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Genre (from writer): WW2 Romantic Drama, Coming-of-Age, LGBT
Premise (from writer): 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 (from writer): 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.
Writer: Angela L. Neale
Details: 130 pages

This one garnered a TON of commentary in Amateur Offerings, mainly due to Angela’s willingness to thank everyone for reading her script and engage in discussion.  Having said that, Angela was slightly defensive at times. Some responses like, “I can’t do that because…” Or “That’s not possible.” With a script, anything is possible. You’re God. You can change anything and everything you want. For example, Angela mentioned that she couldn’t add anything else because her script was already 131 pages and that would make it even longer.

I’ve seen writers say this kind of thing a lot. You can add anything. You just have to get rid of some stuff as well. Getting feedback on what’s clicking and what isn’t allows you to make those cuts. Sure, you may think that Count Harold’s subplot is an essential component to conveying your theme, but if it only casually intersects with the main plot, it might be time to jettison it. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s see what’s causing all the discussion.

The Cloud Factory introduces us to 18 year old World War 2 pilot Jenny Morgan, or “Bubbler” as she’s known to her friends (a “bubbler” is what they call water fountains in Wisconsin. I remember being told this as a child and I’m still baffled by the term).

Once in Europe, Jenny ends up piloting a bad plane that crashes after take-off, barely surviving the ordeal. She’s sped over to the nearest hospital, where she befriends a cute nurse, 25 year old Allison. Allison is a lesbian but does NOT get involved with patients and is NOT into the whole teenage thing. 18 is way too young for her.

Uh-huh, riiiii-ght Allison.

Jenny is just now coming into her sexuality. She hasn’t had a boyfriend or girlfriend or anything yet. All she knows is that she’s attracted to Allison more and more every day. Pretty soon, the two find themselves sharing lingering looks and touches, skating that line between professional and personal, until Allison can’t handle it anymore.

Once she graduates from patient to civilian, Allison is all about The Jenny, and the two hang out non-stop. In the meantime, Jenny is being questioned about her involvement in that plane crash, with the implication being that she’s in some serious doo-doo if it was her fault.

The rest of the script is pretty straight forward. Jenny and Allison hang out a lot, talk about life a lot, and become closer. That’s essentially “The Cloud Factory” in a nutshell.

The Cloud Factory is one of those scripts you read and you just sort of nod your head every once in awhile, mumbling things like, “Not bad,” but never feel all that close to what’s going on. This is confusing for the writer, who believes that by writing such a personal character piece and not some wham-bam effects heavy blockbuster, that emotion is ALL the reader should be feeling.

What they don’t realize is that people talking and developing a relationship is a pretty generic thing to watch. To keep a reader engaged, the script needs structure and it needs drama. These are two things The Cloud Factory is lacking.

Let’s start with the lack of drama, which, to keep things simple, means a lack of conflict. There is some conflict in the script, in that Allison and Jenny aren’t sure if the other likes them. But it’s so light to the point of it not even existing. We know, since we’ve seen both of them confide in friends, that they like each other. So there’s no doubt in our minds that they’re going to get together. That eliminates a ton of potential suspense.

It also leaves the exterior world responsible for injecting all the conflict into the story. Unfortunately, there isn’t any exterior conflict. Besides a pesky close-minded nurse, there’s no reason why these two can’t be together. At least none that was clear. Being a lesbian in the army wasn’t exactly given a huge endorsement, but according to other characters, it wasn’t a career-ender either. And while the hospital seemed to look down upon worker-patient relationships, you didn’t get the sense that anything terrible would happen if one occurred.

In any script, you have to establish stakes. If you want to convey that two people will have a tough time being together, you have to make clear that if they’re caught, they’ll have hell to pay. Look no further than the greatest love story of all time, Romeo and Juliet, to see how that works. People’s LIVES are at stake. Their families’ lives as well. Here, it just seemed like if Allison and Jenny got caught, someone was going to get a slap on the wrist and a dirty look.

But that isn’t the biggest problem with The Cloud Factory. The biggest problem is the lack of structure. Once we get into that hospital, the script just sprawls on endlessly into a mostly mundane “we’ve seen it all before” relationship.

If your entire focus of a script is a love story, it’s gotta be one hell of a love story. Two people talking about life and how difficult being a lesbian is for 115 pages in a hospital isn’t enough. I mean look at The Fault In Our Stars. There was so much AT STAKE in that movie. This might be this girl’s last chance to do anything exciting again ever. She wants to find out what happened after her favorite book ended. And this is going to be her ONLY shot. This is it! The drama is heightened. We want so much for her doctors to let her go and find out the truth. That’s drama!

