I was one of those troubled souls who loved Braveheart so much that I actually memorized the famous battle speech and recited it, in full character, wherever I could. Needless to say, I was kicked out of my fair share of establishments. The thing is, I saw Braveheart before I got into this whole screenwriting thing, and I’ve always wanted to go back and break it down with all the newfound knowledge I’ve accumulated. I must admit I’m bit intimidated by the “epic” screenplay though, because you can’t structure 180 page scripts the same way you do 110 page scripts. To me, getting someone to WANT to read a full 180 pages is the biggest feat you can achieve as a screenwriter. 95% of the scripts I read can’t keep me interested past page 5. So I’m always fascinated by the writers who pull this off. Speaking of, Randall Wallace, who got an Oscar nomination for this screenplay (the movie itself won the Oscar for best picture) has been M.I.A. for the last dozen years. The last thing he wrote was We Are Soldiers. I’m fascinated and a bit terrified by this. How do screenwriters go from the top of the heap to the bottom of the barrel so quickly??? I mean, this is a great script!

1) Let us see what shaped your character’s life in an epic – I realized with Braveheart how effective it was to actually SEE what shaped our character. We watch as William Wallace loses his father to the English, then later as his wife is murdered by the English. Because we were there when it happened, we root for Wallace more than had those experiences been mere backstory. In a typical 2 hour film, you don’t always have time to show these memories. But in an epic, the option is there.

2) Epics and Sequences – I realized the key to structuring epics is they need sequences. That means constructing a series of 15 page “mini-stories,” each with a specific purpose, that span the entire script. So in the first sequence of Braveheart, it’s about a young child’s dad dying. In the second, it’s about William Wallace courting a girl. The third is Wallace getting revenge for his wife’s murder. The fourth is Wallace’s rise. As long as each sequence is focused on a specific thing, your script should never wander, no matter how long it gets.

3) Think of “sequences” as a to-do list – When you think about your huge day and all the things you need to accomplish, it feels impossible. But when you break it down into specific tasks and focus on one at a time, it’s all of a sudden manageable. Approach your epic (or any script) the same way. As an entire story, it’s big and intimidating. But once you break it down into smaller chunks (sequences), it all of a sudden feels doable.

4) Make each battle unique – What really separates Braveheart from a lot of epics is how original and well thought-out each battle was. The first battle is an impromptu attack on the men who killed Wallace’s wife. The next, the Scottish sneak into a castle pretending to be English soldiers. The next is the big battle, where they use a surprise anti-horse stake attack as well as flanking the enemy with their own horses. The next, they storm York with brute force. The next, the Irish surprisingly switch sides mid-battle and join the Scottish. When I read boring period pieces, they tend to involve boring, unimaginative battles that all feel similar. Try to put just as much thought into each battle as you would your story. Be different, take chances, find a cool angle.

5) Know when to take your time and when to speed up – Part of screenwriting is knowing when to take things slow and when to move it along. Mel Gibson and writer Randall Wallace had a disagreement about the revenge scene (the one that takes place after Wallace’s wife is killed). In Randall’s version, Wallace storms into the town like a bat on fire. Gibson’s version, which made the film, took it way slower, with Wallace coming in quietly. Without question, Gibson’s version was the better choice. And the reason slow worked was because the revenge we wanted was so potent. We were willing to wait for it. Had Wallace been avenging something less personal, such as the slaughter of a bunch of nameless characters, going in faster may have been the better choice.

6) Use a personal relationship to villain-ize your villain – Most villains are general and boring. They scream out cliché “villain-y” things like, “Take them down!” and “We must crush them!” Since these phrases are so general, they don’t individualize the villain. Instead, look for a personal relationship to place your villain in so you can explore his evilness on an up-close level. In Braveheart, we get this with King Longshanks and his homosexual son, with whom he spends the entire story berating and abusing. Because we’re exposed to the villainy on an up-close and personal level (at one point Longshanks even kills his son’s boyfriend), it’s specific, and therefore makes the villain feel REAL.

7) The power of reversals – Braveheart is built on reversals, using them wonderfully. There are so many times in this movie where we expect one thing, but get another. We think Wallace will save his wife when her throat is about to be slit. Instead, she’s killed. He comes in afterwards, looking like he’s surrendering. He attacks instead. Two men join his party later, one crazy and unpredictable, the other straightforward and dependable. When the three go hunting, it is the “good” one who tries to kill Wallace and the “bad” one who saves his life. In the second big battle, the Irish are on the English’s side. As they attack, they stop and join the Scottish instead. Later in the battle, Wallace calls in the cavalry, as is part of the plan. They walk away instead, double-crossing him. Braveheart is so fun because it’s always reversing something.

8) Epics need epic motivation – Remember, you’re asking your reader to stick around for 60 more minutes than normal. That’s only going to work if you have a main character who’s so compelling that we’re willing to follow him forever. You do this by giving him an EPIC motivation. We watch Wallace lose his father and then later the love of his life. That right there is epic motivation. Of course we want to stick around until he defeats the English.

