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Genre: Comedy
Premise (from writer): Based on a true story, a group of college kids in the 60s pose as royalty from a made-up country (Marchentia). What starts out as innocent fun, spins out of control when the media turns their arrival into the most important visit in the city’s history.
About: Well, we didn’t have an Amateur Offerings two weeks ago due to Holiday madness, so I had to pick an amateur script on my own to review today. Long-time reader of the site, Matt Hirschhorn, recently won a comedy contest with this script, and since we haven’t reviewed a comedy for Amateur Friday in awhile, I thought it was time the Scriptshadow community stopped screaming at each other (ahem – Grendl), and started having some fun again.
Writer: Matt Hirschhorn
Details: 110 pages

The sure to be classic, Fishbein!

The second I read Matt’s premise, I loved it. The best comedy ideas are the ones where you can immediately start imagining the funny scenes. But the reason you don’t see me reviewing much comedy on the site anymore is because despite all these fun premises, THE SCRIPTS ARE NEVER FUNNY! Not to mention that the execution is always terrible, often sliding between lazy and cheap. What makes a lot of funny people funny, it seems, is what also makes them lazy. They just don’t put in the effort required for a polished “take me seriously” screenplay.

But Thallus isn’t like that. It’s actually quite intricate. There are a lot of storylines going on here, and they’re all rather well balanced, building and interweaving cleverly as the script goes on. There’s a strong sense of purpose for both the story and everyone in it, and, most importantly, there are a lot of laughs. Imagine that, a comedy with laughs. I guess it’s still possible!

The story is set in 1968 and centers around a Buffalo college kid named Marty Goodman. Marty’s your average frustrated chump. He’s in love with a girl, Eve Ryan, the daughter of a senator, who’s way out of his league (she dates guys like O.J. Simpson, not short Jewish boys with questionable haircuts). Marty complains about Eve all the time to his best friend, Herbie, an overweight James Bond wannabe who’s in denial about his lackluster fitness regimen.

So one day, while spitballing ideas for a social experiment Marty must do for class (he must show how people go along with the herd rather than question the masses), he and Herbie stumble across a couple of plants Herbie’s studying for a test (the “Thallus” and the “Marchentia”). They joke that, when thrown together, they sound like the title of some prince from a tiny country. One thing leads to another, and Marty gets the idea to become the “Thallus of Marchentia” for his experiment. He’ll fool the campus and get an ‘A’ on his paper. Added benefit? He’ll finally have a shot with Eve!

The two enlist their annoying acquaintance, school reporter Fishbein, to write about the Thallus’ arrival in the school paper. Fishbein reluctantly agrees, and sure enough, when the article is printed, everyone is talking about the Thallus’s arrival. Which then spreads to the local newspapers. Which then spreads to the local television outlets. And within 24 hours, everybody in Buffallo, including the Mayor himself, can’t wait to meet the Thallus of Marchentia!

As things get bigger, the group finds themselves expanding their story. They’re now a Uranium-rich country who’s in the middle of a war with the Communists, a war only slightly smaller than Vietnam. They’re coming to Buffallo to hopefully open a Uranium plant and expand their relationship with the United States. Things get even more complicated when Senator Ryan (Eve’s mom) wants to get some of that Thallus money to fund her campaign.

Then, of course, there’s local college activists Zen, Cloud, and Wolf, who want to make a difference but are sick of their current SDS group’s lack of action. So they decide to take matters into their own hands by kidnapping the Thallus and getting him to remove all American troops from Marchentia. All of this while Marty desperately tries to take advantage of this one and only chance to bed Eve Ryan, an opportunity that’s quickly slipping away with each passing hour.

What The Thallus did well that I don’t see with a lot of amateur comedies is it was really soundly structured. And what I mean by that is that it always had thrust. Every section had characters going after important things, and each of those pursuits had some level of immediacy behind them. For example, Marty, when he first becomes the Thallus, only has that day to try to hook up with Eve. Fishbein only has one shot to secretly record Senator Ryan offering political favors for money. Senator Ryan only has one shot to get money from the Thallus.  Zen and Cloud are running out of time to record the Thallus to get American troops out of Marchentia.

Screenplays work best when characters are all going after something, and the characters need that something immediately. That’s why Back to the Future is one of my favorite screenplays of all time. It’s all about characters constantly needing something RIGHT NOW. And while I’m not saying the Thallus is up to the level of that masterpiece, I loved that it latched on to the same storytelling principle.

I think the big thing with comedy though is that the characters have to stand out on the page. And not just the protagonist, but everyone. Because everyone has to be memorable and everyone has to be funny in their own unique way. Matt did a great job of that here. I dare you to read this and not remember these characters two weeks from now. Herbie, Fishbein, Zen, Cloud, Wolf. These were all hilarious characters with their own unique shit going on. Herbie, especially, with his obsession of dieting and exercise, despite never going through with anything or ever actually putting any work into his regimen. His White Castle breakdown binge was classic.