So what I’m going to do here is pitch the Hollywood-Friendly version of this story. Angela can ignore it, but if you want to make this more mainstream and more studio-friendly, this is the route to go.

In this new version, Jenny’s plane crashes, but she’s not injured as badly. She’s hurt just enough for, maybe, a week of hospital stay. This is where she meets Allison, just like now, and the two start up a friendship, which leads to a relationship.

One of the reasons the current draft is kinda rambly is because there’s no focused time frame. There’s no finish line for the reader to look forward to. So I say, the army informs Jenny that she’ll be shipped out in two weeks. Make it clear that after this happens, Jenny will never be back here. This is the only time she will ever be in this town. This way, the stakes are high. Their relationship will only last until she has to leave.

The two then spend the second week in the city together (after that first week of recovery and getting to know each other), fall in love, both ignoring the reality that this affair is temporary. The more they fall in love, the more devastated we’ll be that that that love is coming to a close. Sort of an elongated version of Before Sunrise.

From there, I would create more exterior conflict wherever possible. Your job is to make us doubt that this relationship is going to work out in as many ways as possible. For example, maybe Allison is more torn between this life of being a lesbian and taking the “easier” traditional route. An old boyfriend comes back into town (in the second half of the script). He’s rich. He’s well-liked. Marrying him will result in that easy perfect life, whereas being a lesbian means fighting a battle every day that she doesn’t know if she can fight. Show her battling with that as the deadline approaches.

I would also put them a lot closer to the war, possibly in a city that’s in constant danger. I don’t like ideas where the most unique or biggest parts of the idea aren’t explored in the script. This is a script about women flying fighter planes during World War 2. Except for 90% of the story, we’re not flying in fighter planes and we’re nowhere near World War 2. By putting them in a place that’s more affected by the war, that danger could impede upon their relationship in interesting ways.

As far as integrating the pilot stuff more, maybe Jenny learns at some point that they need extra fighters for a big mission and they’re considering bringing in female pilots. This is her DREAM. And it’s finally coming true. So as the end of the two weeks nears, she’ll get the call. They want her for the mission. And now she has to make a choice – go out there and live her dream or stay with this woman she’s fallen in love with. That gives the script that bigger focused ‘climax’ it’s desperately in need of.

I’m not saying you MUST do this or the script has no chance. You can go with the slower artsier less plot-point-y type of screenplay, but I contend that every story needs drama, big or small, and right now The Cloud Factory is too low-key. It needs a few shots of adrenaline.

I hope that helps Angela, if not in this script, then in the next script she tackles. Her writing is strong. But storytelling is where it’s at. That’s what you have to master.

Script link: The Cloud Factory

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

What I learned: In every story, your job is to make us doubt that it’s going to work out for your protagonist in as many ways as possible.

 

We’re going to do something a little different in today’s article. We’re going to talk about the actual PRESENTATION of a screenplay. The way it’s written, the way it looks to a reader on the page. While not as important as story, the choices in how one presents his work can have a big influence on how the reader interprets it. The theme you’ll find here is that while some approaches are preferable to others, every writing choice you make should be made for one reason: it’s the best way to tell the story at that particular moment. With that said, here are some common issues I run into when I read scripts.

CLIPPED WRITING

Clipped writing is something I see a fair amount of.  The idea behind this is that traditional writing is too long-winded for screenplays, which require a more “to the point” approach.   The problem is, some people have taken this so far that it’s unclear what’s being said.  After awhile, the reader starts to feel like they’re reading an illiterate robot.  For that reason, this style probably shouldn’t be used outside of special situations.  Maybe, for example, a character wakes up at the beginning of the script and is confused. So the confused stutter-pattern of clipped writing helps convey the character’s confusion.  There are also times when it works in action sequences.  But for the most part, try to write full sentences.

BOLDED SLUGS (or BOLDED UNDERLINED SLUGS)

Bolded slugs (or bolded underline slugs) have become in fashion lately.  And to a certain extent, they make sense, as they visually signify a new location or scene, which can be helpful to the reader.  Where bolded slugs get annoying is when there are a lot of short scenes or the writer is a slug-lover, so that four times a page, we’re stuck staring at big chunky ugly disruptive lines of text.  My suggestion would be this.  If you write a lot of long scenes, like, say, Tarantino, you can use bolded slugs.  But if you’re constantly jumping from one place to the next, step away from the bold.  It’ll shift the reader’s attention away from what really matters, which is the action and the dialogue.