9) If possible, give your hero a big picture AND little picture goal – Characters work best when they have two reasons for going after their goal, one overarching, the other more personal. So here, Wallace is fighting for the freedom of his country (overarching). But he’s also fighting for revenge (personal).

10) How do you write a great speech!? – I came into this script wanting to know why the Braveheart speech was so amazing, while almost every other movie speech I’ve seen since has paled in comparison. Here’s what I learned. First, there’s humor! Wallace starts out by making some jokes to his soldiers. It lightens the mood and is a little unexpected (which is always good). Second, there’s interaction! The soldiers challenge him, breaking up his speech so it’s not so scripted. Third, there’s a point! He’s not just trying to rile people up. He needs to CONVINCE this army to fight for him. In fact, you can break this entire speech down into GSU. Goal – get them to fight for him. Stakes – England will take over Scotland if he doesn’t succeed. Urgency – He needs to do it RIGHT NOW. The battle is about to begin!

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) A lawyer finds himself in over his head when he gets involved in drug trafficking.
About: Okay, so here’s the deal. Famed author Cormac McCarthy (The Road, No Country For Old Men) sold his first spec script last year, The Counselor. The movie quickly mobilized with Ridley Scott directing, Michael Fassbender playing the lead, and lots of other stars playing the supporting parts (Javier Barden, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz). Now I didn’t know this, but apparently Cormac McCarthy is a huge movie buff and wrote a bunch of screenplays before this (you wouldn’t know it by looking at the script, which is a cross between a treatment, a play, and notes scrawled on a napkin). He needed a break from writing novels so I guess he banged this out in a few weeks. You can actually read more about McCarthy’s exploits into screenwriting in this Wall Street Journal article (where Scriptshadow is mentioned – yeah!). Anyway, the film debuted this weekend to a disappointing 8 million bucks. Critics didn’t like it either (it’s currently at 35% on Rotten Tomatoes). Let’s see if we can figure out what went wrong!
Writer: Cormac McCarthy
Details: movie was 117 minutes. Script is 115 pages.

Cormac McCarthy has been hit with the same criticism over and over again this weekend regarding his film, The Counselor: Nobody knows what the hell is going on in the movie. That is definitely an issue that needed to be solved at the script stage. However, Ridley Scott and Fox weren’t about to tell a Pulitzer-prize winner how to write. So when he turned in his script, they were pretty much shooting what was on the page.

And that’s too bad, cause even though this script is such a mess, it could’ve been fixed with some guidance and some development. I mean, people ask why projects get stuck in development so long. It’s because when they don’t, they end up like this. A script that has some good ideas in it, but which is anything but a finished product. I mean I can tell you one thing RIGHT NOW that would’ve made this script infinitely better. Something that most amateur screenwriters (which McCarthy definitely is) don’t know. I’ll get to that in a bit, but first, let’s deal with the “plot.”

So we got this guy, The Counselor. I guess that makes him a lawyer of some sort. The Counselor is really good friends with a dude with wild hair named Reiner. Reiner hangs out with a vamped up Cameron Diaz (Malkina), whose favorite past time is watching her cheetahs hunt down rabbits in an open field. It’s unclear where all of these characters live. It’s either in Mexico or in a U.S. state close to Mexico.

Anyway, the Counselor has a really long unclear conversation with Reiner about something he’s going to do. It’s not clear what that is, nor is it clear if it’s supposed to be unclear what that is. But the Counselor seems nervous about it. The Counselor zips around the city after this chat, ending up at a diamond place. Okay, maybe that hush-hush conversation was about the diamond trade? Maybe the Counselor is trying to steal diamonds?

No! He’s actually getting a diamond ring to propose to his girlfriend. Yay! The Counselor continues to jet around the city, eventually meeting up with Brad Pitt, who warns him away from this terrible thing he’s planning to do (even though we still don’t know what that is). He then visits a mother in jail who wants the Counselor to free her son, who’s in jail on a motorcycle speeding ticket. (?????)

After a few more talks with Reiner, we watch some dude on a motorcycle get decapitated via a metal wire on a highway. Ah-ha! I remember Mother Jail Chick talking about her son the motorcycler so I’m assuming this is the same guy. The man who decapitates Motorcycle Dude then takes something that was inside his helmet. But what!? (no really, what?  can’t anything be clear here??)

Brad Pitt then calls The Counselor and says, “Dude. Baaaaad news. We’re all fucked!” Now up until this point, Brad Pitt was presented as a friendly mentor who had no connection to whatever The Counselor was doing. So I don’t know why he’s, all of a sudden, in trouble. But it’s enough to freak The Counselor out, who runs over to Reiner’s place and says, “Yo, we’re screwed!” Except we’re still not sure what’s going on or why anyone’s screwed.

