idyllic 1950’s American suburbs, an unknowing police detective investigates the murder of a teenage boy but slowly realizes that not everything or everyone is as they appear.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: There are some pretty great characters and moments and twists and turns, in an old-fashion noir style. There’s a strong theme running through it as well. I like to think of it as “Laura” meets “Ordinary People” with a dash of “Chinatown.” Overall, I’m proud of what I accomplished, especially since I began this project when I was 15, but I know there are a lot of things I could improve. I ultimately just want some good feedback and suggestions, and to know what Carson thinks of it. I’ve never been a finalist at Nicholls or Page or Bluecat, or any other prestigious screenplay competition, nor do I have a Master’s in Screenwriting at NYU. I don’t have any compelling stories about how my script was optioned by a major studio only to have them turn their back on it at the last minute, bringing all my dreams to crushing end. All I can really say is that I have a lot of passion and pride about this, and it’s a pretty darn good script. Give it a shot!

~ COMEBACK SCRIPT ~
TITLE: The Cloud Factory
GENRE: WW2 romantic drama, coming-of-age, LGBT.
LOGLINE: After a near-fatal crash-landing, an American pilot falls for her aristocratic physician, forcing her to confront her sexuality and gender prejudice of class-divided WW2 Britain.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: It’s shamelessly greedy, I know, to try for a second bite at the AOW cherry when so many others are still vying for their first. But I got so much terrific advice from the first bite, and TCF’s evolved as a result. This is partly a ‘Thank you; I heard you.’

Back on July 18th, 2013, Carson warned about the six types of scripts least likely to get you noticed. These included the coming-of-age script and the straight drama. Needless to say, I didn’t get that memo until ‘way too late and rolled two types into one script. Mulesandmud commented recently about a producer asking him why he’d ruin his career writing a female protagonist. I didn’t get that memo, either, and I’ve included two of ’em. In poker parlance, I’m going ‘all in.’ No guts, no glory. But mostly I’ve just tried to write what I’m passionate about. In this case, a young woman’s coming-of-age / coming-out story set against the backdrop of WW2 and her work as a ferry pilot. Fictional protags, but lots of real historical details, events, and a few characters based on real people to heighten authenticity. I humbly invite you to again be the judges, and thank you in advance for your feedback.

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Horror
Premise (from writer): When an outlaw biker, and soon to be father, attempts to leave the sins of his old life behind, he is pushed by a vengeful Sheriff into the arms of an ancient cult of disease worshiping sadists.
Why You Should Read (from writer): The Devil’s Hammer recently won the Top Unproduced Screenplay Award at the Hollywood Horrorfest, Bloodlist Approved, a finalist in the Famous Monsters Film Fest. The Devil’s Hammer is a horror fan’s horror movie. It’s a throwback to the days of Craven, Barker, Raimi with the modern flair of Roth and Zombie. It preys on the primal fears of loss of control and disease. It’s visually gut wrenching, suspenseful and action packed.
Writer: Craig Walendziak
Details: 96 pages

The Devil’s Hammer got a lot of love from the Amateur Offerings Audience a couple of weeks ago. And the fact that the writer went to Harvard didn’t hurt. Those Ivy League credentials are enough to get someone to at least OPEN your screenplay. But that’s not the only thing noteworthy about today’s writer. Craig claims this is his first script! And while I haven’t read it yet (I will start as soon as this intro is over – I like to get kooky occasionally), I’m already impressed. You’ve got to have some pretty raw talent to get this many people excited over a first screenplay.

The best news is I’m in the perfect condition to read “Hammer.” It’s 3 in the morning, I just watched the first episode of Catfish, this is my fourth script read of the day, and I’m pretty sure when I asked for shrooms on my pizza, they didn’t include the kind you get at the grocery store. So I’m a little bit wired at the moment. On nights like this, scripts can turn into fried cheese balls with wings.  Time to fly away!

The Devil’s Hammer is not that original (even the writer concedes this). It starts with the traditional horror teaser, where a couple of characters (in this case, bikers) get in an accident out in the middle of nowhere, and are soon surrounded by a bunch of dudes in hooded robes. Unless someone is saying “the force is with you,” dudes in hooded robes are NEVER good. I repeat: NEVER take candy from dudes in hooded robes.