THE ‘GET INSIDE THE CHARACTER’S HEAD’ ACTION LINE

Using your description to tell us what a character is thinking is considered shoddy writing.  However, I do see it quite a bit (there was a decent amount of it in “The Fault In Our Stars.”).  Where it becomes problematic is when a writer gets carried away with it and starts using it for things we already know.  As you can see above, we can tell from the dialogue that Miss Scriptshadow doesn’t want to see X-Men, so using description to tell the reader afterwards feels like overkill.  If you want to make sure the reader gets the point, there are other options, like using an action.  So you might cut to Miss Scriptshadow’s computer, see that she’s looking at a trailer for “The Other Woman,” longingly, then click it closed with a sigh.  I’m telling you: Only use this device sparingly.  It can get annoying quickly.

LOVE OF ADVERBS

Forget the dialogue here.  Look at the action text.  Carson “walks aggressively.”  He “angrily opens it.”  Adverbs make your writing look weak and indecisive.  Instead, try to find a verb that says the same thing.  You’ll notice that your sentence all of a sudden looks manly and strong!  “Carson barges towards the fridge.”  “He whips it open.”  Just make sure that you have the right verb for the action.  Don’t put in a verb that doesn’t fit just to avoid the adverb. In other words, don’t say Carson “dances over to the fridge” just because I said you had to verb it.

SIMPLIFY YOUR WRITING WHENEVER POSSIBLE

Readers don’t want to have to work for basic information.  Screenwriting should be simple and to the point (most novelists will actually tell you the same thing).  The above is a really clunky sentence, the kind a man could get lost in and never come back.  If I had to read a whole script of that, I’d swallow a box of brads and die by internal bleeding first.  To simplify this, focus on two things.  First, figure out how to turn useless segments into actions, then figure out what’s redundant or isn’t needed.  For example, there’s no need to say “wound up,” since we already know he’s wound up and it interrupts the flow of the sentence anyway.  So we’ll drop that.  “Clicking and clacking” does add some sound to the scene, but I’m not sure it’s necessary.  “Disastrously fighting this war-like mess with an ever-deepening desperation” is redundant.  If we really want to convey Carson’s anger, we can add an action, like him shouting in frustration at the end.  So the new simpler text would look like this:

I’m not saying you should NEVER offer detail in your writing.  You just only do it when it’s important.  Like if a detective walks into a crime scene where very specific things will be important to know later on – then go for it – describe away.  But a guy looking for munchables?  We don’t need to get into any detail with that, unless you’ve got some amazing jokes you can weave into his search (even then, it’s probably not worth it – simplicity should usually win out).

SUBSEQUENT ACTION LINES (NO SPACES IN BETWEEN)

While I can’t speak for everybody, this practice drives me CRAAAA-ZY.  I don’t know who came up with it, but the sooner it goes away, the better.  First of all, you want to be weary of any writing device that goes against what readers are used to unless you’re positive it makes the script better.  The above looks so odd to a reader, they’ll probably stop for a second and wonder if it’s a formatting error before moving on.  I’m not even sure of this device’s intention.  I just know that it looks and feels odd.

THE BEAT SHOULD NOT GO ON

There was a time and place for “beat” when the screenplay was a technical blueprint.  But these days, it’s more about making the screenplay readable.  Anything that breaks the suspension of disbelief is our enemy.  So when you say “beat,” what does that mean?  It means fake-ish artificial term that has no organic reason to be in your story.  Whenever you can, replace “beat” with something more natural so as not to draw attention to its technical-ness.  For example, I’d probably write this instead…

THE DREADED ‘WALL OF TEXT’

Okay, this above scene is kind of funny, but that’s not what we’re looking at.  When a reader turns the page, they immediately see a general snapshot of said page.  The last thing they want to see during this moment is a “WALL OF TEXT.” At least three paragraphs with five lines or more.  At least one character who talks forever (or two characters who exchange 6-7 line chunks of dialogue each time they speak).  There’s no doubt that there will be times in your script where you’ll need to write a lot.  Characters do occasionally have monologues (even those should be rare though).