Oh wait! The people who decapitated Motorcycle Dude are going to get a truck. I need to make some assumptions here because this movie is so vague about what’s going on, I really have no other choice. It APPEARS to me that the Counselor has gone in on a huge drug deal. It just so happened that the Motorcycle Dude he released for Mother Jail Chick was some sort of courier for the bad guys who dealt these drugs. When that Courier was killed, he had a message on him for where the drugs were (the truck!). This allowed this third party to steal the truck (and hence the drugs).

Of course, since The Counselor is responsible for releasing the motorcycle guy in the first place, the Mexican drug cartel who made a deal with The Counselor believes he’s orchestrating some sly double-cross move where he kills Motorcycle Dude and takes the drugs himself. For that reason, they order a hit on him, which is why he, Reiner and Brad Pitt have to scatter. That, my friends, is the best I can do on the plot for The Counselor.

Okay, so how bad is this script? Pretty bad. It certainly does feel like it was written in three weeks. Nothing is really connected. Everything feels thrown together. This is not something McCarthy put very much effort into – and it shows. It reads like a what’s what on amateur screenwriting mistakes. Let’s look at some of these mistakes, shall we?

MISTAKE 1 – Establish your main character.

McCarthy never showed us the Counselor in his natural habitat. Therefore we never really knew what he was or what he did. Sure, he’s called “the Counselor,” but in movies we need to SEE things in action for them to really stick. We needed to SEE this guy in court. This contributed to a good deal of the confusion in the film. Since we never knew what he did, we never knew what he was doing. I couldn’t tell if he was visiting all these people for his job (whatever that was) or for something else entirely.

MISTAKE 2 – Your main character should not be the least important character in the script.

Ouch, you learn this in Screenwriting 101. Don’t make your main character uninteresting. And now that I think about it, this is a classic novelist mistake. See in novels, you get to tell us what the main character is thinking. You don’t get to do that in screenwriting. The only way for us to know what a character is thinking is if he says it or he does it. And novelists will wrongly assume that because THEY know all these deep thoughts going on inside their main character’s head, that it’ll somehow ooze out as they speak or act. WRONG. You need to give us some quirks, some problems, some personality – anything to BRING THIS CHARACTER TO LIFE. It was painful watching Fassbender after awhile because his character was sooooo boring. And audiences don’t care about boring people. They want their main characters to be interesting!

MISTAKE 3 – Keep the philosophizing to a none-imum.

Granted Cormac McCarthy’s monologuing philosophizing characters who drone on about women, the world, death, grief, and happiness are going to be a little more interesting than Screenwriting John’s, who just wrote his first screenplay last night. But that doesn’t matter. It’s never about how interesting or uninteresting a philosophy-based monologue is. It’s the fact that when characters start philosophizing, IT STOPS YOUR STORY COLD. Everything is put on hold so we can hear some random Mexican bartender explain that grief is a bad thing. Okay, WHO THE F*CK CARES? We don’t care. We just want to see a good story. And because your character can’t shut up, we’re not able to do that. There were something like a dozen philosophy-laden monologues in this script. I would advise never going above zero.

MISTAKE 4 – Don’t include unneeded characters.

Can someone tell me what the HELL Brad Pitt was doing in this movie???? He seemed to be a sort of mentor? A friend who gave our main character advice? Um, okay, here’s some screenwriting advice. If you can take a character out of your screenplay, and nothing about the story changes, you don’t need that character. I call these “Island Characters.” Because they’re off on their own islands and have nothing to do with the story at hand. This character was pointless and should’ve been removed.

MISTAKE 5 – If you’re going to set something up, pay if off.

Okay, you’ve got TWO CHEETAHS featured prominently throughout the film. Two dangerous wild animals who get a TON of screen time. If you’re like me, you can’t wait until later when these giant cats are let loose in some uncontrolled environment and they begin wreaking havoc on some poor helpless character. Nope. These cheetahs were just… window dressing I guess. They do get away under uncontrolled circumstances later in the film. But they simply walk off. That’s it. That’s their big finale. If you’re going to set something up, PAY IT OFF!

But see, all of these mistakes paled in comparison to the one big one – the one that may have actually saved this film. It was one of these simple problems that every veteran screenwriter knows but writers who HAVEN’T BEEN AROUND THE SCREENWRITING BLOCK yet don’t. The big problem with The Counselor was that nobody knew what was going on. And the REASON nobody knew what was going on was because the writer never TOLD US what was going on.

When it comes to plot points and motivations THE WRITER MUST BE CLEAR. You can’t dick around with that stuff. Writers think they’re catering to the smarter upscale viewer when they keep their plot points subtle.  But the reality is, the audience (even the smart ones) need that moment where a character says, “I’m doing THIS so I can have THIS.” That’s all we needed here! A scene where The Counselor told us THAT HE WAS GOING IN ON A HUGE DRUG DEAL. But we never got it. For some reason that was just assumed. Which meant for the first 70 minutes of the movie, we had no idea what was going on.

