Long story short, I’m on a mini-vacation in Portland.  Yesterday, I went over to the Food Truck Square and did a food crawl.  Next thing I knew, I woke up in a park post-sundown with several half-empty bags of food and the worst stomach ache this side of a pie eating contest.  A few transients in the area seemed very worried about me.  They said I wandered up asking about a peanut butter pickle cheeseburger before doing something I called the “Dance of the Raspberries.”  After some Chinatown-esque investigatory work, I concluded that someone had roofied my Food Truck food, although it’s unclear why they would do so.  Everything was still in my wallet except for my library card.  I also Googled “peanut butter pickle cheeseburger” and found out that it exists.  Whether or not I consumed one yesterday and said consumption contributed to my demise is still a mystery.

Peanut Butter Pickle Burger

When I did come home and try to do a script review for Seth Rogen and James Franco’s “The Interview,” I passed out before I could get to the finish line.  But I do have a TLDR version of the review – “Pineapple Express in North Korea.  Kind of funny.  What I learned: With Neighbors and now The Interview, the high concept comedy is back!  But I’m not sure the ‘wish’ type high concept comedies like Liar Liar are in favor.  This implies that more reality-based ideas are en vogue.”  I sincerely hope I recover enough to get an article up tomorrow.  But Portland seems to be a bit of a Wonderland.  There are so many holes to fall into, and not a lot of ways to get out.  Until the next time (if there is a next time), good night, and keep Portland weird.

Genre: Drama
Premise: A record executive in the 1970s suffers a mid-life crisis and goes back to his roots, hunting out new talent for his dying record label.
About: With Boardwalk Empire ending, Martin Scorsese and Terence Winter needed a new show to do for HBO. Enter rock n roll! And because it’s Scorsese, you better believe it ain’t set in modern day. Part of me thinks Scorsese hasn’t reached 2014 yet. He’s about 30 years behind us. So for him, he’s actually directing contemporary cinema. As for Terence Winter, besides creating Boardwalk Empire, he also wrote Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, a bunch of Sopranos episodes, the 50 Cent movie Get Rich or Die Tryin’, and even a couple of episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess.
Writer: Terence Winter
Details: 59 pages (Revised Draft, April 4th 2013)

Bobby Cannavale will star in the new HBO project

Do I think Scorsese repeats himself a little too much? Ummmm, maayyyy-be? I mean, he definitely has a formula down for how he tells a story. And back in the day, when that approach was new, it was fun. But now, because it’s the only thing he does, you feel like you know all the beats of his stories before he does. Once the viewer is able to predict everything, there’s no reason to keep watching.

When you couple that with rock and roll as a subject matter, you’re walking on thin ice. Rock and roll is SO hard to do well because cliché is woven into its DNA. There’s a reason “sex, drugs and rock and roll” is one of the most popular phrases in history. Those things are always lumped together and as a viewer, there are only so many times you can see a musician ruining his career with drugs.

You gotta find a different way to do it. And, as I mentioned, with Scorsese directing, I was worried whether that could happen or not. Still, I held out hope that I’d be surprised. Let’s see if I was.

It’s 1973. 40-something Richie Finestra is a record exec at the dying American Century Records. The last remaining big band they have under their label is Led Zeppelin, and it looks like they’re going to jump ship too.

At American Century, we meet Richie’s team, which includes a combination of young A&R kids who aren’t finding enough new music and a bunch of middle-aged guys who are trying to hold onto the past.

Over the course of the pilot, we experience a group of flashbacks, when Richie was an up-and-coming exec, as he signed a talented young black musician named Lester. Richie promised Lester that if he made an album for him, he’d let Lester record an album of the music he loved, which was Blues. But that never happened, and now, sadly, Lester has become Richie’s driver, his musical dreams long forgotten.

As the days pass, Richie finds himself more and more frustrated with the direction of the company, and decides to make a radical change. He demands a divorce from his wife. Then he downgrades his position at the company to talent scout. He’s going back out there and do what these young bucks can’t – find music.

But the plan is thrown for a loop when Richie finds himself at the home of a couple of business associates and things get out of hand. During a fight, one of the men is accidentally killed, and Richie and the other associate decide to toss him into an alley in the hopes that the cops will think someone mugged him. Needless to say, a homicide detective shows up at Richie’s work the next day asking questions. We’ll see just how long Richie and his secret can last.