I also thought Zen and Cloud’s bickering was hilarious. I thought Herbie’s really bad version of James Bond was funny. Loser Fishbein and his dream to one day go on a “Canadian Adventure” with friends.  I even loved the out-of-left-field Russian agents who were there to assassinate the Thallus because Russia’s president “hated Marchentia” (despite the fact that it didn’t exist). I loved watching them dance awkwardly in the club and argue whether you can only do “The Twist” dance to the song “The Twist” or if it was allowed during other songs as well.

And I think what elevated this beyond your typical comedy was that Matt was actually trying to say something with the story. We do follow the masses at the expense of our own opinion. I was just talking about this the other week in regards to what movies we feel we’re allowed to “like” and “dislike.” There was a theme building here that we’d rather pretend we know what everyone’s talking about and go along with it rather than do a little research, form our own opinion, and rock the boat.

There were a couple things that didn’t work for me though. Every once in a while, the scenes felt a little stilted, particularly early on, and I think that’s because Matt was setting up so much story. That’s one of the hardest things about writing an intricate plot like this one, is that almost everything in your first act – all your scenes – double as set-ups. You’re setting up how we come up with the Thallus idea. You’re setting up who Eve is and that Marty wants her. You’re setting up Zen and Cloud’s problems with the system, so we understand why they kidnap the Thallus later. No matter how good of a writer you are, if you have to pack a lot of exposition into your story, it’s going to bleed through at times and make scenes feel a little artificial.

The only thing you can do to combat this is keep working on the scenes and keep simplifying the setups for all these later events. The less information you have to give the audience, the more you can focus on the making the scenes themselves entertaining, which is doubly important in a comedy, since it’s hard to make people laugh when you have to cram a lot of information into the scene as well. Matt did a pretty good job of this in places, but in other spots it felt like the exposition overwhelmed the scene and gave it that “stilted” feel.

The only other big problem I had with the script was the final act. This is where all the storylines intersected. While it was easy to identify who was who in their own separate worlds, once everyone came together, since there were so many of them, I had to read everything twice to remember who the characters in the scenes were, how they knew each other, and what all the subtle but important story points were between those characters so I could fully enjoy their interactions. We have a three-way car chase for example, and I was trying to remember who everyone in each car was and how they were related to one another, as well as those subtle intricacies between all of them. Because of that I had to read everything twice. The end of the script is so important. It’s when the reader should be flying through the pages because things are building and moving quickly towards the climax. If you’re stopping to read everything twice, it’s the exact opposite experience of what you want the reader to go through.

Despite those problems, I really liked this. You don’t often see an amateur comedy (or a comedy in general) that has this much story going on, yet always stays so focused and entertaining. If you’re a comedy fan, you’ll definitely want to take the Thallus for a spin.

Script link: The Thallus of Marchentia

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

What I learned: Once you’ve set up everything in your first act, go back through those scenes and try to smooth them out as much as possible. Do everything in your power to hide the setups, or else your opening act will feel like a bunch of exposition as opposed to a bunch of entertainment.

“The Sequence what??”

Edit: A couple of people in the comments section have told me that someone (Chris Soth) already uses the term the “mini-movie method,” so I’m changing the terminology back to the original “Sequence Approach.”  

Why is writing a script so difficult? I can answer that easily. Because there are a lot of damn pages to fill! Specifically, it’s that second act that kills everyone. That’s where the enormity of the story hits you, and when a lot of writers realize they don’t have enough to fill up all that space. I mean when you think about it, writing a first act isn’t that hard. You set up your characters, introduce your concept, get the plot rolling. Anybody can do that. But as soon as you get past those first 30 pages, you find it harder and harder to move on. All of a sudden filling up even five pages feels impossible. You just want to get to the damn end so you can resolve the story.

I recently got to thinking, “What’s the problem here? What is it about that vast amount of white space that trips people up so much?” And I realized it’s the lack of structure within that space. It’s a little like wanting to be a doctor and thinking about all that schooling you need. 10 years. 10 YEARS! How the hell are you supposed to get through that?

But when you start breaking it down into years and then semesters and then classes – in other words, into MANAGEABLE CHUNKS – it starts to feel doable. And it’s the same thing with screenwriting. You need to find a way to break those 120 screenplay pages down into manageable chunks.

This brought me back to a screenwriting philosophy I keep gaining more and more respect for as time goes by: “The Sequence Approach.” This is not my creation. I learned about it through Paul Gulino’s book, “The Sequence Approach,” (the only book I link to on the site besides my own) and he learned it because it’s how pre-1960 Hollywood used to format their screenplays. Now I never liked that name: “The Sequence Approach.” It sounds too mathematical for a craft that’s supposed to be creative. But it is what it is so it will have to do!

