Genre: Drama/Black Comedy/Thriller
Premise: A Midwestern wife/schoolteacher begins to suspect that her husband’s cheating on her, so enlists the help of a fellow teacher she has the hots for to catch him in the act.
About: This was the #1 script on the 2013 Black List. Some of you will probably be depressed to hear that the writer, Andrew Sodroski, attended Harvard, implying that in order to be a top screenwriter, one must be Ivy League educated. But fear not, Sodroski’s road was not an easy one. He’s been writing since at least 2007 (when he wrote his only other known credit, a video short titled, “The Handmaid”), and therefore had to put in plenty of blood sweat and tears to get to this point. Wait, I don’t know if that makes us feel better or worse. If someone from Harvard is having a tough time breaking into Hollywood, what does that say about the rest of us?? Anyway, the script is being directed by heavy-hitting documentarian Errol Morris (this will be his first feature) and have Naomi Watts in the lead role.
Writer: Andrew Sodroski
Details: 117 pages

I suppose I should be excited that I’m one of the few people reading today’s script who’s actually BEEN to Holland, Michigan. I’m thinking that makes me better than everyone else somehow. Not sure how that would be, exactly, but I’m working on it.

What I don’t seem to have perspective on is why the number 1 Black List script had so few votes this year (45 I think?). I remember a couple of years ago when The Imitation Game, the number 1 script on the list, had like 120 votes. What does this mean? That not as many people are voting on the Black List? Or does it mean there are actually a lot more good scripts in town and the votes are more evenly dispersed (or possibly the opposite – there’s nothing good so they’re more evenly dispersed)? I’m not sure. But the low vote count is tickling (tee-hee) my concerned bone. Let’s untickle it with a little review, shall we?

“Holland, Michigan” is a strange little script. The first half is basically a combination of past Black List entries “The Details,” “The Oranges,” and “Jeff Who Lives At Home.” It’s a quirky little story about a Midwestern teacher named Nancy Vandergroot (nailed the Midwestern name) who’s feeling a little stuck in life. Much of this is via her own doing, though she doesn’t realize it. This is that woman in town who lives by God’s word, and who’s never performed an evil deed in her life.

Nancy has a wonderful little boy, Harry, and an optometrist husband, Fred, who spends the majority of his free time on his elaborate train set in the basement. To say that Nancy is a little jealous of that train set is a Midwestern understatement.

Well one day, Nancy is going through her jewelry box, only to realize that one of her earrings is missing. At first she suspects the babysitter, but after conferring with another teacher at her school, reformed bad-boy Dave, he convinces her to look deeper before she convicts anyone. She does, and is surprised when she stumbles across a group of Polaroid pictures in her husband’s basement.

Strangely, most of the pictures are of the model houses he’s built into his train set, but one is of a woman, and this is when she begins to suspect what was previously unfathomable. That her husband is cheating on her. After doing some more investigating, she gets a reluctant Dave (who she’s beginning to see romantically) to follow her husband on his next business trip in hopes of catching him in the act.

Dave does, and here is where we move past the mid-point, and EVERYTHING changes. I will say this. I was wondering what the big deal was about Holland, Michigan through those first 60 pages. I mean don’t get me wrong. It was good. A fun look at Midwestern America. I just didn’t understand what about it was “No. 1 Worthy.” However, when we find out what Fred is REALLY doing on these business trips and what’s really going on with his elaborate train set, let’s just say you immediately understand why the script snagged the top spot.

Okay, since you can’t discuss this script without spoilers, I’ll warn you when they’re coming. But I wanted to start by saying even before the twist came around, there was some pretty good writing to admire.

What stuck out to me was that all the characters had something they were doing. In a character piece, that’s essential. I see too many amateur writers giving only their hero and romantic lead “things” to do. Good writers give everyone something to do. So here, Fred, the husband, is all about his train set. Harry, the son, is all about getting ready for a dance he’s doing at the upcoming fair. Nancy is first obsessed with her missing earring, and then later with her husband’s potential infidelity. And Dave is trying to help a struggling student in one of his classes. These pursuits are what individualize and deepen your characters. Without them, they’re more “words on a page” than “people in a world.”

And as I always say, even when you’re writing these smaller character-driven pieces, you still want to use a goal to drive the story. That’s because goals KEEP YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS ACTIVE, which is exactly how Nancy is drawn. At first, she’s looking into who stole her earring, and that leads to her following clues to determine if her husband is cheating on her. This is the action that drives the story along. It’s why we keep turning the pages. If Nancy’s simply hanging out with friends, bitching about her husband, we get bored quickly. She NEEDS THAT GOAL. The story NEEDS TO PUSH TOWARDS SOMETHING.

(spoilers) Okay, now we’ll get into why this script kicks ass. Holland, Michigan has a great little twist. We realize that Fred is not, in fact, having affairs. He’s killing these women. And all the beautifully crafted perfectly detailed houses on his model train set? Those are his trophies. Those are the houses of all the women he’s killed. Oh no!

I LOVED this twist. Twists are always a balancing act. You can’t oversell them beforehand or we’re going to know they’re coming. You can’t undersell them either, or when they happen, we’re going to be like, “Where the hell did that come from?” Holland, Michigan got that balance about as right as I’ve ever seen it. Because when it happened, I was shocked. But at the same time, I said, “Of course!” And remembered all the clues that had been set up. An expertly crafted major twist is the kind of writing that gets Black List voters drooling.