After that, we meet a big biker gang. They ride around a lot, doing a bunch of unsavory things. I haven’t seen Sons of Anarchy but I’m guessing these folks cover the same territory. Today, however, they’re just enjoying themselves, drinking some brews at the bar. The key players are Jimmy, who’s planning to leave the group for the straight life, Davie, a huge man who doesn’t think Jimmy should leave, “Wheels,” the young player of the group, “Blitz,” packed with energy, and Maggot, the long-standing vet.

As the men drown themselves in nature’s yeast, the Sheriff and his deputies show up. A little backstory here. The sheriff thinks this gang killed his brother (they didn’t, he’s the one taken by those hooded men in the opening scene, which he shouldn’t have done, because, say it with me, “You never take candy from men in hooded robes unless they can teach you the force.”). One thing leads to another, a huge gunfight ensues, and our core bikers make a run for it. With Maggot injured and bleeding out, they need to find help for him quickly. And where do they end up? An old mining town deep in the forest up in the mountains.

It’s not long before we learn the occupants of this town are those hooded jerkhead jedi impersonators. And that the reason they wear hoods is to hide their horribly diseased faces (which contain boils, tumors, warts, pox, lesions, you name it). So yeah, they’re not e-mailing headshots to the latest America’s Top Model cycle in their spare time.  Or if they are, they’re getting a very low response rate.

Before our gang realizes these diseased wackos are bad, most of them are tied up and helpless. Around this time, the sheriff infiltrates the town as well, but figures out quickly that once Merriwhether and his band of Black Plague pals get you here, you’re at a severe disadvantage.

From there, things naturally descend into chaos. In one scene, one of our men is tied up on a basement hospital gurney, thinking he’s about to be stabbed with a knife. But no. The diseased dude reaches up to his face and slits the knife through all his boils and tumors and lesions, collecting the drooling pus into a glass and inserting it in our biker’s wound, ensuring he’ll be diseased as well (I thought he was going to make him drink it actually – now THAT would’ve been a scene).

It then becomes a life or death situation where our guys have to not only get the hell out of here, but get out of here without getting infected. The chances of that happening are about as good as James Franco posting a fully-clothed selfie.

“Excuse me. We’re looking for a run down town of pus-filled rotting sadists.  Is that up past the Waffle House?”

The truest test of a script is, would you pass it along to someone else? Do you care about it enough to go out of your way and recommend it to others? Here’s the thing with The Devil’s Hammer. I’m not sure I would recommend this to others on the strength of the script. But I would recommend it to producers who want to make a good horror movie. I’m 90% sure somebody will option/buy this and that it will get made. It’s just a slam dunk from a marketing perspective. It’s familiar (a Chainsaw Massacre meets House of Wax setup) and it has something a little different going for it that’ll keep the kids squirming in their seats.

And it’s got some really memorable scenes as well. There’s a scene where two of our players are tied up in a room full of children who play a game of “jack-in-the-box” torture, winding the jack-in-the-box one rotation at a time. Whoever gets the jack out of the box gets to torture one of their captives, usually via something like pulling off their finger nails with a set of pliers (That’s a lot different from my game of jack-in-the-box, which consists of trying to figure out why the meat inside the 2 tacos for 99 cents is so soupy).

There’s the fucking grandma character, who absentmindedly plays a creepy endless tune on the piano. When we get close enough to her, though, we see that her body is covered in huge tumors. The one on the left side of her face is so big, it weighs her head down in that direction. She doesn’t even have eyes because the tumors have pushed them closed.

And the church. Wow. I’m not going to spoil it here, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been as horrified by an image on paper as what’s in that church. That’s going to leave a lasting memory for all who witness it.

But what about the STORY! Well, it’s not bad, but it’s not as good as it could be. The thing with this kind of movie is, the script doesn’t have to be perfect. I hate saying that, but as long as you’re inventive with the terrifying world you’ve set up – which Craig is – that’s what matters most. It’s not the same kind of horror as, say, The Ring, which requires clever pacing, solid twists and turns, and well-drawn characters. This is more shock-horror.