But if there are a lot of pages that look like this?  With big huge paragraphs and character exchanges where both characters are taking forever to say shit?  The reader has given up on you.  The correct way to write is to rarely go over 3 lines per paragraph, and your characters shouldn’t exchange more than 2-3 lines at a time (this will differ depending on character and scene, but it’s an average to keep in mind).  Also, it should be noted that the WORST place this can happen is on your first page.  I see a LOT of amateur writers open with that wall of text and I just know the script is going to be bad. :(

IN SUMMARY
A good reader – and I’m talking about the reader who you’ll eventually have to get past to sell your script – takes his reading job just as seriously as you take your writing job.  So he’s going to have his set of reading quirks, things he can’t stand.  The last thing you want is to trigger any of those annoyances, because then the reader is judging you on something other than what they should be – the story.  Like that wall of text.  Again, when I see that, I know it’s over.  I know it’s over right away.  Sure, there are like 2 exceptions in the last 10 years of scripts overcoming this, but for the most part, readers know it’s a disaster.  Just remember that your job is to make things as easy as humanly possible for the reader.  You want their read to be effortless.  So don’t do anything weird or annoying unless you’re absolutely sure it makes the reading experience and your story better.

What about you guys?  What are some things that drive you nuts when you read?

 

Genre: Romance/Drama
Premise: (from IMDB) A cancer-stricken teenager falls in love with a young man who inspires her to seek answers about a mystery she’s been dying to figure out.
About: You gotta give it to Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber. These guys have found their niche, and they’re pretty darn good at it. That’s really all you can ask for as a professional screenwriter, to be the ‘go-to’ guys in a particular genre. Starting with 500 Days of Summer, about the realities of relationships, they moved to The Spectacular Now, which was about alcoholism, then this, which is about cancer, and next will be a another high school movie, about suicide. Young demo fare that has a little extra kick to it. And “Stars” looks like it’s going to be their biggest hit to date. As I noted in my newsletter, the book the script is based on has over 15,000 reviews on Amazon. The Holy Bible has 11,000 reviews. Hallelujah, John Green.
Writers: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (based on the novel by John Green)
Details: 115 pages (second draft – June 11, 2012)

How this freaking screenplay got me, I have no idea. I went into this fully expecting to hate it. Cancer never works in movie form. It just doesn’t. It’s too depressing. I think that’s why it took people so long to jump on the Breaking Bad bandwagon. They had to hear from at least 5 people that it was an awesome show before they finally, begrudgingly said, “Okay! I’ll watch your freaking cancer show!”

The number of cancer scripts that are written despite this is staggeringly high. People like to write about cancer! There were like 8 Black List scripts covering the C word last year. I think it’s because writers assume their script is “deep” if it’s about cancer. Their script is going to be taken seriously because it’s, like, tackling serious stuff ‘n shit.

This always backfires though. That’s because cancer is, almost by definition, melodramatic. And nearly every one of these movies hits a tired formula: A guy hates his life, meets a cancer chick. She shows him how to live every day to its fullest. Then the cancer hits her hard. Man Cry. Then she dies. But it’s okay because he’s learned something from her. Ahhh! Kill me now (no pun intended). That’s what I thought I was up for here.

But damn you, novelist John Green. You got me. You got me good.

16 year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster has had cancer since she was 13. Luckily, one of the 1 in a million experimental drugs worked on her and is currently keeping her cancer at bay. The problem is, the cancer has decimated her lungs and she requires oxygen tanks wherever she goes or else she faints.

Hazel has a pretty good attitude about the whole thing, but it isn’t until she meets Augustus that she realizes how much better it can be. Augustus comes to a cancer support group to support his buddy Isaac, and that’s where he sees Hazel and instantly falls in love with her.

Augustus is no stranger to this ugly disease though. He once had cancer himself and they ended up having to chop his leg off in the process. Now if you’re anything like me, you’re looking at this and going, “Who the f*ck doesn’t have cancer in this story? Does the dog have cancer?  Does the goldfish have cancer?” Guys, I don’t know how they did it. But despite all the coincidences, they somehow make all of this feel natural. And while it was never specifically stated that the goldfish didn’t have cancer, I’m pretty sure he’s cancer-free.

After getting to know each other, Hazel and Gus get onto the topic of their favorite books. Whereas Augustus, being a 17 year old guy, loves the adapted novella of his favorite video game, Hazel likes some obscure book about a girl dying with cancer. Augustus rolls his eyes at this. Really?? But she insists it’s good. And when he reads it, he agrees, except for the ending, which ends in mid-sentence! Since it’s from the point of view of the girl, it ends when her life ends.