My problem with the script is more about what comes afterwards. I’m not going to get into details, but I think the script tried too hard to live up to its huge twist, and have that third act feel just as big and crazy as the twist itself. As a result, we get a series of questionable choices (Dave deciding to clean up the crime scene he caught Fred in?) and a finale that felt more like an ode to Fatal Attraction than the unique genre-bending script we’d been reading.

Then again, that’s the gamble you take with a script like this. We essentially have a quirky indie black comedy in the script’s first half, then a straight up thriller in the second. Whether you like it or not, there’s going to be some screenwriting collateral damage from that choice.

But man, that twist was so damn good and unexpected, it made me remember why I love reading scripts so much – it’s to find stuff like Holland, Michigan. It’s by no means a perfect script, but definitely worth the read.

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

What I learned: Characters who are stuck in life (like Nancy, or Lester from American Beauty) who are then “set free,” are always interesting because they’re essentially fish-out-of-water characters, and fish-out-of-water characters are fun to watch. Here are these people who have been “good” all their lives, now getting to be “bad.” – I mean how can you screw that up?  Indeed, Nancy is fun to watch for this very reason.

What I learned 2: A friendly reminder to always look for ways to spice up your dialogue. Never go with the expected response. In a great little scene where Fred (who’s an eye doctor) gives Dave an eye exam, they finish up and Fred tells Dave that his eyes are good. Now I want you to think of how you’d write that line of Fred’s. Go ahead, write down what you might have him say. A lazy writer might throw in something like, “Everything looks good.” Sure, it gets the point across, but it’s boring, right? Instead, Sodroski has Fred say, “Well sir, we like to say that only God has perfect vision, but you come pretty darned close.” It’s a sentence that has so much more life to it. What line did you come up with? Share it in the comments. ☺

Genre: Crime/Period
Premise: The 1970s-set true story of a con-artist, who was forced to work with a federal agent to turn the tables on other cons, mobsters, and politicians – namely, the volatile mayor of Camden, New Jersey.
About: I reviewed this script back in April in my newsletter.  Since I’m gearing up for a big 2014, I haven’t had time to put many new posts together.  Hence this is a re-post of that review.  I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I will soon, and I’m interested to see what they changed.  This draft (aggressively titled “American Bullshit”) was written by Eric Warren Singer.  Since then, David O. Russell (who also directs the film) rewrote it.  Singer made his mark over a decade ago when he sold a wild screenplay titled “The Sky Is Falling” that had all of Hollywood a-buzz.  He then went ten more years (selling a few more screenplays) before one of his scripts, The International, was produced.  Singer’s got a pretty interesting backstory worth checking out.
Writer: Eric Warren Singer (based on a true story)
Details: 133 pages – 9/2/10 draft

Okay, let’s get to the important stuff right off the bat. Bradley Cooper is dating a 20 year old?? And her name is Suki Waterhouse?? What’s up with that?? Didn’t Cooper blow off his Silver Linings Playbook co-star, Jennifer Lawrence, because she was “too young”? Well Bradley, she was 22. Which is two years older than your current girlfriend. And Suki Waterhouse? That name is only cool if you’re a movie star. Not cool otherwise.

Now what were we talking about? Oh yeah, David O Russell’s next project. Looks like we’re going back to the 70s for this one. Russell’s been playing with tiny budgets for 15 years now. I guess when you get two actors Academy Awards though, and your last two “artsy” movies made over 250 million dollars, the studio’s willing to open up the offers. Hence, we get a big grand period piece.

Russell’s taking on a tough genre though – the crime flick. The only one who makes consistent money in this genre is Scorsese. You saw what happened when they gave a non-Scorsese the reigns to one of these films (Gangster Squad). It landed like a piano being dropped from a tenth story Manhattan apartment. So there’s an inherent risk there. Now, personally, I didn’t think the script to Gangster Squad was all that. When you’re writing a crime flick, it’s gotta have some BITE. It’s gotta have tough scary guys pulling the strings, the kind of guys who make you wet your pants with a glance. Gangster Squad didn’t have that. American Bullshit does.

It’s 1979 and Mel Weinberg (Christian Bale) is living the life. The LYING life. Mel is a professional bullshitter. And lucky for him, he lived in a time where you could make a living bullshitting. There was no Google to do a quick background check. People had to take you at your word. And if you were a fast-talker, charming, and you knew how to smile at just the right time, you could convince a lot of people to do things that they didn’t want to do.

What Mel does for a living is a little complicated. Basically, he gets people to invest money in companies that don’t exist. By the time these investors find out these companies don’t exist, Mel and his partner/lover Maxine (Jennifer Lawrence) are long gone. This works out for him for awhile, but eventually the FBI catch on to what he’s doing and shake him down.

They give him a choice. You can either go to jail, or help us take down some other guys – guys doing the same thing you are. Mel’s first instinct is to go to jail, but when they threaten to throw Maxine in the slammer too, he changes his mind. Fine, he’s in. The catch is, he doesn’t get to work alone. FBI Special Agent James Boyle (Bradley Cooper) will have to work with him every step of the way.