I definitely think Craig could do more with his characters though. There’s nothing really going on with any of them. And the ones where there is something going on, it’s not clear what that “on” is. Like Jimmy and Davie. Davie was really mad at Jimmy, but I couldn’t figure out why. It was either because Jimmy was leaving the group or because of something Jimmy did in the past.

Also, I didn’t understand what this biker gang did. Were they a band of criminals, or just really rowdy bikers?

Then there was the Sheriff’s pursuit of them. The Sheriff is informed by the bartender that the bikers are at the bar, which seems to imply that this is the only chance the Sheriff will have of catching them. Except this is the year 2014. All you need is Google to find out where people live. How come he has to wait for them to come together at a bar before he can find them?

Then there’s his plan. The best thing he can think of to catch a band of armed bikers is wait for them to get into a bar, barge in, start a shootout, and hope he’s able to kill them all? That not only seems illegal, but really dumb.

Then, once our bikers get to the town, something was off. It took me awhile to figure out what it was, but I eventually realized I wasn’t scared for our characters. And the reason I wasn’t scared was because they were all so capable. These were tough bikers with guns. They were used to handling themselves.

That’s why horror movies usually center around physically weak protagonists. Young women. Mothers. Mothers and their children. Teenagers. These are people who are up against a stronger enemy, which is why you’re afraid for them. With bikers, even when they were caught, I figured they’d get out of it. They were all just too strong.

With that said, I’m not sure I’d switch the bikers out for weaker protagonists. The biker angle is part of what makes this unique. But maybe try to be more convincing on how these weak diseased dudes are able to so casually defeat the bikers. Maybe they’re smarter than the bikers. They use their intelligence and home field to trick them. But if it comes down to blunt strength, come on. The bikers are going to win every time.

Finally, there isn’t a clear-cut hero here. Not that that’s a requirement, but it sort of is. We need to know who’s leading the charge. At first I thought it was Jimmy, since we start with him, but Jimmy’s actually pretty boring. It’s Davie who actually gets the most screen time. If I were Craig, I’d look to make Jimmy the clear-cut hero and give him the depth that a clear-cut hero needs in a story. Leaving a pregnant girlfriend at the beginning of the script isn’t enough. He needs a flaw, something he’s fighting on the inside. Maybe it’s his fear to commit to this woman. He’s struggling with whether he wants to settle down or not (instead of it being a foregone conclusion). I don’t know. Maybe some of the commenters can give you ideas. But if you’re going to play with the big boys, you gotta learn to create depth in your characters.

With all that said, I think there’s more good here than bad. And I think the good things are so good, that they make you forget about a lot of the mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like for those mistakes to be fixed as well. But The Devil’s Hammer delivers what its customers want. And if you have that, you have a script that can sell.

Script link: The Devil’s Hammer (latest draft)

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

What I learned: Every scene here was a fresh variation on scenes I’ve seen before. Where genre writers get it wrong is they write COPIES of their favorite scenes. Don’t copy. Start from the same place, but then challenge yourself and look for ways to make the scene yours. I’ve seen basement hospital scenes before. I haven’t seen one where a guy cuts his sores and lets the pus drip into a glass and then pour it into our character’s wounds. I’ve seen the creepy woman playing the piano from behind before. I haven’t seen it where the woman has tumors the size of basketballs all over her body. I’ve seen freaky kids scenes before. I haven’t seen one where pus-filled diseased looking kids play a jack-in-the-box torture giggle game. It’s when I see these variations on scenes that I know the writer is above and beyond the typical amateur.

What I learned 2: You probably shouldn’t tell somebody this is your first script (or 2nd, or 3rd). They’ll be looking for first-time mistakes throughout, and rarely give you the benefit of the doubt. Trust me, you want as much benefit of the doubt as you can get in a read.

Fried cheese balls.

Jason Statham fully endorses #3

It’s one of the questions that never goes away for a writer. What should you write next? Write what you know? Write what you want? Write what’s going to make money? I don’t think there’s any one right answer. I’ve seen writers break in with a script they’re passionate about (Allan Loeb: “Things We Lost In The Fire”) and writers break in with a script that was purely market-driven. Ideally, the stuff you want to write would match up with the stuff that Hollywood wants to make, but it never quite works out that way, does it?