This practice continued throughout the script where too many plot points were glazed over. We needed characters who clarified who the motorcycle guy was and who told us what the truck was about. Because we were never told, we were left out in the cold, and if you do that one too many times in a script, we check out. I mean it seems like the most obvious advice in the world and yet I still see writers make this mistake all the time: BE CLEAR! That’s all. Just BE CLEAR with what’s going on. We don’t know what’s happening UNLESS YOU TELL US.

Now there were a few good things here. I liked Cameron Diaz’s character. She was fun. (spoiler) Brad Pitt’s death scene was cool. And I just like Ridley Scott as a director. But man, he was given a really bad script here. The writing was on the wall before this was shot.

Script rating:

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

Movie rating:

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

What I learned: Scripts written quickly always FEEL like they were written quickly. So don’t think you’re fooling anyone. Scenes go on for too long. Characters talk too much. Everything feels loose and unfocused, leading to a lot of confusion. There’s a clear lack of setups and payoffs. Not surprisingly, all of those problems were on display here.  Coincidence?

 

UPDATE: Calling all female screenwriters – we want YOU to submit your best work for an upcoming Amateur Offerings Weekend that will showcase scripts written exclusively by women! Send a PDF of your script along with the title, genre, logline, and a ‘why you should read’ section in an email to carsonreeves3@gmail.com ASAP! :)

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

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

Happy reading!

TITLE: Gravity Kills
GENRE: Sci-fi thriller
LOGLINE: A man awakens without memory in the nightmarish world of history’s largest super-prison. As he fights for his freedom, he develops visions of a past he cannot recall, causing him to lose grip on the present — leaving only a matter of time before his past & present collide.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “Awhile back you gave some advice on how to generate a good starting point for your script. Basically, you had it down to: confined space, central hero, a mystery to solve, and keep them moving. I really took that into consideration when starting this script. But of course I was derailed along the way. I started it in March 2012, had a solid 60 pages. Then I got sick. Like, real sick. I was in the hospital for the first half of April 2012 (ruptured colon – not fun), then had no energy for the next few months to do any writing. Once I came back to Gravity Kills (which was called “Breakout” then), I realized I had strayed from your advice. I needed to get back to a clearer thru-line and stick to what I really wanted from this script. I love The Twilight Zone. And I had a great idea: a guy wakes up in a super-prison without any memory. It involves fears we all share: the innocent man accused, held against our will, losing our mind – really frightening shit. So that’s what Gravity Kills is…hopefully.

Gravity Kills is a bold science fiction thriller in the vein of Rian Johnson’s Looper (2012), Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010), Oldboy (2003), and Dark City (1998).

I’ve had scripts finish in the top 10% at Nicholls and the Austin Film Festival, and another top 20%-er at Nicholls. I believe I have good concepts, but have struggled to really break through and sustain the ideas through Act 2 and 3 (but the endings work). So I took extra care to keep the momentum moving and I think Gravity Kills enjoys a very tight structure.”

TITLE: Arab In America!
GENRE: Family Comedy
LOGLINE: As a young Arab-American Muslim in a post 9/11 world, no one will hire Osama Ahmed Abou-Bakr, but when he changes his name to Samuel Adam Baker, his old struggles suddenly become new opportunities. However, his pursuit of the American Dream is soon undermined by the multitude of lies he creates to keep his professional and personal life from colliding.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “Arab In America! is a thoughtful and whimsical family comedy in the vein of Mrs. Doubtfire and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Our journey began as a short film which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. It was also awarded the Grand Prize at LinkTV’s One Nation Many Voices Film Competition and was later featured in USA Today, NPR, Yahoo Movies, Huffington Post, CNN, and many others. Ironically, everyone thought a feature was already on the way (which it wasn’t), so together Nabil Abou-Harb, Colin Ferri, and I all hunkered down to adapt our successful short film into a feature.

The challenge of adapting a 15 minute story into a full length story was a difficult task, but we did get some traction on the screenplay (after many revisions of course). We were also trying to make this film ourselves, not just sell the screenplay, and knew we were headed on an uphill battle–the main character was an Arab Muslim in a post 9/11 world after all–but the fact that we had a short film, lots of press, and a well-produced pitch reel for the feature allowed our blind query letters to actually get through to some producers and generate a bit of interest. By 2011 (yes, it was 4 years later, but we were figuring everything out as we went, and trying to make a living any way we could in the process), we had Tony Shaloub interested in playing the father of our hero, and $1 million in LOI, and things seemed to be going up.

However, the moment Osama Bin Laden was killed, Arab In America! officially became dead in the water. Personally, I believed our screenplay was a unique comedy that touched on cultural differences, family issues, and the ever-human struggle to determine one’s own self-identity, but overnight, it seemed like the cultural story became irrelevant. You can be the judge of whether that’s true or not, but thinking back on all we accomplished (and all the mistakes we made along the way), Arab In America! really is a product of its time, and its much easier to see its strengths and weaknesses in retrospect.