Now like I said, our big problem here is the fact that when we look at a screenplay as a whole, it’s too big. Even if we break it down into 3 acts, that’s still 50-60 unstructured pages we have to fill up in that second act. It’s too daunting! We need a way to create manageable chunks within that framework, portions small enough that they don’t intimidate us.

The Sequence Approach basically states that instead of writing one giant 110 page story, we write eight 12-15 page smaller stories.  Think about it.  Everyone can write a 15 page short, right?  That’s easy.  And if you can write one 15-page short, you can write eight 15-page shorts.

All you have to do is come up with a movie concept that features a protagonist with a goal, then write 8 mini-scripts with that protagonist (or in some cases, supporting characters) pursuing 8 linked mini-goals. The pursuit of these mini-goals will last 12-15 pages each, and be little mini-scripts in themselves, with their own setup, conflict, and resolution. Let me show you how it works in action.

I thought up a movie idea not long ago that I kinda dig. It’s not great, but it will serve our purposes for this article. Here it is:

TITLE: Trust Fund Dan
GENRE: Comedy
PREMISE: A 40 year old trust fund baby who’s been living off his dead parents’ money for the past 20 years, is informed that an overlooked banking error from 1990 has resulted in the termination of his trust fund. For the first time in his life, he’ll have to get a job and learn to live in the real world.

So before you write your script, you want to lay out all eight of your sequences and write out the objective of your protagonist within each. Each of these eight objectives will drive the story forward until the next sequence arrives. In addition to listing the goal of your character in each sequence, list the purpose of the sequence itself (a general breakdown of where you want it to go) along with any other ideas you may have. So this is how the sequence outline for Trust Fund Dan might look like:

Sequence 1
Goal: Dan tries to put together the ultimate party.
Purpose: Establish that Dan is rich and lives off his trust fund.  The purpose of this sequence is to show how easy Dan’s life is and how out of touch he is with the real world. Sleeping in, getting his next stash of pot, and attending parties are really his only three obligations. Establish, as he calls people and puts together this lavish party, that he’s a moron who’s never worked a day in his life and doesn’t even understand the concept of money. At the end of the sequence, he’ll get the call from his lawyer and learn that all of his money has been taken away.

Sequence 2
Goal: Dan tries to get his money back.
Purpose: Now that it’s gone, Dan desperately tries to figure out what happened and how to get his money back. He goes to the Trust Fund lawyers, the banks, everyone associated with his money, to figure out what happened. But because he’s so stupid and knows nothing about the real world, he fails to understand any of what they’re telling him. But the consensus is clear: He’s broke. He asks his friends for money, but finds out that none of them were his real friends. They were just leeching off him. At the end of the sequence, he doesn’t even have enough money to buy food. He realizes he needs to get a job.

Sequence 3
Goal: Dan tries to get a job.
Purpose: Much like the scenes in Step-Brothers, these scenes will show just how clueless Dan is about “jobs” and how the real world works. Have fun with these scenes. He goes through a montage of job interviews and makes a complete fool out of himself. He finally gets stuck as a part-time janitor at a local community college.

Sequence 4
Goal: To figure a way out of this mess.
Purpose: When Dan realizes just how shitty real work is and how little he gets paid, he starts plotting a way back to his life of luxury and invests in every get-rich quick scheme he can find. From spending his entire month’s pay on scratch-off lottery tickets to starting up sketchy internet businesses that rely exclusively on porn advertising. His scary co-janitor, a former gang-member, even enlists him in a vague business venture that involves something about “credit cards.” He fails at everything because he doesn’t know anything. He also occasionally runs into a very pretty teacher there who he instantly falls in love with.

Sequence 5
Goal: To ask the teacher out (or find a way to spend more time with her).
Purpose: Because Dan has no idea how to manage money, he’s unable to pay rent and is kicked out of his apartment. He is now officially homeless and starts secretly living at the college. In his pursuit of the teacher, he starts hanging out in her lectures and, for the first time, starts to actually learn something. Because he’s also the worst janitor ever, he’s always in danger of being fired. But he eventually convinces the teacher to go out with him on a date (which should be a funny scene, since he won’t be able to pay for it).

Sequence 6
Goal: To get back on his feet.
Purpose: Despite the teacher starting to affect how Dan sees the world (she helps him see the value of hard work), Dan finds out that his little co-venture with his fellow ex-con janitor buddy has panned out! They’re bringing in the dough! Dan quits his janitor job and starts spending money like crazy again, taking the teacher on an extravagant date of the likes he used to experience all the time. Dan’s on top of the world again and he couldn’t be happier. But alas, he has no idea that his “business” involves stealing people’s credits cards, and at the end of the sequence, he’s arrested and thrown in jail. Mortified at what he was doing, the teacher leaves him.

Sequence 7
Goal: To figure himself out.
Purpose: After a short stint in jail, Dan’s mysteriously bailed out. It’s his lawyer, who informs him that he was able to pull off a miracle and retain half the money from the original trust fund, enough for Dan to live comfortably for the rest of his life. Dan should be excited, but he isn’t. For the first time, he wants to know what he really wants out of life. He finds out more about how his parents earned their money, how hard they worked for it, and again that theme of “the value of hard work” is hit upon.

