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.

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: Hunter’s Moon
GENRE: Action/Adventure
PREMISE: “Loosely based on a feature article I penned for Maxim (“The Death Dealer”) some years ago about an ex-merc who takes wealthy hunters on human safaris – mostly in Africa where they hunt poachers.”
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “The merc this story is based on – a very twisted individual by the name of Keith Idema – died last year in Mexico. He made the cover of the Wall Street Journal for detaining Afghan civilians – and torturing them! – back when bin Laden was still alive, trying to get intel on where he was hiding. Idema – who owned a gun store near where I grew up – taught me to shoot. On the weekends, he used to go to El Salvador to fight alongside the Contras against the Sandinistas.My first year of college (U of Maryland) – I came back from a long weekend and he was in my apartment, hiding behind the couch which he had flipped over to guard against grenade attacks.

Yes, you read that right. Here’s his Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Idema

The script, which I’d pitch as Billionaire Boys Club meets Most Dangerous Game meets Deliverance is pretty fuckin’ cool and based on events that actually took place.

TITLE: Penalty
GENRE: Black comedy
LOGLINE: An ambitious soccer referee works his way up the lower leagues when he’s suddenly bribed to start throwing games.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “One thing I notice about your amateur submissions are that they seem to be mostly written by under 30s with comparatively little life experience. Technically they might be structured well and are always written in a confident style but generally lack a certain nuance that only age can give you. So come on Carson, how about us oldies. I propose an over 40s week to see if you can encourage a more measured kind of voice that can harness the important ground rules to something truly life-affirming.”

TITLE: Safeguard
GENRE: Action Thriller
LOGLINE: A hitman is offered the chance to avenge his wife’s murder by joining forces with a team of highly skilled ex-cons to prevent an assassination attempt in Paris. It’s Ronin meets the Dirty Dozen…
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “SAFEGUARD was a 2013 Nicholl SF. The script was a (four week) first draft so as you can imagine, I was utterly stunned to see it advance as far as it did in the contest. My first script was an honorable mention in Trackingb and also a PAGE Award winner and has since been taken on by the guys behind the Batman Trilogy and Man Of Steel.”

TITLE: Rigged
GENRE: Biopic
LOGLINE: The true story of Bobby Riggs, The Battle of the Sexes, and how the mafia may have influenced the most famous tennis match in history.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “Rigged combines something you love (tennis) with something you hate (biopics). Like chocolate covered raisins. It’s also tailor-made for an A-list actor (Paul Giamatti?), has clear GSU and features some of the most intense tennis scenes this side of Bridesmaids. Is this the first amateur biopic to get a “Worth the Read” by Carson?”

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: Contained Horror Thriller
Premise (from writer): A woman fights to escape an isolated home controlled by an Incubus, a demonic force that feeds on sexual energy. A task made more difficult by her co-hostages, who are content to remain under the creatures spell.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Something interesting about me: Watch the pilot episode of “The Wire” and you will see my elementary school in the background behind the young Barksdale dealers. I went from playing marbles to shooting craps on the same corners where many of the show’s stories were ripped. I’ve loved movies and writing since childhood. They provided a 90 minute respite from an oft times less than ideal environment. I’ve had many people tell me that a career as a writer was a dream beyond my reach. Admittedly, I believed them. But even without the hope of making a dime let alone a living, I kept writing, reading scripts, and consuming all I could to learn about the craft from sites like Scriptshadow. I can’t stop writing. I’ve tried. It is a part of me. A part I want to make better. A goal I work on daily. “In the Flesh” is a sample of that effort. I believe a good one. One that people will one day read and enjoy. If I’m wrong, I’ll write something better tomorrow.
Writer: Ken Alston
Details: 91 pages

note: I read this without knowing the logline (Miss SS picked the loglines for Amateur Week) which I think really helped my enjoyment of it.  

Whoa, the last Amateur Offering Post was a dead heat. 172 comments long and at the end, I still didn’t know which script had come out on top. A little backstory might help explain why I went with In the Flesh. If you received the last newsletter (the new one JUST WENT OUT – if you didn’t get it, check your SPAM now!), you know I touted a big surprise in those offerings. Well, that surprise was that none other than Grendl had written one of the scripts (Tall, Dark and Handsome). I figured it might be interesting to put one of his screenplays in there under an alias. As we all know, the cave-dwelling commenter can be a bit antagonistic, and that makes it hard to read his stuff objectively.  Without anything cluttering our judgment, I anticipated a fair contest.  It seemed to work for awhile until a couple of long-time readers sniffed out the surprise, recognizing his style from previous posts.

The thing was, Tall, Dark and Handsome did well, going neck and neck with In The Flesh, but when it was all said and done, I decided to give the review to the writer who hadn’t had a review on the site before. And I mean, how can you not love Ken after that “Why You Should Read” section? His comments convey hard work, overcoming adversity, a love of screenwriting, humility, and a great attitude. A little more heartwarming than, “Because I wrote it.” That’s not to say I’ll never review Grendl’s script. I probably will at some point. Just not this week.

Weak heroines not apply in “In The Flesh.” Alison, 28, is the kind of girl who goes after what she wants. And tonight, after a couple of drinks, she wants Cole, the one guy in the bar sexy enough to make her forget about morals.