Then again, maybe you haven’t explored all your options yet. Maybe you need to see all those options to make an informed decision. That’s what inspired today’s post. I thought it’d be fun to show you the top ten types of movies Hollywood likes to make. These are the movies that keep popping up, year after year, and have been making the film industry moolah for decades. If you’re not writing within one of these genres, you’re not necessarily screwed, but you certainly aren’t making things easy on yourself.

A couple of caveats to this list. I don’t want to include anything that’s impossible for the average amateur screenwriter to write. So I’m not going to include comic book movies, high profile intellectual properties (Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games), or animated films. I’m also not including sub-genres that pop up every five years or so, stuff like submarine flicks, the body-switching movie, the inspirational-teacher movie, or the stoner-comedy. The whole point of this list is to show the TOP films that Hollywood likes to make year in and year out. Let’s take a look, shall we?

1) The buddy cop comedy – This sub-genre doesn’t need much of an explanation. Basically, pair two people up who have a job to do, make sure there’s a lot of conflict between them, and make sure it’s damn funny. This year it was Ride Along. Last year it was The Heat. Before that 21 Jump Street. The Other Guys. Going back in history, we had Rush Hour, 48 Hours, and Lethal Weapon.

2) The weepy romance – Destined to drive men everywhere mad, the weepy romance flick is primed for the young female audience to drag their boyfriends to. It’s recently been dominated by the Nicholas Sparks craze, but it’s been around much longer than that. I guess not surprisingly, these movies almost always have someone dying in them. The Fault In Our Stars, Love Story, Harold and Maude, The Notebook, The Last Song, The Lake House. Strange how soft and soothing all those titles sound. These films don’t do Transformers numbers, but they bring in the lady money.

3) The straight action thriller – These are usually very simple stories following a bad ass protagonist as he/she kicks a lot of ass in pursuit of a clear goal. Die Hard, Brick Mansions, Jack Reacher, Salt, James Bond, Wanted, Crank, Rambo. Liam Neeson has made this genre his bitch in recent years, but it’s been around long before him and will continue to be around long after.

4) The big action movie where shit gets destroyed – It could be aliens, monsters, zombies, whatever. Give us a movie big in scope where lots of shit gets effed up. World War Z, Independence Day, Godzilla, Pacific Rim, Cloverfield, War of the Worlds, The Day After Tomorrow, Battle L.A. Hey, where else can anyone destroy entire cities with just their MacBook. This is one of the coolest things about being a writer!

5) The safe female-driven comedy – This is an area where Hollywood has changed. This slot used to go to the classic romantic comedy, stuff like The Wedding Planner or Notting Hill. Now, these stories tend to be broader in scope with multiple characters. For the most part, the female audience who go to these movies want to watch female characters going through the same things they are, and laugh about it. The Other Woman, Sex and the City, Eat Pray Love, Julie and Julia, He’s Just Not That Into You, Mamma Mia. If you’re a man writing these movies, God help you with authenticity.

6) The classic high concept comedy – This genre is never going away. If you can come up with a clever big idea for a comedy, you can strike gold in the spec market and at the box office. High concept comedies are one of the few genres that can break through that stodgy box office top 10 full of sequels, cartoons, and comic books. The Hangover, We’re The Millers, Identify Thief, Night at the Museum, Tropic Thunder.

7) The action-adventure – Although increasingly difficult to break into this IP dominated field, if you can write a good one (which, by the way, usually requires its characters to wield swords, wear sandals, or both), you can start yacht shopping, because these don’t just make a lot of money HERE. They make a lot of money EVERYWHERE, as in all over the world. Pirates of the Caribbean, Braveheart, 300, Troy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Immortals.

8) The big family comedy – One of the few huge genres you don’t need intellectual property for. These movies are usually divided into two categories – the literal family adventure, and the unique concept targeted at families. In the first category you have stuff like Cheaper by the Dozen, Parental Guidance, Blended and RV. And on the other end, stuff like The Tooth Fairy, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Home Alone.

9) The straight horror film – This is a tricky one. Hollywood loves these films cause they cost so little to make and have such a big upside, but they’re more of a crapshoot than they look. Maybe you get the next Paranormal Activity. But there’s a much better chance you’ll get Would You Rather. Your best bet is to focus on a unique concept that you haven’t seen before, then write in the most complex characters you can. No character development in a horror script almost always leads to direct-to-Itunes. The Conjuring, The Sixth Sense, Oculus, Saw, The Exorcist, The Shining.