Sequence 8
Goal: Get the girl back.
Purpose: Dan decides that instead of wasting money on a bunch of stupid boring shit, he’s going to invest it in a degree and pursue a real career. So he enrolls at the college he was a janitor at. He enrolls in all of the teacher’s classes, but she ignores and rebuffs all his advances. In the end, he pulls out of all of her classes and focuses on getting a degree. Finally, he’s learned to appreciate the “value of hard work.” By chance, one day after school, he sees her in the parking lot and her car won’t start (Her car not starting will be set up multiple times throughout the script. This will be the big payoff). He smiles. Walks towards her. Cut to black.

So this is obviously a rough and tumble outline of the story. But that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. It’s a first run-through. The idea is to get your 8 sequences down so you have a game plan in place. As you get started on the script, you’ll add more detail to each sequence, move things around, and add scenes and characters. I might make Dan’s Trust Fund lawyer a bigger character, for example. I might have him befriend a few of the kids at the college and give those characters some arcs of their own. I might make some of these sequence goals more concrete (Number 7, “To figure himself out,” feels a little vague. I’d like to improve upon that). I’d try to introduce the love interest earlier somehow.   All of that will be added as you either write your script or do successive drafts of your outline.

Now it’s not always going to be this simple. Each script is different. Things get tricky when there isn’t a clear goal for a sequence, which is the case, for example, with a lot of romantic comedies. I don’t recall any sequence goals in When Harry Met Sally. But in that case, you’d still divide your script into 8 smaller scripts. You just need to work harder to figure out what each of those smaller stories will focus on. A story is easiest to tell when the main character is trying to achieve something. But since you don’t always have that, you might instead say, “The opening sequence in When Harry Met Sally is about Harry and Sally getting to know each other.” In other words the “goal” is transferred over to you the writer. You write the 15-page sequence where Harry and Sally ride to New York together with a strong emphasis on getting to know each other. The idea here is that by breaking everything down into these manageable chunks, it’ll be easier to create some element of focus for each “chunk,” and therefore you should be able to get through the entire script more easily.

There ya have it, an easy-peasy way to write a script. Try it out. You may be surprised at how simple it is!

Genre: Period/Drama/Comedy?
Premise: A group of Allied men is tasked with going into Europe during World War 2 and saving all the culturally important pieces of art before they’re stolen by the Nazis.
About: George Clooney co-wrote and directed this film. The film stars himself, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, and Cate Blanchett. It was originally supposed to be released in 2013, but Clooney couldn’t finish it in time, so it’ll be released February 7th. This is Clooney’s 4th writing effort (2 features and one TV movie). Co-writer Grant Heslov is Clooney’s co-writer in crime, working with him on two of those movies, but is probably better known as an actor who’s appeared in over 60 TV shows and films.
Writers: George Clooney & Grant Heslov (based on the book, “The Monuments Men” by Robert M. Edsel).
Details: 4th draft – June 15, 2012

The Monuments Men feels like that odd-duck of a movie writer-director George Clooney is trying to make more of in an increasingly derivative Hollywood that caters too heavily to 13 and 14 year olds. You gotta love Clooney for taking on the likes of billionaire Daniel Loeb recently, who tried to trash the studio he invested in (Sony) for making so many duds, which Clooney said was “dangerous to our industry” for someone who didn’t know jack about filmmaking to say.  Indeed, the more you push studios to only go with the super safe bets, the less originality we’re going to get. Clooney believes in taking chances, in making adult movies like The Monuments Men. And I’m all in with him. We need to celebrate when our biggest and brightest stars create diversity in the market. If all I’m going to get is Transformers movies for the rest of my life, I’m walking off the stage without finishing my speech (Miss SS: “That’s the first time I thought Michael Bay might be an android that someone forgot to charge all the way.”)

So I bet you’re thinking, “Wow, Carson must’ve really loved the script for The Monuments Men with that kind of introduction,” right? Oh how wrong you’d be! You see, I want diversity just like the Cloonester. But I want diversity with GOOD WRITING, not the wandering unclear narrative that The Monuments Men turned out to be.

So it’s 1942, and Professor Frank Stokes brings it to the president’s attention that while, yes, millions of people are dying in that little war over in Europe, the bad guys are stealing all the great art and bringing it back to Hitler, which is pretty bad too. Not only that, but guys with grenades and tanks don’t pay much mind to the 900 year old paintings that are inside local churches.  If someone in the know were there, those paintings could be protected, even saved!

He proposes getting a group of men together, stodgy old art-scholar types, men who know the difference between Picasso and Park LaBrea, head directly into the war, and start saving all that art. The prez agrees and off they go, but not before a trailer-perfect basic training montage of all these out-of-shape men trying to climb over a wall.