Okay, first question. Was it cliché? Yes. Pretty much every character here did some kind of drugs. Just once – ONE TIME – I’d like a character in a music movie not to do drugs. A character who shuns it. What’s the harm? Having one original character in this world? Because I’m pretty sure not EVERYBODY did drugs in the 70s. Although if they did, it would at least explain the fashion of the time.

The story itself was okay I guess. When you’re doing a period piece, you’re doing historical fiction. And when you’re doing historical fiction, you’re trying to educate (in an entertaining way) the viewer on the subject matter, whether it be casinos, money, the mob, whatever.

So I was really looking forward to learning new things about rock and roll in the 70s. I was disappointed. There’s nothing new here if you’ve seen Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. And that’s not good. With a movie, you only have a limited amount of time to get into details. With TV, you have an unlimited amount of time. TV thrives BECAUSE of the details. I get that this was just the pilot, but seeing a hot young singer bang a chick then pull out a heroin needle and shoot up, or watch two executives binge on coke until they were clueless… I saw that stuff 40 movies ago.

And it’s tough. I realize that you have to show SOME drug use since it’s rock and roll in the 70s. But there’s got to be a more original way to do it.

The one original and memorable aspect of the pilot was the Lester storyline. You know right away something’s up with Richie’s chauffeur, since we never see his face. And you know pretty quickly that this up-and-coming singer in the flashbacks, Lester, is probably him. So the dramatic irony feeds this aspect of the story. We know Lester’s career is doomed from the get-go.

But I thought RICHIE was going to be the one to screw him over. In the pilot, it’s nobody’s fault. Stories become more interesting when your protagonist’s’ choices drive the drama. So if our main character isn’t responsible for this man’s dried up life, then where’s the conflict?

And I don’t like mushy main characters, protagonists stuck in that boring middle-ground. Jordon Bellforte (The Wolf of Wall Street) isn’t KIND OF a greedy crazy asshole. He IS a greedy crazy asshole. I wanted Richie to have more wrong with him. I wanted him to be that record exec who rips off artists for his own personal gain. He’s done it his entire life and finally, now, he reliazes it’s wrong. He wants to change. Instead, Richie has no conviction. He’s not responsible for much of anything that’s wrong here. He’s just around.

In the end, I’m looking for three things from this kind of TV show. I want to learn something new about the subject matter (we learn the intricate nature of how casinos work in Casino), I want strong interesting characters that I care about (like Henry Hill in Goodfellas), or I want a cool story. There were little flickers of that stuff here (a quick scene about how a record contract works, the Lester storyline, the murder) but for the most part, this felt like a retread of stuff we’ve already seen. I couldn’t get into it.

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

What I learned: Inner conflict. You have to look at your character and ask, “What is the main conflict within this man?” “What is the thing he’s at odds with every day of his life?” Because if you can find a strong conflict within a character, you’re 90% of the way to creating a complex character. So with Richie, I was hoping to see him battling the fact that he screws singers over every day. He signs them to contracts he knows they’ll never make a penny for, and reaps the profits for his company. And it seemed to be heading in that direction with the Lester subplot, but it never quite got there.

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Genre: Action/Sci-fi
Premise: A young woman is forced into being a drug mule. But when the experimental drug she’s carrying inside her ruptures, she starts gaining super-human powers.
About: Taken and Transporter creator Luc Besson is back with his latest action flick, Lucy, an idea he’s had for over 10 years. He’d been looking for a way to mesh action with philosophy for awhile and Scarlett Johansson celebrating her inner badass allowed him to achieve it. Besson said that part of the reason it took him so long to write the script is that, unlike his heroine, he was only using 10% of his brain. The movie came out this weekend and went on to a huge 44 million dollar take, a surprising dominating performance when you consider she was going up against the ultimate testosterone machine, The Rock (in Hercules). Of course, that flick was directed by Brett Ratner, who I’m pretty sure only uses 2% of his brain.
Writer: Luc Besson
Details: 114 pages

I was sure this type of movie had gone out of style. As much as I love GSU, I’m growing tired of the overly simplistic action-thriller use of the model. “Taken” was fresh back when it came out, but after the clone-train hit and I read a million copycats of a) Hero tries to save someone or himself, b) the life of someone they care about or themselves is at stake, and c) they have 48 hours to achieve their mission, I couldn’t muster up enough enthusiasm for the flicks any more.