10) The serious subject matter vanity project – These are usually centered around the most complex characters of the year. So don’t even attempt to write one if the main character isn’t fascinating in some way. Also, they’re almost always based on real people, so you’ll typically have to snatch up the rights to someone in book or article form. Not as impossible as you might think. Sure, you’re not going to get the big players, like Johnny Cash, but there are plenty of people in this world who have lived captivating lives that haven’t had movies made about them yet. Other than that, this sub-genre is exactly what it sounds like. Write us a story centered around a very compelling individual that has the potential to win an actor an Oscar. The Wolf of Wall Street, The Aviator, Lincoln, Seven Pounds, Ray, A Beautiful Mind.

So why are these movies so popular? Well, outside of the obvious, that audiences enjoy them, these are the movies Hollywood knows how to market best. They know exactly how to draw up the posters, how to cut the trailers, how to snip together a TV spot. That makes them low-risk, and since Hollywood is risk-averse, that’s a match made in heaven. But it doesn’t mean if you’re not writing one of these that you’re screwed. Plenty of popular films don’t fall into these categories. Life of Pi, The Descendants, Argo, Magic Mike, Gravity, American Beauty, Slumdog Millionaire.

The difference is, because Hollywood knows these movies are going to be tougher to market, they’re less inclined to pick them up or produce them. Which simply means the journey to get your script purchased or made will be harder. As long as you know that and are okay with it, by all means take that chance (although you should be taking less chances the older you get).  I believe your best shot at success is to look through the ten film types I’ve listed above, figure out which one you like best (the kind of film you actually go out and pay for) and see if you can’t write something in that mold. Not a copy. But a fresh angle that gives the genre a kick in the butt. That way you get the best of both worlds. You get to sell your script to Hollywood and you get to push the envelope some. I’ll be right here on the other side waiting to see what you come up with. ☺

Genre: Non-Fiction Book
Premise: A group of Wall Street underdogs begin to realize that the current computer-driven stock market is rigged, and decide to do something to change it.
About: Everyone in town takes notice when Scott Rudin options something, because Scott Rudin wins Oscars. He’s the guy who headed up The Social Network, after all. So when he snatched up Michael Lewis’s best-selling non-fiction book, Flash Boys, the book immediately hit everyone’s radar. You probably know Lewis best for writing the book Moneyball, which, of course, eventually became the movie starring Brad Pitt. You can find Flash Boys here (and as long as you’re over at Amazon, you should pick up my book too. It’s only $4.99!).
Writer: Michael Lewis
Details: 289 pages (published March 31, 2014)

We’re going to do something a little different today. Once that glorious moment comes when you break into Hollywood (through a spec sale or just by writing a great script), your ability to stay in the club will depend on your ability to land assignments. You’ll have to read books like Flash Boys, then come in and pitch your take to producers.

You’ll be up against lots of other writers, so your pitch is going to have to be good. And when I say, “pitch,” I don’t mean your showmanship ability. That’s important, of course. But what’s more important is your take. How do you plan to tell the story?

Because the reality is, a lot of things you’ll need to pitch won’t be obvious stories. They won’t have that perfect narrative spine of a main character going after something and encountering obstacles along the way. In those cases, you’ll need to find a spine. Or decide if you even want a spine. Maybe you want to try something different? The Social Network, the way it bounced back and forth between the deposition and genesis of Facebook, wasn’t a straight-forward treatment of a story at all.

Take Flash Boys. While the characters eventually do come up with a goal, it isn’t until much later. At first, this book is all about numbers and equations and stocks and how stock exchanges work and individual stories of how this rag-tag team of men came together to fight the power. Then, it’s almost like Lewis realized, “Oh yeah, I have to bring this all together,” and came up with something for the group to do.

Flash Boys actually starts with the most fascinating story in the book. A man is secretly building a fiber optic line between Chicago and New Jersey (where the major stock exchanges in the country are located). But this isn’t any ordinary line. He needs it to be straight. Like perfectly straight.