Here’s where things get fun. In order to take down the FBI’s primary target, an influential New Jersey mayor who has his dirty hands in all the Atlantic City casinos, they have to create the kind of pretend investor that would attract him. So they build up this fake Arabian Sheikh who’s willing to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at Atlantic City. The plan ends up working, but a little TOO well.

When rumor spreads that a Sheikh is going to be dumping money into every building with a slot machine in it, everybody wants a piece. But one of those folks sticks out a little more than the others. Arthur Zelnick. Zelnick is the top dog. He controls Atlantic City. Nobody makes money in this town unless he’s taking most of it. If this Sheikh wants to play, he’s going to need to play through Zelnick.

But that’s not the best part. Zelnick is able to operate because he’s paying off congressmen and senators. All of a sudden, the FBI realizes that they’re no longer going after a bunch of nobodies. This could be one of the biggest government corruption busts in U.S. history. What started as a thin story about a fake Sheikh all of a sudden requires elaborate planning and backstory so that nobody suspects the ruse. And the puppet show will be constructed by the biggest bullshitter of them all, Mel.

I’m going to tell you why this script worked so well. STAKES. I don’t know why I keep forgetting how important stakes are. But if you use them wisely, they can make any story interesting. The key is to keep raising them as the story goes on. So at any moment in the script, the pressure and intensity are twice as high as they were 15 pages prior. That’s especially important for crime movies cause what’s the point of a crime movie if the problem isn’t getting more dangerous as the story goes on?

First it’s Mel trying to survive on his own. Then he gets caught. Then he’s told they have to take down 5 small fries. One of those guys leads them to the mayor. Then a couple of bigger guys want the action. Then Zelnick wants the action. If Mel gets caught at the beginning, he gets a black eye. If he gets caught in the middle, he’s going to jail. If Zelnick finds out he’s a sham, he’s dead. Plain and simple. So when we get to that point, we FEEL the enormity of the moment. Mel has EVERYTHING to lose. That’s how you know if your stakes are high enough. How much does your character have to lose if he fails?

The big problem with the script is the female roles. They’re terrible. It’s as if Singer’s never met a woman before. Maxine is a total waste. She has one or two scenes where her and Max have heartfelt conversations but that’s it. Now that I think about it, she just disappears from the last third of the story. I don’t even remember her.

Strangely enough, Mel is married in the story. So you’re thinking that sooner or later he’ll have to make a choice between the two women. Or there’s going to be a confrontation between them. Or his wife is going to find out about Maxine. Anything so that the conflict from that personal part of his life will play into the story. But nothing like that ever happens. It’s so bizarre. I’m guessing that they’re totally rewriting this part for Jennifer Lawrence. Russell’s pretty good at writing female characters so I’m sure he’ll take care of it.

It’s weird. Whenever I see an amateur tackle one of these scripts, it’s a disaster. There are tons of characters and no direction. So when I read something like American Bullshit, where the storytelling is so effortless, it’s a little deceiving, because it tricks you into thinking it’s easy. It’s not. Singer was smart in that he laid out the goal very clearly: We’re using you, Mel, to take down the bad guys. I mean, that’s the story right there. And it worked. This was a good script!

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

What I learned: This complex subject matter (crime, period piece, lots of characters) makes writers think that they have to live up to a certain complexity with their story. But some of the best crime films are really simple, like this one. I mean, the narrative basically amounts to “Good guys go after bad guys.” I think this can be applied to any genre. No matter how big your story is, always ask yourself if you can plot it simply.

Genre: Drama/Sci-fi
Premise: Set in the near future, a lonely man begins to fall in love with his artificially intelligent operating system.
About: Spike Jonze’s (director of Where The Wild Things Are and Being John Malkovich) latest! This is only his fourth directing effort in 15 years and his first as both writer and director. Columnist Mark Harris classifies Jonze’s career best when he says: “As he begins his third decade as a restless genre-hopper in the public eye, he remains one of the rare film artists who is equally respected in and out of the mainstream. He’s never been tagged a sellout, and—amazingly, given the accelerated pace of public taste and Internet mood swings—he has never not been cool.” You can read the rest of Harris’s article here.
Writer: Spike Jonze
Details: 125 minutes!

Sequel “Him” coming to a theater near you early 2015

I had a tough week at the movies this Christmas. I had three films I wanted to see. The first was Walter Mitty. I love coming-of-age movies wrapped inside higher concepts and this looked ambitious and imaginative from the trailer. Final verdict though? It certainly wasn’t bad, but something didn’t click. It never quite grasped what it was reaching for and the final act lost major steam.

Then there was Grudge Match. I know, I know. A lot of you pegged this as sucking brass punching bags long before I paid 10 bucks to see it but I thought it looked fun and the casting was genius. Well, wrong again Senor Reeves. This was abysmal. So boring and on the nose and PREDICTABLE. Of course, seeing as it came from the writer of “First Kid” (starring Sinbad), I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Which brings us to Her. This one had the most upside. Spike Jonze continues to be a hell of an interesting director, and like all good artists, you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get from him. The question is, what kind of “not sure” did we get? The kind we run home and tweet about, or the kind that makes us want to throw away our indie-loving Netflix Instant account?