Now in 2013, we’ve finally been able to look at the Arab In America! screenplay on its own merits, and be proud of what we accomplished, despite the film never getting made. Perhaps there is still an audience with another revision, who knows, but for now, Arab In America! is yours to exploit for the benefit of your many readers. I know there’s plenty in there for us to learn from as well. Enjoy!”

TITLE: What Doesn’t Kill You
GENRE: Dark Thriller
LOGLINE: When a child killer is sentenced to death under dubious circumstances, the investigating detective discovers that the very man being executed holds the keys that can solve the crime.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “You mentioned in this week’s review of Escape from tomorrow, “If you can find a way to break the rules in an interesting way, to create an excited discussion around your film or script, then the doors to Hollywood will open right up.

This script does just that! It’s a genre bending story that catches most readers off guard.

Just a note; it placed in the top 15% at Nicholls this year and finished in the top 10% in the PAGE AWARDS.”

TITLE: The 2Hr Rule
GENRE: Drama
LOGLINE: After his father falls ill, a down on his luck control freak learns to let go of the past when he meets a happy-go-lucky stripper saddled with amnesia and the lingering stigma of a mysterious scar emblazoned across her face.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “I’ve been a music video/commerical director for over 12 years. The last 5 years has been a gradual shift into long form, with a heavy focus on writing. I’ve always been a very driven individual, sacrificing a lot for my work. But when my father fell ill with Cancer my perspective changed dramatically and I was looking for an outlet to channel what I was feeling. This script is the result. Interestingly enough, it opened the flood gates for a lot of unresolved issues and, as it turns out, I’m pretty fucked up. Fortunately it’s been a cathartic experience. A lot of what happens in the story happened to me at one point or another including getting my tattoos from cholo gangbanger with a guitar string stuffed through a hollowed out Bic pen, powered by a VCR motor. Yeah, that happened. All five times. I know you have a lot of scripts come across your desk and honestly, I can’t say why you should read mine over someone else’s. I will tell you that Nichols told me I beat out over 5,000 other scripts and gave two positive reads. But more than anything, you should read it to meet some great characters and discover a world you haven’t seen before. The story echoes the sentiment of ‘Garden State’ with a more twisted edge.”

Submit your script for a Scriptshadow Review!: 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 it gets 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: Comedy
Premise: (from writer) The Sock Gnome aspires to be promoted within Legendary Inc to respected positions, like Santa or the Tooth Fairy, but compromises this when he accidentally steals money from a bellicose Drug Dealer and must bring him down to save his life.
Why you should read: (from writer) I’m Freddy and I’ve been doing stand-up for years… mostly in Minneapolis, but really all around. If I can find an open mic, I’ll grab it and talk and hope people giggle. It started as a way to hook up with girls (obviously) but then I really fell in love with it.
One of my buddies suggested I take my humor and give screenplays a shot. He told me they were a hundred pages and things needed to be spelled write so I of course said no. But he insisted I try and I’m glad he did. Since then I’ve written two. This is the second and I find it delightful (so does this bum I paid $15 dollars to say so). I’d be thrilled if you gave it a shot.”
Writer: Freddy Gee
Details: 107 pages

Zach Galifianakis for the Sock Gnome??

I have seen SO many people try to get this holiday mascots idea right. I’ve probably read 3 dozen different takes on it over the years. I’ve even seen a few get to the big screen (Rise of the Guardians). And strangely enough, nobody has figured it out. Every single version of this idea has failed. And the thing is, it SOUNDS like a concept bursting with comedic potential. You make Santa a badass. Make the Easter Bunny a weirdo. Come up with some wack-a-doodle plot. Hilarity ensues, right?

Except hilarity has definitely not ensued yet. The closest anybody’s gotten to ensuing was The Nightmare Before Christmas. And that only used two of the holiday mascots. Or wait, is Jack in “Nightmare” the Halloween mascot? Does Halloween have a mascot? I don’t know.

Anyway, you’d THINK this would deter me from continuing to read these scripts. But I admit the whole “sock gnome” thing made me chuckle. And with Legendary seemingly winning a close race with last week’s Amateur Offerings, I figured I’d give it a shot.

Lion is a 38 year old sock gnome. You know how there have been times when you looked in your drawer and found 18 different socks without a match? Well, this man is responsible for that. Now why would anyone purposefully do this? Well, Lion works for this corporation called “Legendary” that’s funded by companies like Hanes, and OBVIOUSLY it’s in Hanes’s best interest if your socks disappear. It means they make more money.

Lion is joined by Jess, The Stork of Unwanted Pregnancies, whose job it is to go into households and prick people’s condoms, and then Ari, a level 2 bogeyman whose job it is to shake people when they sleep??? This rag-tag little team goes from house to house, basically leaving unhappiness in their wake.

So one day, while on a job, Lion accidentally steals a sock stuffed with money from a couple of drug dealers, Buddy and Vince. Once they realize what they’ve done, they return the money, but the damage has already been administered. Buddy wants to take these weirdoes down.