You see, in recent years, trading stocks has become a game of speed. How much speed? The kind of speed where if you can gain at least 1 millisecond over your competitor, it could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. How is that even possible? That’s what much of the book is about.

But anyway, what this guy realized, was that the current fiber optic line that travels between New Jersey and Chicago zig-zagged all over the place. He hypothesized, that if he could build a straight line, he could save stock traders up to 7 milliseconds of time, which would allow them a huge advantage over their competition.

So his plan was to build this secret line, then go to all the biggest banks and mutual funds and traders, and basically hold them hostage. He’d tell them that if they didn’t get on this line, their competition was going to smash them. Everyone would have to join, and he’d be able to set the price. What would that price be? 10 million each. And guess what? They all signed up.

If there’s a hero in this story, it’s probably Brad Katsuyama. Brad worked for the biggest bank in all of Canada, but when his bank opened a branch in New York, which he’d eventually move to, he realized that nobody gave a shit. On Wall Street, the biggest bank in Canada was the equivalent of a hot dog stand outside of Mcdonalds.

Brad’s new branch meant the company needed a new trading operating system, one that could compete with the heavy hitters on Wall Street. But while Brad expected this new system to make his work easier, it actually did anything but.

Brad realized that whenever he made a trade on this new system, everything in the market would immediately change. Prices in that stock would shoot up or shoot down instantaneously, making it impossible to track the market on any sort of consistent level. In short, every time Brad would make a trade, chaos would ensue.

And he learned he wasn’t alone. When he’d go to other companies, he found that the same thing was happening to them. The crazy thing was, nobody knew why it was happening. Everyone just assumed that because technology was increasing at such a rapid rate, chaos was the collateral damage.

But Brad wasn’t so sure. He thought something fishy was going on. So he went to all the guys at all the top banks and all the top firms, asking them what they thought was going on. But nobody had a clue. What confused Brad is that nobody was that concerned about it either. Something nefarious was clearly going on inside the biggest financial machine in the world, and everyone either didn’t care or didn’t want to spend the time trying to figure it out.

Finally, Brad figured it out. The problem was High Frequency Traders. Now the book gets REALLY specific about what these guys do, which is super complicated, but I’ll try to simplify. Basically, these lone shark dudes figured out a way to see when one of these huge banks or companies was making a trade, then would zip in and buy or sell in order to profit off of it. They could make millions a day doing this. And every time they took that money, it meant the banks and hedge funds were losing it. And whose money do the banks and hedge funds use? YOUR money. So these guys were stealing from YOU.

How did they do it? SPEED. A bank may buy tens of thousands of shares of stock in one go. That takes time. And by time I mean seconds. But if a high frequency trader (HFT) has access to one of those connections that can make a trade in 7 milliseconds, they can buy and sell stocks before your order has even finished going through.

This is why speed became such an important commodity on Wall Street. Whoever had the fastest connection, even if it was by just .1 millisecond, they could undercut you. So HFT were willing to pay millions for those milliseconds.

Awhile back, you’d hear stories about how traders would have their routers set up in the building right next to the Exchange that made all the trades. This allowed them to make their trades the fastest. Savvy entrepreneurs figured this out, would buy up these adjacent buildings and sell router space INSIDE the rooms in the buildings.

But even that wasn’t enough after awhile. Traders would start paying money to get preferred placement INSIDE the room. They wanted their routers to be right next to the wall, so they were closest to the trading building across the street. Even if it was just .1 microseconds of an advantage, it was an advantage.

The book covers how Brad figured all this out, along with his campaign for trying to explain to Wall Street how badly they were getting screwed. Nobody believed him though because nobody on Wall Street gives you information for free. They erroneously figured he must be trying to scam them. Nobody just tells you how to save money. They use that information to MAKE money. They didn’t realize that Brad was just Canadian.

After his knowledge campaign failed, Brad decided to do something unprecedented. He recruited a bunch of underdogs that Wall Street had spit out, and decided to create a new stock exchange. This exchange would have a built-in algorithm that would make it impossible for high frequency traders to game the system. Everybody who traded through his exchange would be on equal footing.