“Her” is set in a not-too-distant Los Angeles future. Everything’s the way it is today except instead of people being obsessed with their phones 18 hours a day, they’re obsessed with them 23 hours a day. In other words, the future versions of ourselves are tuning out the real world even more than they do now.

Enter Theodore, who writes online letters for people who don’t know the difference between a metaphor and a simile (I admit to being one of these unfortunate souls), a job that allows him to exist smack dab in the middle of this reality-sucks universe. Theodore’s had a rough year. His wife left him (notated by classic indie over-exposed flashbacks of the two during happier times) and he’s still not over it, still not able to give himself to another woman.

And thennnnnn…. And then the first ever artificially intelligent operating system is introduced. This is how Theodore meets Samantha, one of those OSs. Samantha is fun, playful, and efficient, and soon begins thirsting for knowledge. But that search for knowledge quickly evolves into a thirst for Theodore! If you know what I mean.

Theodore loves it and begins to feel alive again. Not only has he fallen in love, but this is someone who can never leave him. I mean, it’s an operating system. Where is she going to go! He begins telling his friends, like depressed documentarian Amy (played by Amy Adams) and is surprised when they actually accept the relationship. But for every Facebook, there’s a Myspace, and the more Samantha learns, the more she outgrows Theodore. Will he be able to contain her and save their relationship? Or is he destined, once again, to be sad and alone???

Ben Stiller in Walter Mitty, one of my other Christmas Week watches.

I loved the setup of Her. I liked Theodore. I liked that he wasn’t over-the-top lonely. He still had friends. He still did things occasionally. It wasn’t that typical amateur writer stuff where he’s an all-by-himself 24/7 super-loser.

I liked the discovery of Samantha, their burgeoning relationship, and I liked how relatable it all was. I mean I think most people under 40 have had a relationship by now that began online, and so you’ve been through those experiences, where you’re the one dating “Samantha.” Where you’re questioning how real a person or a relationship is if you’re not physically with that person. That’s what really stood out here, how familiar these experiences felt and how accessible that made the movie.

(spoilers) Unfortunately, the script takes a strange final act turn that destroys that relatability (yes, I know “relatability” is not a real world. Just roll with me). Theodore finds out Samantha is seeing 600 other guys. Umm… WHAT??? Okay, actually, you know what? This will probably be how it happens in the future when you have Artificial Intelligence able to communicate with thousands of people simultaneously. I get that. But for right now? For here in this movie? There is no real-world equivalent to your partner cheating on you with 600 other people. Unless it’s Elliot Spitzer, of course.

And I think that’s important for sci-fi scripts. No, not that Elliot Spitzer cheat on you. But that you make sure the things your characters are going through are relatable to real world people. Or else why would we be interested? How can we be invested? That, to me, is when the movie/script fell apart.

But you could see the writing on the Facebook Wall before that if you were paying attention. Phone calls are BORING to watch. Putting people face-to-face is always better because it’s more interesting to see people duke it out in person. Now there are exceptions. If the phone calls are built into the plot (in something like “The Call” which was about a 9-1-1 Call Center – obviously, phone calls will be needed there), it can work. And the phone calling is definitely a plot requirement in Her. But man, after like 20 scenes with them on the phone together? I’d had enough. It just got too repetitive.

Spike Jonze was, no doubt, aware of this, and he did his best to keep us entertained in other ways. One of the best (and creepiest) scenes was when Samantha got a surrogate woman to have sex with Theodore while she talked to him. Watching the woman come on to Theodore with Samantha’s voice, even though the woman’s lips weren’t moving, was, as Theodore put it, “really weird.”

And there were a few quirky Spike Jonze’isms that kept things fun, such as Paul, Theodore’s co-worker who really really really (like in an unhealthy way) liked Theodore’s letters. And then there was a cyber-sex scene that had Theodore’s partner (voiced by Kristin Wiig, I later found out) telling him to strangle her with her dead cat while he fucked her. A little strange, if not crowd-pleasing. But those moments couldn’t prop up a film that probably would’ve worked best as an extended short, as opposed to a 125 minute feature (125 pages for a script where your character is going to be on the phone 80% of the time?? Come on!).

I came away from this week a little confused, because I watched three sets of writers take three different approaches to their scripts. The Grudge Match writers literally copied and pasted Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat book into their Final Draft document and saved the document as “Grudge Match.” The Walter Mitty writers were a little more ambitious and went off the beaten path, yet lost momentum in their final act as a result (once your main character achieves his goal, as Walter Mitty did at the end of Act 2, it’s hard to keep us interested for another half-hour). And then there’s Her, which took a bunch of chances, and was really the antithesis to Save The Cat screenwriting. Yet without any footing underneath it, it eventually went south as well.

I’m not sure what to make of that. But I think Walter Mitty and Her were definitely more interesting movies than Grudge Match, so maybe the lesson here is to err on the side of taking chances rather than going the obvious route.

[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission (barely – I’d say a matinee at a cheap movie theater)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The Relatability Quotient. This is especially true with sci-fi. Keep your characters and the experiences they’re going through universal so we can relate to them. When Samantha represented our own online relationships, we identified with Theodore and cared about what happened. Once she started seeing 600 other guys, because we have no real-world equivalent for that, we began to feel disconnected from the story. How’s the Relatability Quotient in your latest screenplay?