And thus begins a strange chase where Buddy and Vince try to kill Lion, eventually leading them to kidnap Jess, which results in Lion and Ari trying to save her, and ends with Buddy resorting to his original plan, which is to kill Lion and Co. And that, my friends, is the screenplay.

Oh boy.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.

I sooooo want to be nice here but Legendary represents a LOT of what I find wrong in comedy scripts these days. However, it appears that Freddy is still fairly new to this screenwriting thing so I want to be constructive. But there are a lot of issues here.

To start, the plot doesn’t make any sense. Lion steals some money from Buddy. He then returns the money to Buddy. Buddy then spends the rest of the script trying to kill Lion. I don’t understand. If Lion has returned the money, why is Buddy trying to kill him?

I have a feeling this choice was chalked up to, “It’s a comedy. It doesn’t need to make sense.” Nothing could be further from the truth. All the comedy spec sales I read have strong logic, strong motivation, and high stakes involved. Legendary has none of these, leaving the entire plot feeling empty and pointless.

Next was the humor. There isn’t a single joke in Legendary that took any thought to write. Every joke was crass and in our face and obvious. We’ve got dick jokes, rape jokes, blow up dolls, cum rags, little girl sex jokes. Every joke here was a line of dialogue meant to shock and there wasn’t any variation in that humor whatsoever.

I wanted ONE clever joke. Just one. I wanted comedy based on character (the way Phil Dumphey in Modern Family so desperately tries to be the perfect father to a fault), I wanted comedy based on situation (the way Jason Sudekis’s character in We’re The Millers must talk his way away from another family where the father is a D.E.A. agent), I wanted comedy based on misunderstanding (the way Tom Hanks in “Big” thinks he’s having a sleepover at this woman’s house when she thinks they’re having sex). I wanted SOME version of comedy that wasn’t, “Go fuck yourself with that cum rag, Sock Shit.” (not an actual line from the script – although this is how many of them sounded to me).

New comedy writers think it’s all about the crass, about the shock value. No. No no no no no no. It’s not that you can’t use shock humor. But you want to sprinkle it in there. You don’t want it to be THE ONLY JOKE YOU USE. We’ll be tired of it by page 3!

And I don’t mean to generalize here, but it made sense when I found out Freddy had only written two scripts. When you’re on your second script, you’re still at that stage when you think half-baked will do. And this script is very half-baked. Take Ari for example. I have no idea what his power is, what he’s doing, or what the point of his character is. He’s a level 2 bogeyman who becomes invisible when he’s vertical? Lion and Jess are actually trying to do things. What does being vertically invisible do?

Or Lion and Jess. Clearly, there should have been a love story here. Either Lion always liked Jess but was too nervous to make a move or Jess always liked Lion but was too nervous to make a move. Maybe Jess always liked Lion but he was in a relationship. This way, when Jess gets kidnapped, the stakes are much higher. We know there’s a potential relationship on the line here.

We needed a bigger clearer goal as well. Lion, who hates his job, has only ever wanted to be a real holiday mascot. He’s been trying to get out of this Sock Stealing gig for two decades. He’s finally given one night to [steal a certain amount of socks, steal one super important sock, solve a sock mystery, whatever], and if he does, he’s anointed to a real holiday mascot. But of course, on this night, something goes terribly wrong. Stealing drug money feels wrong for a holiday mascot. The sock he steals should have something a little more sophisticated in it. But he must solve all of that before the night is over or he’s going to be a sock stealer forever.

Now you have stakes. You have urgency. You have a clear storyline. As it stands, we’re never really sure why anyone was doing anything in Legendary, and that just can’t happen in a spec script. Once the reader is no longer sure why things are happening – YOUR SCRIPT IS DEAD. It’s dead. Plain and simple. People never finish a script and go, “Man, I barely understood what happened but that was awesome.” You, the writer, have to put in the effort and give us a strong story with a big goal that’s always clear. ESPECIALLY with comedy.

And that’s just for starters. That’s the easy part (especially if you read this site, since I always talk about it). The hard part is creating fresh characters that are going through compelling inner dilemmas, creating interesting relationships between them that need to be resolved, creating story beats that feel fresh and new, throwing in enough obstacles and twists to keep the story unpredictable. THOSE are the hard things. The structure? The part where you lay out what your hero needs to do and why? Then adding consequences and immediacy to that goal? That should be the easy stuff.

So there’s a part of me that wants to get angry here because I know how hard screenwriting is and I know how many people put in months (even years) to get all those things I just mentioned right in their script. And then you have writers who think they can slap something together in a month and it’ll stand up to the biggest scripts on the market but it doesn’t work that way.