Of course, creating your own stock exchange was nuts to say the least. Up until a few years ago, there were only a couple (the NYSE and the Nasdaq). Some deregulation practice to increase competition came about after the 2008 finanical meltdown. But getting folks to trade on a new exchange was a whole other animal. Would Brad and his buddies be able to do it? That would become the ultimate question.

John Cho for Brad?

Flash Boys is a fascinating book that both flies and stumbles in equal parts. When it’s telling stories about people trying crazy never-before-attempted schemes like creating your own stock exchange or secretly building a straight fiber optic line from New Jersey to Chicago (physically blowing up mountains in the process), it’s at its best.

But when it gets into the specifics of how high frequency traders are undercutting the bigger guys, the information is overwhelming. You have to understand how stocks are traded, the unique kind of orders traders can use (which there are a lot of), how “baiting” works, how using different stock exchanges affects a trade, how orders are put through (some all at once, some in bunches), mutual funds, dark pools. Flash Boys spends a lot of time on that. And at a certain point, it’s impossible to keep up.

Still, I found it fascinating. For example, you might wonder why the SEC hasn’t stopped this. It’s because THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND IT. The top people at all the banks don’t even understand what’s going on. These are people who grew up in a pre-computer-stock-driven world. They don’t understand how a bunch of smart tech geeks could sneak in and take advantage of their system (many of them from Russia, surprisingly).

The question is, how do you adapt this into a movie? There’s a lot of information in this book so there’s a lot of different ways to go. When you adapt something, you’re first looking for the best angle to tell the story from, and from there, you’re looking at all the potential challenges that direction poses and how you’ll address them.

So for example, the most obvious angle to tell the story from is to follow five Wall Street misfits as they try to create their own stock exchange. The question is, where do you start? Do you start with them already together? That allows us to jump right into the story. Or do you start earlier and focus on these guys as they meet each other one by one? Because in the book, Brad’s the one who figures all this out before he hires anyone. And the audience needs that information to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing in the first place. So do you cheat, start with everyone together, and have them learn all this stuff together (instead of Brad doing it alone?) or do you follow Brad first, even though that means it’ll take awhile for the story to get going?

Or do you come in with a weirder more ambitious take? Maybe you pull a Lost-style setup mixed with a little Scorsese. Start with these guys already together, have one of the characters be a narrator, then as they pursue their goal of a stock exchange, one by one jump back in time and tell the origin story of each player. Because each guy’s backstory in the book is pretty interesting (one guy realized he wanted to do this after going to work one day only to watch the two towers fall right before going inside).

Whichever way you choose, you’re going to have challenges. For example, Lewis portrays all these guys as underdog Robin Hoods. Their “thing” is that they could profit off this, but instead try to educate others on it. When nobody listens, they build a stock exchange to save them.

That’s very noble and all, but it seems to me that if you build a successful stock exchange, you’re going to make a lot of money. I mean, these guys aren’t donating all their profits to charity, are they? Lewis conveniently downplays this aspect, but it’s something you’d have to consider when adapting the script.  You can’t portray people as Robin Hoods if the end goal is to make a ton of cash.  And if that – the most obvious direction for the script – can’t be executed, then what’s the end goal going to be?  There’s no obvious substitution, yet there is no script unless you find the answer.

And then there’s all that information you have to convey to the audience. Talking about numbers and teaching people how stocks are traded, for the most part, is boring. Yet it’s essential to understand what Brad’s getting so upset about and what he’s trying to do to change it. A smart producer may even ask you that in your meeting. “How do you plan to convey all this information to the audience in an entertaining way?” And you better have an answer ready.

In the end, this is a really good book. Whether it becomes a really good movie is still up in the air. That could be up to you. In fact, maybe Mr. Rudin is watching right now (I know he’s been to the site). Pitch your best take on how you’d adapt the book. Most upvotes wins!

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

What I learned: When it comes to adapting a book, you very well might pick only a small portion of the book to base the script on. It could total only ¼ of the story. The story that opens Flash Boys, for example, could make a great movie in itself (a guy risks everything by building a high speed fiber optic line between Chicago and New Jersey with no idea if anyone will actually buy into it when he’s finished). All you care about when adapting something is finding the best story within those pages and bringing it to life. What makes a book good often isn’t the same thing that makes a movie good.