2013 has been an okay year for movies.  Not great.  Not terrible.  But decent.  For me, the year was marked with high expectations on a few choice picks that crashed upon viewage (which, funny enough, rhymes with “sewage”).  I was preparing for movies like Elysium and Pacific Rim to be great.  When they were only okay, I sat in the theater stunned, dogged by memories of The Phantom Menace premiere, when I learned that fateful lesson that movies can crush your dreams if you expect too much from them.  Oh well, we can’t win them all, right?

I’m sure my picks today will, in some cases, stun you.  That’s because I don’t conform to the reviewing consensus.  I never look at Rotten Tomatoes before I see a movie.  I want to form my own opinion, something fewer and fewer people seem to be doing these days.  Just because something was made by an acclaimed filmmaker doesn’t mean that filmmaker will succeed.   And just because an Oscar marketing campaign says a movie is great, it doesn’t mean you’re wrong when you think it isn’t.  Like what you like, hate what you hate, and don’t be apologetic about it.

I should note that there are a few movies I haven’t seen this year yet. Those include Her (can’t wait to see), Walter Mitty (very excited to see), 12 Years A Slave (do not like this director so probably won’t see), Dallas Buyers Club (maybe DVD), American Hustle (will probably see), so factor that into these choices.  Can’t wait to hear your reactions as well as what you guys liked.  Oh, and some of these movies may have come out in late 2012.  Hope you have your “Carson, you’re insane!” comments prepped and ready to go.  Let’s begin!

 

THE 10 WORST MOVIES I SAW THIS YEAR

10) Drinking Buddies – No script?  No problem!  Who needs a script when you can have four actors mumble endlessly about really boring shit?  Oh, don’t forget to record the audio with bad microphones so the ambient noise drowns out 20% of the dialogue.  Speaking of dialogue, this movie was a freaking advertisement for why we need writers.  Without them, dialogue is general, cliche, rambling, and dull.  I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that a movie without a script made a screenwriting site’s “10 Worst” list, but come on, I mean this is basic knowledge.  A movie needs a screenplay.

9) All is Bright – Wanna watch a holiday movie this Christmas?  Don’t rent this one!  I’m not lying when I say at one point, I thought the writer was purposefully trying to make the most boring choices possible for some sort of social experiment or performance art.  There wasn’t a single interesting moment in this script.  Not one!  The two main characters were beyond dull.  The dialogue was on-the-nose and boring.  The story was way too basic.  And everything was laced with this over-the-top depression that sucked any and all energy these two great actors could’ve provided to save some percentage of this film.

8) The Hangover 3 – I thought that the prerequisite for doing comedy these days was that you had to be funny.  Who wrote this again?  I wish people would’ve seen this poster before they walked into the theater, read that tagline at the top, assumed it literally, then left.  That’s the only thing that would’ve saved this film – people not seeing it and imagining funnier versions of the scenes that actually happened.  I mean, I’ve seen cash grabs before, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen one this blatant.  Nobody working on this film seemed to care AT ALL.

7) The Counselor – Rule number 1 when writing a movie: Make sure it makes sense!  Rule number 36: Don’t write 10 page scenes that don’t have a point.  Rule number 95: A movie should build in momentum until it reaches its climax, not slow down until nothing’s happening.  The Counselor could’ve been a cool movie if it had a professional screenwriter come in and rewrite this vague treatment of an idea Cormac McCarthy came up with.  This was never a script to begin with, so it serves everyone right for not dealing with that problem ahead of time.

6) Iron Man 3 – I don’t know what to say about these superhero sequels anymore.  It’s not like they didn’t know they were making Iron Man 3 as they were making Iron Man 2.  So wouldn’t you take advantage of all that time, get a writer to start writing the third film, and that way have a decent script by the time production started?  Iron Man 3 was so damn MESSY and so tonally off, I could never get into it.  This movie, with its juvenile humor, was so obviously made for ten year olds, they might as well have had everyone get slimed by Kenan Thompson at the end.  And hey, I have no problem with films made for 10 year olds.  Just don’t sell it as a film for adults, conning us out of our money.

5) Man of Steel – Okay, so maybe Superman doesn’t deserve to be so high on this list.  In a vacuum, it’s probably mediocre (as opposed to “terrible”).  But I had such high hopes for this one, I was devastated by what unraveled.  The number one problem with this film?  Melodrama.  Scenes (Clark hiding in closet, Clark’s dad getting swept up in a tornado) were taken so over the top, milked so far beyond their saturation point, that you threw up a little each time they happened.  It was also too long and too messy (why spend so much time on a planet that isn’t a part of the main storyline?).  I wanted this to be so awesome, and it so wasn’t.  I’m devastated.

4) Escape from Tomorrow – The only escape you’re going to find in this movie is the exit door you’re looking for ten minutes into it.  Such an amazing idea flattened by the thinnest script this side of Michael Cera’s biceps.  Literally, the plot was: follow the teenage girls.  That was the plot!  Two young girls in a park and a guy follows them for 90 minutes.  Random things happen for no reason.  Writer wraps it up ambiguously, even though it’s clear he did so because he had no idea how to wrap it up because, OH YEAH, there was NO PLOT!