That’s not how this business works. Readers know the difference between genuine effort and half-baked. But this is only Freddy’s second time around the block so I’m guessing this is the first time he’s hearing this. I want him to use this as a learning experience. If you really want to make a go at this, Freddy, learn about goals and stakes and urgency. Learn about character flaws and conflict and obstacles (check out some of the bigger articles here on Scriptshadow). Learn to push past those initial obvious first choices and to look deeper to those fourth or fifth choices when creating a character or a scene or a plot point. Learn to vary the comedy in the script. Don’t be a one-trick pony. And, of course, read a TON of comedy specs. I’m sure some people here in the comments can help you out with that. And I’ll be happy to send some to you as well if you e-mail me.

Good luck, my friend. Legendary may not have been ready for prime time, but if you keep working at it, one of your future scripts may be.

Script link: Legendary

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

What I learned: Vary your comedy! Go ahead and use dick jokes. But make sure to include character-based humor, situational-based humor, and the classic misunderstanding as well. If you only use one type of humor, those jokes are going to get really stale really fast.

Update: Bad Robot JUST ANNOUNCED TODAY that Michael Arndt was out and JJ and Lawrence Kasdan (Empire Strikes Back) were taking over writing duties.  I think someone likes my little Star Wars 7 treatment. :) 

A month ago I proposed the idea that it’s impossible to write a Batman vs. Superman movie. It’s too hard to mix the tones of the characters. Any attempts to have them working together or fighting each other would feel forced. It’s simply not the kind of setup that’s easy to turn into a movie.

But the difficulty of writing that film pales in comparison to the pressure of writing a new Star Wars film. I mean come on. That’s gotta be the tallest screenwriting order in Hollywood, maybe, EVER – right? Imagine sitting down and fading in on “A long time ago in a glaxy far far away…” It’s sort of like being asked to write a new Bible.

But since it’s happening, the folks at Bad Robot may want to keep a few things in mind, starting with something every Star Wars lover seems to have forgotten (even George Lucas!): The two most popular films in the series were steeped in urgency. In Star Wars, the Empire was chasing after our characters the whole movie. And in Empire Strikes Back, the Empire was chasing after our characters for the majority of the movie. “Slow-build” was a term nobody used back then. It was always go go go. Return of the Jedi at least tried to do this. The prequels, however, dismissed the approach entirely, attempting to go the “epic” route instead.

And there is our first lesson when writing sci-fi movies: sci-fi movies cannot be epic.

WHAT! Blasphemy, you say. Of course sci-fi movies can be epic! Well, think about it for a second. How many of your favorite sci-fi movies are “epic,” or even complex? Star Wars – it’s a heart-pounding chase movie. Empire – another chase movie. The Road Warrior – one man helps good guys beat bad guys. Aliens – contained horror. The Matrix – Guy finds out he’s living in a fake world and fights bad guys. The Terminator – A chase movie. Terminator 2 – A chase movie.

Now look at some attempts to be epic sci-fi. Star Wars Episode 1 – A wandering never-ending story about a Trade Embargo. Star Wars Episode 2 – A half-mystery half-planet-jumping fiasco where there was no time limit for anything. Star Wars Episode 3 – A long slow journey about Darth Vader’s rise. Matrix 2 – This was so confusing, I have no idea what it was about. Matrix 3 – Um, Neo turns into Jesus? Dune – I’ve seen this movie three times and I lose track of what’s happening by the 15 minute mark every time.

There are always going to be exceptions (you can make the argument that Avatar was epic) but the truth of the matter is, sci-fi works best when there’s some kind of immediacy and simplicity to the storyline. When the goal is big and clear and the timeline is contained, it’s much easier for the audience to enjoy the story. Once you start stretching your sci-fi timeline out over months (or, god-forbid, years), chances are you’re going to bore us to death.

So the trick is to do what movies like Star Wars did. You look for ways to MASQUERADE as an epic, even though your narrative engine is simple. Star Wars is jumping from ships to planets to space stations, making it SEEM epic. But all that’s driving the story is a chase. The whole thing takes place over a few days. The Matrix seems kind of complex, but that comes from the dual-world switching – the grimy underworld versus the Matrix world. But the story itself is about Neo learning he’s special and using his powers to fight the bad guys. Simple and easy. It also takes place within a few days.

So bringing this back to Star Wars 7, that’s the first thing we should hope they got right. And you’d think they would. Screenwriter Michael Arndt (our Ep 7 scribe) knows about contained timeframes, having written Little Miss Sunshine (a race to get to a beauty pageant) and Toy Story 3 (a race to save our main character’s friends before his owner leaves for college).  He’s a guy who knows how to keep a narrative hurrying along.

However, even if they do get that right, they’ll run into another issue: You can’t just remake Star Wars. You can’t just put a young clueless hero on an abandoned planet. You can’t just build a new rising Empire. You can’t have our hero discover they have the force and were meant for bigger things, then pull them into the war, where they take on a new Dark Villain.

We’ve already done that. And no. Switching Luke Skywalker’s character to a girl (hinted at with the Star Wars 7 casting sheet) doesn’t change this. You have to do something new (For the record, I think the clever Abrams placed the female character on the top of that call sheet specifically to mislead the media about the plot).