And the market seemed to agree. Besson’s own GSU film, Lockout, never did anything. The recent Kevin Costner flick, 3 Days to Kill, didn’t do well. All of Crank’s 24-hour man-on-a-mission cousins didn’t do well. And then of course there are all the scripts I’ve seen that no one at the studio level will touch anymore. “It’s Taken on a [insert noun here]” can kill a meeting if you read the room wrong. I was even thinking of writing an article about how the GSU model needed to evolve to survive this change.

And then Lucy shows up, the very embodiment of the simplistic GSU model, and kicks ass. A female mule has an experimental drug leaking into her system, making her smarter and smarter by the minute. She’s got 48 hours before it kills her so she’s got to get to a man who specializes in this sort of thing and transfer to him everything she’s learned before it’s too late.

This straight-forward GSU spec didn’t just do “well,” it fucking blew the competition away, collecting 44 million dollars on a summer weekend with a B-list female carrying the entire movie. That is NOT easy to do.

I don’t know what to make of this. Cause all I saw in the trailers was Scarlett Johansson running around with a gun. To play devil’s advocate, one might say they put a new spin on the action-thriller formula (Lucy becomes in tune with 100% of her brain’s capacity, allowing her to become a “realistic” super-hero). But I’ve seen a ton of that “We only use 10% of our brain” stuff in movies and scripts over the past decade. “Wanted” did it. “Limitless” did it. I thought it was old hat.

Maybe Lucy just lucked out and opened on the perfect weekend, when she had ZERO competition (note to Hollywood, if you want zero competition, find the weekend Brett Ratner’s movie opens). I mean if we’re speaking of ideas that feel played out, look no further than Hercules. Didn’t they just make a Hercules movie earlier this year? This isn’t the 50s.

I give it to Besson. He writes fun scripts. And when I say “fun,” I really mean it! “Lucy” was written in comic sans! That’s a first for a professional script. It also opened with this after its title page:

I don’t think you can get away with this if you’re an amateur. People would laugh at you for being presumptuous. But since Besson has a track record, it’s allowed. And I have to admit, it worked. I was using those films for reference while I was reading, so I could picture how this would look. It’s too bad amateurs can’t do this because being able to explain the style in which you hope your movie will be shot can be the difference between two totally different movies in the reader’s head.

As for the story itself, it’s typical Besson. Once we get to the action, we don’t stop. And with Lucy, we get to the action immediately. A sketchy guy convinces his one-night stand, Lucy, to go deliver a suitcase to someone named “Mr. Wang” for him. Why anyone would deliver a mysterious suitcase to a guy named “Mr. Wang” for someone they just met last night is beyond me. But Lucy does it.

That leads to her finding out some super-heroin-crack is in the suitcase. Mr. Wang makes her mule it to Los Angeles, but the packet inside her starts leaking, and whatever this stuff is, it starts unleashing a chemical that opens up your brain, turning you into an exponential Einstein.

At first Lucy just thinks clearer. But then she starts seeing the vibrations around people, which allows her to read their minds. She can use satellites to see through the internet bringing her into offices halfway around the world, using the vibrations of the matter in those offices to literally see what’s happening in them. Soon she’s manipulating matter, so she can “use the force,” picking objects up and putting them down without ever touching them.

It’s all pretty cool stuff. But this is the reason I thought these movies were dead. With so much centered around the action and the gimmickry, we don’t ever get to know anybody. Personally, I loved how they took their time in Taken. It’s one of the reasons I think that film is the standard for the straight-forward simplistic action-thriller. We actually got to know the dad and the daughter before she was captured, and therefore we CARED about him saving her.

I knew very little about Lucy when she was kidnapped and learned only slightly more over the course of the film. That’s why a film like this gets 57% on Rotten Tomatoes. The critics go there and they see a film that feels fun, that feels visual and kinetic, exactly what a film is supposed to be. But because they don’t ever get to know any of the characters, they leave feeling empty, like what they just saw was a dream.

That’s exactly how I felt after reading this. I was like, “Hmm, this would be a fun movie to watch.” But halfway through this review and I was already forgetting what happened.

Comic Sans font! The future of screenwriting??

Ironically, Besson didn’t even nail the GSU model. I wasn’t sure what Lucy’s main goal was for most of the second act (it turned out to be getting to Professor Morgan Freeman to tell him about her discoveries before she died). That felt like a weak goal. Who cares if she gets this information to Red or not? What happens if she doesn’t? Nothing. That’s the very definition of no stakes.