3)Movie 43 – I really only need to say one thing here.  Hugh Jackman has giant testicles hanging from his neck in this movie.  Whoever wrote this needs to be shipped to a far away island with no return ferry.

2)Upstream Color – Aha!  You guys thought this was going to be my number 1 most hated movie of the year!  You were wrong!  Yes, yes, I didn’t think it was possible I’d find something worse than Upstream Color either.  But lucky for Shane Carruth, a woman named Stephanie Meyer exists.  Here’s my issue with Upstream Color. If there was a poster boy for pretension, Shane Carruth is on that poster (Wait a minute, Shane Carruth IS on that poster!) This work wants to be taken so seriously and exudes such a false claim of depth and complexity, that it’s impossible to take it as anything but a joke.  I would love to see the version of this movie where Shane simply tells a story as opposed to trying to impress the uber-snobby independent film scene.  I’m guessing it wouldn’t be half-bad.

1) The Host – Okay, I’m actually laughing as I write this because this movie was sooooooooooooo bad.  I mean it is so bad.  And I don’t know what the heck happened to Andrew Niccol, who I’m pretty sure penned Gattaca before he had a cinematic lobotomy, but how could he not see that there was no way this movie would work?  We have a girl running around having valley-girl like arguments with an alien, who’s fluent in English mind you, stuck inside of her.  A girl is having arguments WITH HERSELF the whole movie!  And it’s not a comedy!  And it’s an alien!  And we’re supposed to take it seriously!  And someone thought this was going to work!  It’s just so bad, you have to see it to believe it.  Grab a case of beer beforehand.  Trust me, you’ll need it.

 

THE 10 BEST MOVIES I SAW THIS YEAR

 

10) You’re Next/The Call/Admission – Expectations work both ways!  There are some movies you’re sure will be terrible, yet end up being way better than logic dictates.   You’re Next is the best B-horror film you’ll see all year.  The Call was the tightest written thriller of 2013 (it’s “Taken” for the world of 9-1-1 operators) and Admission has some really great character development wrapped in an unexpectedly fun story.

9) Oz The Great and Powerful – Expectations definitely played a part in this one as well.  I thought this was going to be horrrrrr-ible.  But James Franco found a role that fit him perfectly and ran with it (or floated on a balloon with it).   I just remember sitting there at the end of this film and feeling happy.  No, there wasn’t as much imagination as its sequel, which premiered 74 years earlier, but there was enough to feel like your money was well spent.

8) We’re The Millers – We’re The Millers surprised the comedy space this year by beating out its much more heavily-hyped counterparts like Hangover 3 and The Heat (as the best comedy – I don’t know if it beat them at the box office).  Every once in awhile, the actors understand the material so well and have such amazing chemistry together that if you do your job as a writer and guide them with a great story, they’re going to deliver for you.  That’s what happened here.  Especially with Will Poulter.  I mean this guy tore it up.  Can’t wait to see what he does next.

7) The Great Gatsby – Dream scenario for a producer: Get some great source material and a director with vision who wants to take that material to a new place, and you got a shot at making something special.  See this is the problem with this book.  It’s too old fashioned.  It doesn’t translate well to modern audiences.  But Baz Luhrmann seemed to know all the little nooks and cracks the film could’ve fallen into and went about filling them with his genius caulk beforehand.  He focused on the glitz, the glamour, the drama, the betrayal, the scandal, the anger – the things that get people’s blood flowing no matter what decade they’re in.  A nice early-year treat!

7) The Spectacular Now – I’m not sure this movie is as great as everyone wants it to be, but it’s good.  And I think what makes it good is the honesty of the performances.  This is the funny thing.  This script and Drinking Buddies essentially tried the same approach, to “let its actors go” and create these “honest performances.”  The big difference is that THE SPECTACULAR NOW ACTUALLY HAD A SCRIPT.  It had lines for its leads to speak, which they could then improvise off of, instead of having to make up everything on their own.  The difference was quite spectacular.

5) Don Jon – Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s smile kinda creeps me out sometimes.  But it didn’t bother me here.  With so much on his soldiers, he knew this was going to be a pivotal role in his career, and he nailed it.  This is a great film for writers to study when it comes to character transformation.  We see Don’s character arc, but not in that obvious in-your-face amateur screenwriter way.  It feels natural and real.  Add a story that never quite goes where you think it will, and that’s why this film cracked my top 5.

4) Mama – Mama!  I don’t know what it was about this movie that got me but something about it was just… different from other horror films I’d seen.  Not only did we get a creepy ass ghost in this Mama character, but we saw a superb character piece about the intense bond between a mother and her daughters.  Note to horror writers – focus more on your characters than your scares!  Oh, and freaking Jessica Chastain tore up this role as a reluctant girlfriend who gets stuck with two girls she doesn’t want after her boyfriend goes into a coma.

3) World War Z – World War Z and Lindelof haters — LOOK AWAY NOW!  This is two Lindelof scripts in my last two Yearly Top 10s.  From everything that I’ve heard, this man SAVED this movie from being a total disaster.  Ironic since it was a disaster movie!  Not only did I love this film, I loved how the producers got it right.  I read the early draft WITHOUT the urgency (everything was being investigated AFTER the zombie infestation was over) and it was so not going to work.  They brought another writer on, added that immediacy, and we got the best blockbuster of the year.  Thank you, Brad Pitt, for saving me and the rest of the world.