Of the men we have Granger, a painter, Garfield, a sculptor, Savitz, the president of the Harvard Society For Contemporary Art, Campbell, an architect, and Jean-Claude, director of design at a well-known university.

Once they get to Europe, the men decide to split up, with some going to Normandy, some going to Belgium, etc. etc. From that point on, things get a little unclear. I want to be as nice as possible, but it was hard to keep track of who was where and why. For the most part, these pairs were in the forest, following one lead after another, trying to find any Nazi-stolen paintings they could and getting them back.

As they collect clues, the end of the war nears, and they get closer to the front line of Germans who are stealing this art, eventually figuring out where they’re going to be before they’re there, and trying to head them off at the pass. They’re able to get there, but with the Germans still lingering, and the Russians coming in to claim their share of the loot, it won’t be easy to get all those paintings back.

Sheesh, at 145 pages, this script was a World War in itself.  I felt like I was storming the beaches of Boremandy.  So what is a reader’s biggest fear when he opens a script this big? Why do they always complain when they see a page number this huge? Because 999 times out of 1000, it means the script is UNFOCUSED. It means the writers lost themselves somewhere along the way, following multiple threads and multiple characters into unchartered wars, and couldn’t find their way back to shore.

So guess what The Monuments Men’s biggest problem is. Any takers? Shouldn’t be that difficult.

I’m not sure how many drafts Clooney and Heslov wrote after this (this is the 4th). So maybe they fixed this issue. But boy is this script all over the place. One of the biggest problems is that the monuments men SPLIT UP. They go in pairs to different countries. So instead of getting to see all these personalities work together in a cohesive format, they’re sent off to do their own thing. That seemed like a really odd choice to me. Wouldn’t it have been so much better to see these guys tackle this thing as a group?

And that brings me to THE biggest problem. The goal here is too vague. It’s not clear exactly what everyone has to do. When you give your protagonist a goal, it’s best for them and the audience if it’s specific (Indiana Jones goes after THE ARK, not a bunch of different religious artifacts). Here, everyone’s going after “art.” Not any specific piece of art. Just as much or whatever art they come across.

I couldn’t help but think this script would’ve been a thousand times better if they were going after one very important piece of art, not unlike how they structured Saving Private Ryan. Can you imagine a funnier version of Saving Private Ryan (which is kind of how they’re marketing this anyway) with these old guys searching for a particular painting in a giant war fought by 20 year olds? It may have even been cooler if a really rich criminal hired 7 guys to go into the middle of World War 2 and steal him one of the most important paintings in the world under the cover of all this chaos (hmmm, future heist film?). Or, if they wanted to stick closer to the real story, then at least have them going after a particular group of paintings (that were all being transported together), anything that made the goal singular, as opposed to randomly spread all over the place. Because it was the “randomly spread all over the place” characters that made this thing feel so damn unfocused.

In fact, the likely reason they’re having so much trouble editing this is because they don’t have that clearly laid out goal that EVERYONE is going after. It’s all so spread out and unclear, that likely everyone in the editing room is unclear about who they should be following and who they should give the most time too.

That was another issue. Who was the protagonist? I’m not sure. I’m sure the writers would tell me, “Fuck you. Who says you only need one protagonist?” And I’d say, “Okay, fair point.” But if you don’t have a clear protagonist leading the story, you need to have clarity in the other parts of your story to offset that, and this did not.

Likewise, a ticking time bomb would’ve really helped here. There doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. Characters sit around and talk about the war and we’re unclear where they’re going or how long this is all going to last. Again, this comes back to the goal, that they must “get art,” and not a specific piece of art. How can you create a ticking time bomb on getting something if there’s no clear piece of art (or grouping of art) to get?

Probably the biggest thing that surprised me, though, was how similar all the characters were. Clooney, being an actor, knows how important characters are. But nobody really stuck out here. There was no big personality, no one who popped off the page. Often times I’d be reading and have no idea who was talking. Then I’d look at the character names and realize I didn’t remember who was who. That’s a real killer for a script, especially an ensemble, when you’re writing a bunch of characters and you want those characters to stand out from each other.

This was an ambitious idea, and something that had the potential to be cool. Despite the 1 billion stories that have been told about World War 2, I’d never heard of this one before, so, yeah, why not make a movie out of it?

But the story feels uneven on the page, and I suspect that’s the same thing that’s happening in the editing room. I know Clooney is about trying new things and not always catering to the Hollywood machine, but this script could’ve been so much better had it followed some basic storytelling devices like having a concrete goal and more urgency. The biggest problem with it, though, is that it spread itself too thin. Too many characters in too many places with not enough meat/drama packed in those places to keep us interested. Should be interesting, though, to see what the final cut comes out like.