He’s furious and desperate to know what happened to all the other characters. She says it’s pointless. She’s written to the author numerous times but he lives in Amsterdam and is a recluse. Augustus is one determined dude though, and somehow gets through to the guy. When the author invites them to his home, Hazel is floating on air. She gets to go to another country with a guy she’s falling in love with AND get the answers to her favorite novel of all time from the author himself!

However, as you might expect, the trip to Amsterdam doesn’t go as planned, and it gets even worse when they come back. Something truly shocking throws Hazel’s life into disarray. And it’s not that her cancer’s back. It’s much worse.

(huge spoilers to follow) When you look at The Fault In Our Stars from the outside, there’s no way it should have worked. It’s a story about two people with cancer falling in love. There are more schlocky melodrama pitfalls in that idea than any other story idea I can come up with. I mean it’s bad enough that ONE person has cancer. But two???

But here’s how John Green and the Neustadter/Weber team got it right. They focus on making these characters “people” first. They strip away the cancer and ask who they are. What they like, what they hate, what they fear, what they dream, their personalities (basically the exact opposite of what Godzilla did with any of its characters).

I think that’s where everybody gets it wrong with cancer stories. They try and define the characters by their cancer, which is not only depressing, but disingenuous. These people had lives before they got diagnosed, and by seeing that, we start to connect with them like we would connect with any character.

Hazel and Augustus are fun. They don’t sit around and discuss how shitty their lives have been. They laugh. They joke around. They enjoy each others’ company.

Also, The Fault In Our Stars did something really clever. They created an actual story here. We have a mystery and a big goal for our characters (get in touch with the author and find out what happened at the end of that book). Sure, we could’ve watched these misfits fall for each other within the confines of a high school that ostracizes them. I’m sure there’s a story there somewhere. But the book goal made this feel bigger. It gave the story a sense of adventure.

I also learned something really powerful while reading this script. When you’re dealing with these really overly-emotional subjects (it doesn’t have to just be cancer – it can be depression, suicide, addiction, whatever), the best way to do it is to make the reader laugh at first. And make them laugh for awhile.

The first half of “Stars” is a lot of fun. And we love that because we go into this expecting the opposite – a lot of “the cancer is back” lines or really depressing trips to the hospital. “Stars” just shows these two characters having fun and falling in love, ingeniously baiting us into a false sense of security.

Then, when we get to the final act, and you DO start bringing out all the heavy-handed stuff, you’ve got us so far wrapped around your finger that it works. These are things (the cancer being back) that would never work if you heavy-handedly dropped them into the first act. They only work once you’ve made us feel good for a really long time.

About the only thing I didn’t love in “The Fault In Our Stars” is when they met Van Houten (the author) in Amsterdam. This is always a tricky screenwriting thing to pull off. You’ve built the whole story up to this meeting. And you can’t just give the characters what they want. You can’t have them walk in there and the author go, “Oh yeah, this is what happened in the novel.” That would be too easy. There’s no conflict in that, no drama.

So I get why Green had the author be a jerk. But for me, it was too much. It wasn’t just the opposite of what we were expecting, it was the EXTREME opposite, and whenever you use extremes in writing, you’re treading on dangerous waters because you risk the reader seeing through the illusion.

With that said, Green redeemed himself with the author’s surprise reappearance at the ending. It’s a testament to how good of a writer he is. Even with the character I hated most, he still arced him, still changed him, allowing me to feel better about how he treated our protagonists earlier.

The Fault In Our Stars is one hell of a miracle. It manages to find the humanity in a story that’s so often oversaturated with drama. The character work here is great. The story is really really good. I did not expect this at all. But this was a really good script.

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

What I learned: Undercut dark moments with unexpected humor. This is the best way to write these types of movies. The audience is expecting lots of depressing talk, so you can have fun with that and play with their expectations. At one point, Hazel is in her back yard, on the phone with Augustus, and everything just sort of hits her at once. The doctors won’t let her go to Amsterdam. She’s got another test tomorrow. Her father is depressed. She’s staring out at this swing set that her father made her when she was a little girl, when she didn’t have cancer and there was actual hope in the world. It’s so depressing. So how does Augustus respond to this? Does he go into some deep monologue about the philosophical meaning of life and all that dreck. No. He pauses and then says, “I demand to see this swing set of tears.” He later comes over. The two agree they have to get rid of this depressing ass swing set and sell it on Craigslist. With these movies, you can’t strangle us with insufferable depression. You have to have fun. And this is a great way to do it.

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.