2) Gravity – Could they have made Sandra Bullock’s character more interesting?  Sure.  Were there some aspects of this script that were repetitive?  Sure.  But once you put on your 3-D glasses and sit down to watch Gravity, none of that really mattered.  This is pure GSU.  It’s ticking time bombs on top of ticking time bombs.  If you want to write a great screenplay, start by putting your character in a situation that’s IMPOSSIBLE to get out of, then keep throwing things at them to make it impossibler.  That’s what they did here and dammit if they didn’t execute it flawlessly.

1) Searching For Sugar Man – Okay, if you don’t know anything about this movie, I’m begging you, DON’T READ ANYTHING ABOUT IT (including the rest of this mini-review) and go see it.  I know some of you are like, “Artsy documentaries.  No thank you, Carson.”  You guys know me.  I hate artsy for artsy’s sake.  I hate pretension.  The reason why this is different is because it isn’t so much a documentary as it is a STORY.  It evolves.  It grows.  It surprises.  It’s both tragic and uplifting.  If it doesn’t make you cry, you are not a real person.  Not only is this film number 1 on the year for me.  It’s NUMBER 1 by 50,000 miles!  Sandra Bullock and Imaginary George Clooney weren’t even close to it.  Come on, jump in my Scriptshadow Van and go search for Sugar Man with me!  I promise to give you lots of Scriptshadow candy!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

This actor dropped 50 pounds to get ready for his role in my favorite script of the year!

It’s the end of the year, which means it’s time to reflect on the happiest moments of 2013. Like Kim Kardashian getting engaged again. And N’Sync reuniting on stage for all of 43 seconds. I still remember where I was during those moments. You?

Okay let’s be honest. I don’t pay attention to anything unless it has a .PDF extension at the end of it. If I’m not reading, I’m sleeping. So truthfully, I don’t know who Kim Kardashian is (although I was recently told she waxed her baby’s eyelashes, whatever that means).

During all that reading, I found ten scripts that I haven’t been able to forget. Whenever I do these lists, my ranking doesn’t always reflect my Top 25. That’s because some screenplays, just like some movies, improve with time – they dig into you like a tick and stay with you. So with that piece of knowledge, here are my 10 favorite scripts of the year. Afterwards, let me know your favorites!

(Note: The lack of review links is due to most of these scripts being reviewed in my newsletter. To get future reviews not posted on the site, make sure to sign up!)

NUMBER 10
Title: Transcendence
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Writer: Jack Paglen
Premise: An epic love story set in a time where a dying scientist is able to upload his consciousness into the internet and, facing its global implications, must fight against the forces who are actively working against the existence of a singularity.
Thoughts: Loved this because it felt like a good old fashioned blockbuster. It didn’t carry all the baggage your typical IP comic book or childhood toy does. The story and the mythology came solely from the writer, Paglen, and he knew how to have fun with it. This script taught me that once you have your high-concept idea, make sure to mine it for all it’s worth. Anything less and you’re cheating yourself (and your chance for a sale!).

NUMBER 9
Title: Marshal of Revelation
Genre: Western
Writer: Jon Favreau
Premise: The story of a deceitful town marshal who saved the town of Revelation, Wyoming with the help of a mysterious Jewish gunman.
Thoughts: Wow, what a surprise this was. Here’s the thing about Westerns. Despite having one big advantage over their present-day counterparts (the lawlessness, which creates tons of drama), they’re potentially boring as hell. Because the world was so slow back then, Western screenplays can move at a glacial pace, which is where most wanna-be Westerns go to die. How do you prevent this? Character character character character, then character again. Just like its distant screenplay cousin, Django Unchained, Marshal of Revelation has two unforgettable characters. We have the talkative car salesman-like Isaac, and the cool as a cucumber gunslinger, “The Jew.” Sometimes as a writer, you hit on two characters who complement each other so well (so as to provide the most conflict, drama, and entertainment) that the story actually takes a back seat to them. Favreau achieved that here.

NUMBER 8
Title: Shut In
Genre: Horror
Writer: Christina Hodson
Premise: A young woman who takes care of her comatose teenaged son at home begins to believe she’s being visited by the ghost of a young runaway boy.
Thoughts: This script was just spooky. No, it was more than that. It was uncomfortable. I think whenever you write a script, you’re trying to make the reader FEEL something. The problem is, readers read so many scripts, they become numb to feeling. So you have to hit on something so intense, the reader can do nothing BUT feel it. Hodson did that with this ongoing feeling of discomfort. When the mother is bathing her teenage son and he gets an erection, I got that icky chill all over. And while it may not have been a feeling I was thrilled to have, it was A FEELING nonetheless, and it kept happening again and again in this screenplay. If a writer can make me feel something that consistently, they’ve done their job.