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

What I learned: When reading a two person scene, it’s usually easy to tell who’s who, even if you’re not looking at the character names. But in a scene with multiple characters, it’s harder, because a lot of people are talking. These scenes are the true test for screenwriters, then, to see if they’re good with dialogue. If the reader is able to tell who’s who in these scenes without looking at the character names, you have done an amazing job differentiating your characters and dialogue. If not, it means all your characters sound the same, and you must put more effort into making them sound different (i.e. one always swears, one stutters, one barely speaks, one can’t stop talking, one’s a wise-ass, one’s a know-it-all, one’s a tough guy, one always sees the worst in everything, one’s religious and always bringing up God). So go into one of your scripts and pick a scene where all of your characters are talking. Without looking at the names, are you easily able to pick out who said what? If so, good job!  If not, fix it!

Genre: TV Pilot – Cop Procedural
Premise: (from IMDB) The lives of two detectives, Rust Cohle and Martin Hart, become entangled during a 17-year hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana.
About: This was a huge spec pilot that went out that a lot of networks were bidding for, with HBO finally winning. It stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson and will premier this Sunday. Creator Nic Pizzolatto is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer. He’s an author of the novel ‘Galveston.’ Originally from Louisiana, he taught literature at several universities, including the University of Chicago, before going into screenwriting in 2010. His only other credits are writing a couple of episodes for, what sounds like, the exact same show, in Fox’s “The Killing.”
Writer: Nic Pizzolatto
Details: 52 pages

I remember when this show first sold. There was a TON of talk about it, the kind of talk usually reserved for some super high-concept spec sale or a new Christopher Nolan movie. I read through the description of the show several times, trying to figure out what the big deal was, but as far as I could tell, it was just another procedural.

I guess it did have Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson involved, two established film stars, and since you don’t usually see that in a TV show, it was worth noting. But I was still trying to figure out why the trade sites were going batshit over this thing. I felt like I was missing something. Uhhhh, so it’s a procedural about detectives trying to catch a killer? Haven’t we, um, seen that before? Well, with the script in hand, it was time to find out what all the fuss was about!

True Detective begins oddly. Former Detective Martin Hart, 56, is being interviewed about a couple of things, his relationship with his old partner, Rustin Cohle, and an old case he was involved in 20 years ago, where a young woman was killed and posed as an angel.

Most of that discussion, strangely enough, centers on Cohle, who appears to be a weirdo to the tenth degree. There are some people on this planet who don’t believe in God. Cohle is the thousand times multiple of that person. He buys and reads dozens of books to help define his belief, how we’re all a bunch of meaningless nobodies floating inside a meaningless construct of time and space. Your typical upbeat stuff!

Anyway, we’re soon interviewing Cohle as well, getting his thoughts on that old case with the dead woman posed as an angel, but more so Hart and Hart’s thoughts about him. An inordinate amount of time in True Detective is spent on Hart’s thoughts on Cohle, and Cohle’s thoughts on Hart’s thoughts on Cohle. Sounds exciting right? Well it isn’t!

While we do eventually begin talking about the most interesting part of the story, the dead girl posed like an angel, the description of her and what they think happened to her is actually quite brief. Instead, the writer decides to make the centerpiece of True Detective a visit Cohle made to Hart’s house for a family dinner. Cohle doesn’t like being around people, so he gets wasted beforehand. We assume this is probably some insight into a huge drinking problem Cohle has or the beginning of some major event that caused a fracture in their friendship, but it’s neither. He just comes over. He’s drunk. And he talks to Hart’s wife and kids. Wow, way to build up something that goes absolutely nowhere!

In actuality, this entire pilot, where nothing happens, is a setup for one line, the final line, the only line in the script that actually gets you excited. Unfortunately, BECAUSE it’s the last line, it gets you excited for an episode to come, not the episode you just watched, where you feel beyond gypped that you just spent an hour of your life watching/reading. (Spoiler) That line is when Rustin Cohle says to the guys interviewing him: “It’s started again, hasn’t it? The killing. Him. And how can that be possible, when we got the bastard in 2000?”

So how is it that a script/show like this can get so much heat, and land on such a quality network like HBO, when its pilot is so subpar? GREAT QUESTION! I’m trying to figure that out myself. But I’d like to venture a guess. Cohle is an interesting character. I mean, I wasn’t interested by him. His bleak depressing persona actually kinda put me off. But his whole extreme philosophy about how life is meaningless along with the crazy attention to detail he has for investigating murders – I can see an actor wanting to play that role. And in writing, that’s really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to create characters so compelling that actors can’t NOT want to play them. That’s exactly what happened, with suddenly hot Matthew McConaughey coming on. He legitimized the project, which gets a known actor wanting to play opposite him (Harrelson), and all of a sudden everyone’s saying this pilot is genius, when in reality, it’s simply a well-known actor wanting to play a challenging role. If I were the head of HBO and someone came to me with a shitty pilot that Matthew McConaghey was attached to, I’d probably buy it too.