So if you can’t redo Star Wars and you’re steering clear of the “epic” trap George fell into with the prequels, what story do you tell? My gut tells me that it’ll be something like this: A new type of evil is spreading throughout the galaxy. It is happening unexpectedly and quickly. Han and Leia have been living peacefully on a faraway planet with their son (now a young adult).

With fear gripping the galaxy, the aristocracy asks of Han and Leia what they’ve been fearing ever since their son was born. He is one of the last Jedi. And they need him to fight. The son is brought into this war, likely to try and stop some immediate threat, such as the takeover of a key strategic planet (think the fights over key Japanese islands in WWII – George loves WWII) that will allow the baddies to set up a launching point to take over the entire galaxy (which will happen in successive movies). Luke will likely be brought in to train him for the job, and possibly even join him as his master.

The “strategic planet” thing is a vague guess, as they need SOME big goal for the characters to go after. The problem with creating a script goal here is, Star Wars wrote itself into a corner when they used “destroying the Death Star” as a goal in the original film. There has never been a force more devastating than that. Which made the stakes higher for Star Wars than any of its sequels or prequels by far. They lucked out in Empire and Jedi as they’d created such strong characters with such big unresolved issues (Luke and his father) that those substituted for the lack of a giant universe-threatening weapon (even though they tried to re-do the Death Star in a smaller capacity in Jedi). But since our current film knows it can’t replicate the Death Star with anything (How do you get bigger than a weapon that can destroy a planet??) they’ll probably go with something simpler, like taking control of a key planet.

What do I think of this storyline? It could be okay, I guess. There are ways you can play with it. For example, you can have this new evil force’s army come in and slaughter Leia and Han, forcing their son into the war, which would feel different from Star Wars in that Leia is royalty. She’ll be living large. So the slaughter would likely be on a much grander scale with further-reaching implications. That, however, brings up another problem. The favored Jedi son of a celebrated war hero and queen isn’t exactly an underdog. And that’s what made us love and root for Luke Skywalker so much. He was the biggest underdog of all (Scriptshadow Master Tip: Underdogs are the most likable heroes you can create!). So should they really base the movie around Han and Leia’s son? The Star Wars equivalent of an entitled Trust Fund baby? I don’t know. Something feels wrong about it.

I’m also curious how Luke is going to factor into all this. Does he have a son as well? Or maybe a daughter? Do his daughter and Han and Leia’s son hang out? Do they like each other? Or maybe they both have sons and they dislike each other. Maybe they’re on completely different planets and have never met, leaving one offspring to head to the dark side while the other takes the light path. The trilogy would follow their ascension up the ranks of the good guys and bad guys, with a final showdown in the third film. That might be cool.

But what about if I were writing Star Wars 7? What would I do? I can tell you (and Disney and Bad Robot) are just dying to know. So here goes… Personally, I think it’s all about the main character, and I’d want to play around with mine.  My hero wouldn’t be related to anyone from the past (I’m on Team No Old Trilogy Characters). I’d make him troubled, a kid growing up in the slums (imagine the streets of Bombay). He’s a young criminal of sorts, a kid who took the wrong path and hangs out with the wrong crowd because that’s all that was available to him (think any young kid growing up in South Central). This is a guy who all he cares about is his next score, about making it through the day. And then as this new evil force starts spreading throughout the galaxy and someone finds out he’s a Jedi, he’s called upon to either help or lead the fight against them. The most unlikely hero is asked to be just that, the hero.

See, to me, the problem writers make when they think about sci-fi, is they think about the plot or the worlds or the gadgets or all these things that are ultimately window dressing. You have to come up with interesting characters first and Star Wars has always been about this common theme of fighting that war within yourself – choosing good or bad. If there’s one flaw in the Luke Skywalker character, it’s that I never really believed he was going to turn bad. So despite that battle going on inside of him, we always knew he was going to choose the right path.

Then with Anakin in the prequels, we knew he would choose the wrong path because we saw the original trilogy and knew he’d become Darth Vader! So in both cases, picking good or evil was never in doubt. With a new character like this, someone who came from a bad place and tough circumstances, we’d truly wonder, during the 7, 8, and 9 trilogy, which path he was going to choose. This is a character we’ve never seen before in Star Wars. He’d have that original underdog quality Luke had. Plus he’d have a little bit of rebellious Han in him.  He wouldn’t be whiny like Anakin.  He’d be tough.  He’d basically be the best of all worlds!

So once I had that character, I could build the plot around him, and it probably wouldn’t be too far off what I’m assuming they’re going to do now. If they had to bring in old characters, Luke could be called in to train this guy, who doesn’t listen to anything he says. And our new hero is thrust into a key first film battle that our good guys must win in order to stave off the bad guys strategic play for the entire galaxy.

But alas, I am not writing Episode 7. Like many fans, I will be waiting on the sidelines to see what they come up with. Which leads me to my next question – What would Star Wars look like in your hands? What would your plot be for the next film in the favored franchise?