NUMBER 7
Title: Peste
Genre: Horror (found footage)
Writer: Barbara Marshall
Premise: A young suburban girl documents her family during the outbreak of a deadly virus that turns its hosts into monsters.
Thoughts: They say that the best horror scripts/films revolve around family (and that family trying to stave off a threat). There’s something about keeping the family unit in one piece that’s easy to root for. Peste proves how effective this approach can be when done well. There are a few truly terrifying scenes in this script, such as our family needing to steal food from the neighbors, who have already transformed into “pestes,” and also the sounds of a transformed daughter eating her mom behind closed doors. This script starts too slowly for its own good, but once it gets going, it really gets going. I don’t meant to be a pest, but read this if you can.

NUMBER 6
Title: Chef
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Writer: Jon Favreau
Premise: A talented chef loses his job after a bad online review, leading him to open a food truck.
Thoughts: Well shucks, Mr. Favreau. I wasn’t so sure about you after Cowboys and Aliens. But it turns out Favreau has a little self-awareness left in him. This upcoming writing-directing effort, while tackling a sell-out celebrity Chef who goes back to his roots and starts a food truck, is clearly an exploration of the mistakes Favreau’s made as a director. This is an incredibly talented writer we’re talking about here and what I really love about him is he doesn’t seem to follow the traditional three-act structure everybody else does. He’s got his own mysterious formula that steers each of his stories into an unfamiliar kalediscope of time and space where you don’t know which way is up or down or sideways. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But there’s something different about his stories that makes you feel like you’re always reading something fresh. For example, the food truck stuff here doesn’t happen until the final act! I don’t know many writers who would’ve made that choice as the food truck is the hook here! Why would you ignore it for 75% of your story? But Favreau does. And it works!

NUMBER 5
Title: Draft Day
Genre: Drama/Sports
Writers: Rajiv Joseph & Scott Rothman
Premise: A football GM finds his personal and professional life falling apart on the biggest day of the year, draft day.
Thoughts: I love love love when writers recognize that the genres they’re writing in are hard sells, and so curtail their screenplay in some way to negate that. If this would’ve been about a long drawn out season where the General Manager evaluates his life through his team, we would’ve gotten, no offense, Moneyball 2 (which, come on, in retrospect was pretty boring). But instead, they focus on a single day, one of the most important days for a football organization, the day they draft six players who will determine their future as a team. Because it all happens in a single day, there’s a sense of urgency that you’ve never seen in a sports movie before. This is such a great script!

NUMBER 4
Title: The Story Of Your Life
Genre: Sci-Fi
Writer: Eric Heisserer (based on a short story by Ted Chiang)
Premise: When alien crafts land around the world, a linguistics expert is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat.
Thoughts: I love this idea so much that I’ve forgotten about the problematic climax. I guess you could say I’m looking at “Story of Your Life” through rose-colored glasses. But I just love what Heisserer did with this story. He took what could’ve potentially been a very slow script, with a linguist chatting with aliens, and turned it into an intense pressure-cooker (via a race between all nations to get a super-weapon from the visitors). No surprise that a Scriptshadow favorite term – ticking time bomb – is the key ingredient for making this and Draft Day so good. Whenever time’s running out for your characters, everything’s ramped up a level.

NUMBER 3
Title: Monster Problems
Genre: Insanity
Writer: Brian Duffield
Premise: In a future where the world has been overrun by monsters, a young man risks his life to get to the woman he’s fallen in love with.
Thoughts: I don’t get star struck. But I would probably get star struck if I met Brian Duffield. As soon as one of this guy’s quirkier scripts hits the big screen, I think his voice is going to help define this generation of screenwriters. Monster Problems is the embodiment of that. It’s a John Hughes-like approach to a monster movie. I love how Duffield is so casually able to jump back and forth between personal dramatic moments and big huge actions scenes, never once losing control of his tone. Very few writers can pull that off. I just loved this script.

NUMBER 2
Title: Where Angels Die
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Writer: Alex Felix (based on the novel “In the Place Where Angels Die” by Richard Seal)
Premise: A suspended inner city social worker tries to protect a young girl and her mother from the girl’s father, a psychotic killer who’s just been released from prison.
Thoughts: I’m not sure I can say anything more about Angels than I already have. But I will say that Alex and I recently discussed the difficulty of writing drama specs in today’s spec market, and how, knowing that, he emphasized the crime/thriller element of his story to give it a better shot. If you want to write a dramatic character piece, like Alex has, look to explore genre elements in your script, even if it’s only partially. This is the exact same approach Ben Affleck took with The Town. He wanted to write a love story, but knew nobody would see it if he did. So he emphasized the heist genre element to make it marketable. – Anyway, some great things are happening with Angels. If only I could tell you what’s happening behind the scenes, you’d be so excited! But I have to let the process play out.

NUMBER 1
Title: Nightcrawler
Genre: Crime/Thriller
Writer: Dan Gilroy
Premise: A Los Angeles drifter with big dreams finds himself drawn into the world of “nightcrawling,” a practice where independent videographers search out violent crimes and sell them to news shows.
Thoughts: This script has stayed with me more than any other script I read in 2013. Why? Put simply, it had the best character I’ve read all year. I think if there’s a lesson here, it might be that instead of always coming up with a story concept first and trying to infuse characters into that story, maybe you should come up with a great character first, then build a story around him.  I know this is how Wes Anderson works, for example.  I don’t know if that’s what happened here or not, but the protagonist is so amazing in Nightcrawler, he essentially becomes the concept anyway.