And I hate to use that word – shitty – but come on. The majority of True Detective is people talking about each other! That’s never ever interesting. I think the biggest faux pas the script commits is that it masquerades as something deep, when in reality there’s zero depth. The writing is dense, with thorough descriptions of characters and events (such as the way the dead angel body is posed), giving the illusion that we’re dealing with something profound here. But it’s all a magic act. Description is boring. Remembering old times or people when they were younger is boring. If your story is devoid of conflict or drama, then you don’t have a story. And there is ZERO conflict/drama in True Detective.

The only real thing the script has going for it is the unanswered question of “why the fuck are we interviewing these guys?” I admit, that was the only thing I was looking forward to – the answer to that question. But not because the story did a good job making me want to know. Because I was dying to find some kind of point to what I was reading!

If this had showed up in my Inbox for an Amateur Friday slot, I would’ve been positive it was from a beginner. It takes good writers ONE SCENE to set up who their characters are. Not 20 pages! And the whole dead angel girl isn’t even original. It feels like every other setup for a serial killer. So I guess I’m not surprised that Pizzolatto is fairly new to screenwriting. I mean maybe he goes into actually telling stories in future episodes. But this episode was one big boring setup where nothing happens.

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

What I learned: As David Mamet has often said, one of the most boring things you can write is a character talking about another character. There is nothing inherently interesting about it. Since this entire pilot is based around people talking about other people, it’s pretty easy to see why it doesn’t work.

Genre: Found-footage Horror
Premise: A young man finds himself “marked” by a witch who lives below him.
About: Feeling that their franchise was getting stale, Paranormal Activity decided to take its newest entry in a different direction. The Latino audience for PA has always been huge, so they decided to create a PA movie specifically for them. Writer/director Christopher Landon scripted PA 2, 3 AND 4 (if you want to talk about “series fatigue,” I actually thought the fourth one was the third one until I wrote this review). Landon’s break-out writing credit was 2007’s Disturbia. It’s just coming to light now that Shia LaBeouf plagiarized his entire performance from the film. Landon is the son of famous TV star, Michael Landon, who headlined one of the biggest TV shows ever, Little House On The Prairie.
Writer: Christopher Landon
Details: 87 minutes long

The last Paranormal Activity was really bad. It’s hard to remember anything about it because it was so terrible, but what I do remember is that ¾ of the movie went by before anything happened. No story, no scares, no nothing. The creators of Paranormal Activity finally realized that their format was broken and they needed to look in another direction. I mean come on, how many times can you show a clip of someone sleeping with a counter in the bottom corner?

Here’s the thing though – the found footage genre is not dead. Oh no, my friends, it’s not even close. Any time a found footage film makes 19 million its opening weekend, its genre isn’t dead. That’s because of found footage’s unique advantage over other genres. It can be made with no name actors (who cost nothing!), and is super-cheap to produce. In fact, writer/director Christopher Landon defends the format best (in an interview he did on Crave Online) – “You know, it’s funny. I don’t think found footage is in danger of running out. I think it’s in that process now where I think we’re going to obviously start to see more and more movies that are tackling different genres through that lens. I think you’re going to see more comedies. I think we’re going to see a lot of sci-fi movies. I don’t think it’s going away entirely.

“Sometimes it reminds me of when reality TV first really hit and was growing. There was a lot of pushback and people saying, “Oh, it’s going to go away, it’s going to go away.” But it didn’t go away. It just changed a lot. That’s kind of where I see it going because there’s a thing that’s happened in our culture, a thing called YouTube which has completely changed the way that we experience movies because people are out there making stuff all the time and capturing moments, so there’s a certain language that I think we’ve adopted. So I think that the found footage format connects to that. I think it’s very relatable to people, even if you’re not necessarily making a “found footage” movie. I think the style of it connects with the audience in a way that traditional movies don’t.”

So what was The Marked Ones about? Well, the good news is we’re not stuck in a freaking house the entire running time. Best friends Jesse (the straight guy) and Hector (the funny one) have just graduated high school. They live in a lower-middle class apartment complex on the East side of Los Angeles that for all intents and purposes seems to be a group of chirpy, happy people.

That is except for Anna, their mysterious first floor neighbor. There have been rumors going around forever that Anna is a witch, but we never get her side of the story because she’s KILLED by one of Jesse and Hector’s friends from school. Being the high school trouble-makers that they are, the two investigate Anna’s now-abandoned apartment, and find a lot of spooky witch shit laying around.

Soon after, Jesse begins experiencing mood swings, as well as super strength and exceptional skate board ability (no seriously!). Hector, being his eternally cheery self, has to get it all on video, and even uploads the feats to Youtube (in one of the funnier lines of the movie, the youtube crowd belittles the tricks as mere “cheap effects.” Disappointed, Hector says, “Man, the people who comment here are so negative,” in a way that only fellow internet posters can truly understand).