The two spend a wild night in the throes of drunken passion, and upon waking up, Alison isn’t ashamed. This isn’t the kind of guy you wince at come morning wondering how you’re going to spin it to your friends (“Well, he was wearing nice… shoes?”).   Cole’s the real deal.

The thing is, the real deal isn’t around (they never seem to be once the morning comes).  But he was forward-thinking enough to leave her some brand new undergarments. Which begs a few questions Alison doesn’t want to ask. Weird clue #2 is when she goes downstairs and tries to leave, there’s no doorknob on the front door.

It’s here where she runs into Breeze, an airhead-ish hippy who’s as sweet as a bowl of cookie batter. Alison assumes Breeze will have answers, but she seems just as clueless as Alison is. In fact, Breeze assumed that Alison lives here. Hmmm, now things are getting really strange.

Alison quickly realizes that if they don’t get out fast, they’re going to be decorating the wormy underground of the backyard. So she tries to break out the window. Unfortunately, she’s met with electrified bars! Eventually, Alison meets a third tenant, Doyle, a proper British gentleman who seems to have been here for awhile. Doyle informs Alison that she should stop trying to get out because… no one gets out.

That night, Alison’s introduced to another piece of the puzzle in the form of a beast-like growl coming from the basement. Are they all food? A constant influx of main courses accompanied here for late-night consumption? We certainly think so. But the great thing about In The Flesh is that it never quite goes where you think it will. Things keep changing, and with every change, we become more unsure of our heroines’ fate.

One of the marks of a good script is if you don’t typically like the genre that you’re reading, yet you’re still into it. Actually, the setup for In The Flesh was right up my alley. A woman waking up in a strange house with a bunch of locked doors, each with their own mysterious tenant? I was in.

But then later (spoilers) we learn that there’s a monster in the basement. And usually that’s where I go “Ehhhhh, no thanks.” But the characters were all so well-drawn and expectation-defying, and the script kept tripping me up as far as where it was going, that I wanted to find out what would happen.

So when we do find out what’s in the basement (a person) and see how it acts towards our protagonists (tries to bite them), we assume it’s a vampire. But again, the great thing about In The Flesh is that it’s constantly going against convention. It’s not a vampire at all, but a Succubus (or Incubus?). Now I’ve never seen a Succubus used as a monster in a script before, so I thought that was a nice twist.

The monster fit the tone and theme of the script well. This was about flesh, about sex, about want. A Succubus (or at least this succubus) survives by sucking all the life out of you through sex. We see this nicely handled not only with Alison and Breeze, but with the mysterious frail girl living in one of the rooms who’s only a shell of her former self (she’s been sucked dry) as well as the overtly subordinate Doyle.

Which makes Alison stand out all the more, because she’s the only one here who wants to get out and will do anything to do so. In other words, she’s ACTIVE, which is exactly what we want our main character to be. I mean this is easily one of the strongest female leads I’ve read in awhile.

Also, this horror script succeeded where so many others fail in the emotional component. We need a relationship to latch onto, something to play with, something that changes over time. That’s what gets us through the second act. Here it’s Alison’s relationship with Breeze. At first she’s disgusted by Breeze, calling her a moron, a retard. She even offers her up to the Succubus in a deal for a better room! But after awhile, she becomes attached to Breeze, and she wants to save her just as much as she wants to save herself.

I did have a few problems with the script. It was a little too bloody for me. I prefer the “cutaway” approach, cutting away before the blood starts gushing. And to Ken’s credit, he does that sometimes (the scene where the Succubus attacks Breeze in her room for example). But at the end, there’s so much blood, it almost becomes comical, and I think it undermines how clever the script has been up to that point.

I also thought some of the rules in this universe were unclear. I never fully understood why the Succubus slept during the day. I thought it lived by similar rules to the vampire in that it had to avoid sunlight. But this seemed to be true sometimes and not true others? I don’t now. It was confusing. A minor problem to clear up though.

Oh, and let me say this. This may be the first sex scene I’ve ever read in a script that I’d consider “hot.” Usually sex scenes are boringly or awkwardly written, but when Breeze makes a move on Alison, I am not going to lie, I forgot I was reading a screenplay. Yeah yeah, I know everyone will be saying, “Girl on girl. What guy isn’t going to like that??” I’m telling you, I don’t care what the sex scene is – I’m always aware I’m reading it.  This was the first time in forever that I got lost in one.  Kudos to Ken for pulling that off.

So the verdict is, this was a darn good script. It’s great to find and celebrate another talent here on Scriptshadow. ☺

Script link: In The Flesh (note: this is a newer draft of the script that Ken wrote after the comments he got on Scriptshadow.  So it’s probably even better than the draft I read)

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

What I learned: Try to store something in the freezer for your readers. One of the issues I see with amateur writers is they lay everything out right away. If a character shows up, they explain him. If something weird occurs, we’ll get three minutes of dialogue telling us why. Good writers give you a glimpse of something, then store it in the freezer for later consumption. I love how Ken introduced the Frail Girl, but before we could figure out anything about her, she was tucked back in her room, not to be seen for another 20 pages. We want to know what’s up with that girl, but we only get to find out when the writer takes her out of the freezer.