I honestly didn’t expect this to make more than 30 million dollars in its entire run. But I learned something here. One of the most common pieces of advice screenwriters receive is to find a fresh “TWIST” on a tried-and-true genre. It’s the key to your script being “familiar but different.”

Here’s what nobody talks about though. Is how MUCH of a twist you need. Because if it’s not enough of a twist, then it feels exactly like the genre you’re trying to update. If it’s too much of a twist, it’s no longer within the genre’s target zone and feels eccentric. Nobody really knows where that twist range begins and where it ends.

I thought for sure the whole “10% of your brain” thing wasn’t enough of a twist. But I was wrong. It turns out Besson squeaked it in just past the minimum threshold. I wish I could tell you where that range is, but it’s one of those things that can’t be quantified. This is where craft is thrown out the window and artistry takes center stage. It’s up to you to decide how far you should go. If you nail it and fall right smack dab in the center of that range, you’re golden. If not, that’s probably why you’re not getting enough read requests.

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

What I learned: One way to mix up GSU is to start your script with a mystery or two. So instead of jumping into the goal immediately, use the first act to create a “mystery” storyline where the reader’s trying to figure out what’s going on. Then, at the end of the first act, institute the main goal that will drive the rest of the story. So here, we start with the mystery of “What’s in the suitcase?” This leads to a second mystery. Lucy is knocked out by the goons and wakes up with a surgical scar on her stomach. What’s happened to her? She finds out that she’s being used as a mule. Once this mystery is over, she has her goal. Find the other mules before their cargo is transferred, then get to the professor to give him the knowledge she’s gained before she dies. Like I said before, the goal that drives this story is pretty weak, but the use of mysteries at the outset was well done, and pulled us into the story right away.

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

Genre: Horror
Premise (from writer): Murdered to advance the construction of an exclusive golf resort, a mountain man is resurrected by Death himself to take revenge as an undead killing machine.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I’m a lifelong horror fanatic and very much a product of the VHS generation. This is my sincere attempt at horror the way I lovingly remember it; gruesome and gory, but also imaginative, cinematic and, most importantly, FUN! THE HARVESTER is a high-concept, blood-soaked blast of old-school carnage with an ending so wild and explosive that it needs to be read to be believed. Hope you enjoy!
Writer: Nick Morris
Details: 97 pages

Much like the title character of its script, “The Harvester” came back from the dead after being passed over in its initial Amateur Offerings run. Like any good writer, Nick took the feedback he got from that initial post, made some changes, then tried again. The effort was enough to win him the week.

Of course, now he’s got to get past a sleepy Carson who’s eager to get a review up so he can start his weekend. Oh, that pesky reader – never in the mood you need them to be in when they’re reading your script.

I’ll say this. I stayed wide awake during the entirety of The Harvester. But was Nick’s love for VHS horror enough to steal my attention away from why the hell Zack Snyder is tweeting Jedi Superman pics at Comic-Con? May the Kryptonian force be with me as we find out.

We meet 35 year-old David (“a rugged-looking mountain man”) on the verge of death. His car’s just been pushed over the side of a cliff. His wife died in the fall. And he’s minutes away from following her. But before he does, the original scythe-wielder, Death himself, shows up to send him off in style.

Cut to the board room of one of the richest men in the world, pharmaceutical kingpin and all around hell-raiser, Bob Vargas. Turns out Vargas is talking to David. But how can that be? David is dead, isn’t he? Enter Bergman, Death’s disguise in the human world. Bergman freezes Vargas and asks David what he thinks about becoming his own personal killing machine.

Cut to 20 year-old Sasha, who we’re going to come to learn is David’s daughter. She was a toddler when David and her mom disappeared, and she’s coming home to finally figure out what happened to them.

You see, her town has been overrun by a giant resort owned by whom? You guessed it: Bob Vargas! And there are some suspicious connections between Vargas and David, such as the fact that David was the only person who wouldn’t sell his resort-blocking property to the billionaire. Wouldn’t you know it, a few months later, he disappeared. Problem solved.

While Sasha infiltrates the resort to find out the truth about her parents, David’s brought back to life by Death as someone called “The Harvester.” His only job? Kill as many people as he can. Why? Because that’s what Death wants!

Eventually, Sasha’s investigation and The Harvester’s killings intersect. Will the two figure out who they are before it’s too late? Read The Harvester to find out!

The thing I love about amateur scripts is they’re these giant balls of boundless energy. You can feel the excitement exploding off every page.