After awhile, it’s clear that with these new found abilities, Jesse is also losing control of himself. When he’s finally kidnapped by a witch coven that plans to take advantage of his powers, Hector and some hard core gang members head to the coven’s home to get him back. As you might imagine, it doesn’t go well.

The biggest lesson of this movie is that people get tired of the same old crap. So after awhile, you can’t keep dishing it to them (Paranormal Activity 4). By adding a Chronicle aspect to the franchise (gaining powers) combined with a different culture (than the boring middle class white family) as well as getting out of the damn house, made The Marked Ones “fresh” enough to be enjoyable.

See there was a time when the claustrophobia of staying inside the house the whole movie worked. But not after four damn movies. That’s one of your jobs as a writer – to recognize what the general audience is getting bored of and adding a fresh angle to it. But this review isn’t so much about breaking down the movie as it is helping you write your own found footage film. I’ve read a good 50-60 found footage scripts and seen probably 20 found footage films. This is what I’ve discovered.

It’s becoming more and more accepted in these found footage movies that someone is holding a camera the whole time, even if it doesn’t make complete sense. Why hold a camera towards a monster that’s chasing you? Wouldn’t it be shaking by your side as you pump your arms running? But we still see it. Despite this practice becoming more common, it’s highly advisable that you motivate the reason why your characters are holding a camera. The thing with found footage is that it’s supposed to feel like REAL LIFE. So anything your characters are doing that doesn’t follow logic, alerts the reader/audience that it’s not real life. And their suspension of disbelief collapses.

You gotta bring the funny in FF. If you watch any family or friend’s video, someone (the cameraman, the person in front of the camera) is trying to be funny. It’s that age-old belief that once the camera comes on, you’re supposed to entertain. Paranormal Activity works best when it has that joker character (the husband from the first one, Hector from this one) making fun of shit. If someone isn’t joking around at least periodically, something about the “found footage” is going to feel off.

There should be no traditional character arcs in a found footage film. This isn’t Titanic where Rose finally learns how to enjoy life and follow her dreams. This is supposed to be REAL LIFE. People don’t typically change in real life. So if you try these big sweeping character arcs, they feel false, and expose the ruse of your “found footage.” Instead, let your characters change through the circumstances surrounding them. For example, Jesse changes because he’s marked, and starts losing control of himself. Hector changes because his best friend is acting weird and he’s scared for him.

Keep the script short. When it comes to found footage, the audience treats it almost like watching clips on Youtube. Their attention span for watching “real life” is shorter. So you can’t have these big long found footage movies. And really, the thing that creates screenplay bulk is complex storylines and lots of character development, something a found footage film should traditionally have none of. The Marked Ones was only 87 minutes.

This may seem like a small tip, but it’s an important one. Have at least ONE SCENE in your found footage script where the camera is used in an inventive/clever way. Or maybe a better way to put it is, make your camera become part of the story. One of the best scenes in The Marked Ones happens early on when they’re hearing strange noises coming from Anna’s place below them. So they tie the camera to a rope and lower it down the heating vent, looking at the video feed through Anna’s vent to see what’s going on. It’s an exciting scene because the camera’s now an actual part of the story. This is FOUND FOOTAGE, so you have to use that hand-held camera in interesting ways.

I think the hardest thing about writing Found Footage is that in real life, nothing happens. In movies, things constantly happen. So you’re trying to make a format entertaining that shouldn’t be entertaining. I mean who’s ever been stuck watching your Aunt Carol’s videos of her daughter’s figure skating lessons?

The great thing about Found Footage, though, is that it doesn’t have to be so perfectly linear and connected. You can use the power of the “Cut to black” (which The Marked Ones does constantly) and jump forward a week in time without the audience being jarred. You just can’t do that in a traditional film. A jump in time must be nuanced. In many ways, and I especially noticed this with The Marked Ones, Found Footage is just a bunch of selected vignettes tied together with “Cut to blacks.” Find the interesting scene that best tells the story. Then jump forward in time to the next interesting scene that tells the story.

I think whereas it was once okay to take the Paranormal Activity approach and have “nothing” happen for the first 60 minutes, audiences are getting more impatient with this format and so want the fun quicker. I don’t remember exactly where it happens in The Marked Ones, but Jesse and Hector’s friend from school kills Anna at around the 20 minute mark, a much earlier “inciting incident” than happens in any of the previous Paranormal Activity films.

Finally, I think it’s worth noting that this genre is still relatively young and therefore open to new ideas. If you’re not willing to play with the format in some way upon writing a FF film, don’t expect your FF script to stand out from the pack. And that’s exactly what producers interested in this format are looking for. Found footage films that are a little different in some way.

What about you guys? What have you found are the necessary components for a good found footage script?

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

What I learned: Emotional anchors. Every film, whether it be traditional or found footage, should have an “emotional anchor,” an emotional centerpiece the story can keep coming back to. As Landon points out in his interview I linked above, he wanted the emotional anchor of The Marked Ones to be this friendship between Jesse and Hector.