The bad thing about this? Those balls can become so out of control, that they shoot off into space without ever letting you know why the heck they came into existence in the first place. Which was kind of my experience with The Harvester.

I’d say for about 10 pages, I loved this. It felt different. It felt fresh. I liked this dual-narrative of following our dead father while seeing his now-grown daughter looking into his death. At that point, the narrative felt focused and strong.

That didn’t last long though. The ice started to crack once David transformed into The Harvester. I never understood why David was supposed to kill people. Death was always so vague about it. He’d say something to the effect of, “That’s for me to know and you not to worry about.”

Which is okay. I’m all for a good mystery if there’s going to be a good payoff. But unless I missed something, that payoff never came. I’ll tell you what did come, though. Confusion.

Why, for instance, with David being so reluctant to do Death’s bidding, did he become the Picasso of killers? Why did he have to stab, slice, decapitate, chop, and mow every person down he killed? Death never said anything about, “You need to kill them as magnificently as possible.” His only stipulation was that David had to kill them. So you’d think a reluctant David would perform his killings as mercifully as possible.

Once the reader senses that things are happening in a script not because that’s how they would really happen, but because that’s the way the writer wanted them to happen, the suspension of disbelief is ruined. Every choice must have a purpose, a reason to exist. Even if you’re writing a fun 80s-type slasher film.

Which leads us to my next issue. Was this an 80s horror film? Sometimes I’d say yes. Other times I’d say no. One of the most interesting things about The Harvester was that we got to know our “movie monster” on a very deep and intimate level. We watched him lose his wife, lose his kid. We see him begging for his life back from Death. This led me to believe that we were going to explore the horror genre on a much deeper level.

But then, once Sasha becomes an employee of the resort and starts partying with all the other 20-something employees, it basically turned into an 80s slasher flick. I just couldn’t wrap my head around what The Harvester wanted to be.

Yet another problematic area was the late emergence of the resort storyline. We didn’t really start meeting all the resort employees until the halfway point (Employee Graham and his wife Portia, page 43. Asshole Jock Mike, page 48).

I’m always nervous when characters don’t get introduced until halfway through the script. Obviously, there are cases where late-arriving characters are necessary. But usually, it’s because the writer didn’t work hard enough to get those characters established early.

I mean I’d read half the script. There had been no mention of this character, Mike. Then Mike’s introduced, and all of a sudden he’s on every page! It became the Mike Show.  If he was going to be this important, why wasn’t he in here earlier?

On the plus side, Nick is a really talented writer. I mean, if you open up this script and start reading, you can easily imagine the scene as he’s telling it to you. That’s not easy to do and something most amateurs struggle with for a long time. He’s got a clear, crisp, and visual writing style.

But as I’ve stated a million times before, one of the most frustrating things about screenwriting is that that’s supposed to be a given. Nobody gives extra points to Olympic skaters because their costumes fit. Those things are simply expected. And a clear, crisp, visual writing style, even though that puts you ahead of a lot of amateurs, doesn’t mean diddly squat on the pro circuit, where everyone’s able to do that.

In the pro circuit, it’s all about your ability to tell a compelling story. And right now, The Harvester is too unfocused as a story. If I were Nick, I’d figure out what I wanted this to be. Do I want it to be a weightier character-driven horror flick like the first 15 pages hint at? Or do I want this to be an ode to 80s horror classics like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th? Because I don’t think you can be both.

Personally, I’d be more interested in the first option. But it feels like Nick’s partial to the second. Which is fine. But, if you’re going to go that route, I’d look for a new way to freshen up that genre. Just doing what they did back in the 80s isn’t going to be enough. I wish him luck. I see a lot of promise in Nick’s writing. Just remember to control that ball of energy. The second it gets away from you, there’s no getting it back.

Script link: The Harvester

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

What I learned: One of the things people in the entertainment business will tell you is to write something “different.” I see a lot of amateur writers take this advice the wrong way. They take it to mean that any kind of different is good. And it isn’t. There’s “different good” and there’s “different bad.” The main difference between the two is focus. The “good different” stuff still has a focused story, whereas the bad different stuff, while definitely different, is all over the place. I can write a movie about a man who paints himself orange and moves to Antarctica, but if there’s no point behind the story, who cares? Write a story about the first murder investigation on the moon though (Moonfall – the hot new spec that just sold) and you’ve managed to write something different that still feels focused.