Okay folks. Doing something different this week. Many months back, I had people on my mailing list send me their best scenes from their current scripts. The plan was to read them all, then review the full scripts of the best scenes. Due to a couple of factors (the primary one being that I didn’t find anything that blew my socks off), I’ve changed my mind. Instead of reviewing the entire script, I’m only going to review the scenes. I realized that in all the reviewing I’ve done on this site, I rarely analyze and break down individual scenes. And obviously, with scenes being the primary building blocks of a screenplay, that’s kind of absurd! So this week, I’m going to review five scenes, and then, whichever one gets the best feedback, I’ll review the entire script. Let the fun begin!
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Premise: (from writer) ALIENS meets THE MATRIX as a troubled soldier leads a group of mercenaries into a hostile, alien dimension to retrieve an ancient artifact. Against his wishes, his estranged father is along for the ride and is the only one that can lead them out.
Scene setup: The writer’s setup is too elaborate to include, but basically we’re in a gigantic alien hive lit by a river of flowing lava.
Writer: Logan Haire
Details: 7 pages
Download and read the scene here.
As I started reading the scenes for Scene Week, I learned the most valuable lesson I’ve learned in a long time. Let me set the scene (heh heh). I was at a café for reasons beyond my control, and so had to read some scene submissions in a busy place with people constantly walking in and out of the door just a few feet away from me. It was Distraction Nation. Which meant I had a hard time concentrating.
So I’m trying to read page after page but something’s always happening. A click. A bang. A loud laugh. Something always caused me to jerk up, to see what was going on.
That’s when it hit me.
When you write, you have to write in such a way that the reader CAN NEVER LOOK AWAY. You have to make it IMPOSSIBLE for them to look away, no matter what kind of distraction pops up.
I remember reading a book a couple of years ago – “Before I Go To Sleep.” It was told from the perspective of a woman waking up with amnesia who was in bed with a man she didn’t recognize. She was scared, confused. She needed answers. She realized this wasn’t the “long night out, wake up the next morning” type of forgetfulness. This was a deep forgetfulness. Something bigger and more terrifying. Then, when she walked to the bathroom, when she looked in the mirror, she almost fainted. She saw someone 15 years older than herself staring back at her. Why the hell did she look like this?? The scene continued like this and even though I HAD to go to sleep because I had a big day the next day, I couldn’t stop reading! I NEEDED to figure out what had happened to this woman.
I felt the same way when I read The Disciple Program and Django Unchained. Tyler and Quentin wrote these scenes that you just COULDN’T look away from, even if you wanted to. They pulled you in and never let you go. Sadly, I can’t say a single scene I read here (out of hundreds of submissions) compelled me to keep reading. Don’t get me wrong. There were a lot of SOLID scenes. There was a lot of professional-level writing. But again, there was nothing that made me want to read the entire script.
For that reason, I think it’s best to look at this week more as a learning experience than a “These are the best!” set of posts. The truth is, I haven’t spent a lot of time breaking down scene-writing on the site. So I’ll probably learn a few things myself.
As such, even though I know it will make the comments section messy, feel free to pitch your scene (and provide a link to it) if you felt like your scene was INDEED “Must Read” worthy. If a bunch of commenters verify that, yes, your scene kicked ass, I’ll be more than happy to review it. So again, I found about 20 decent scenes that were all of similar quality, and I’m basically picking at random between them for the 5 reviews.
For those who didn’t read the Harbinger scene, it’s basically about a group of military dudes who find themselves in some sort of alien hive. As they’re walking through this thing, they see the aliens (or demons, as they’re known) skittering through the hive walls, watching them. What starts as just watching, slowly evolves into an attack, and our guys start running and shooting in a desperate bid to save themselves. They even enact a “nano second skin” that can’t be penetrated as part of their defense. But with the demons are growing in number and with our team running out of solid ground, even that may not be enough.
I chose this scene because, while it didn’t do anything mind-blowing, it was a solid action scene that kept me entertained, that I could visualize, and that I could imagine on the big screen.
The first thing that stuck out to me is something that barely ANYONE did with their scene submission, and that’s create suspense. We see the shadows of these demons running through the hive walls as our military group is walking. We know it’s only a matter of time before they come out. So we’re on edge. That anticipation is getting us all antsy, scared of WHEN they’re going to attack. That’s how you want your audience to be. All antsed up! You never want them to be relaxed.
You know when you have one of those impossible days? You have to write, work, read a friend’s script, pick up your dry cleaning, get your girlfriend a card, pay a few bills, be home for the cable installation, etc., etc.? Add to this that you woke up late. So you’re already behind on the day. Just the thought of doing all these things in such a small amount of time stresses the hell out of you. I want you to imagine that feeling. That’s the kind of feeling you want your reader to have when they’re reading your script! They have to feel like there’s so much that needs to get done and there’s no way your characters can do it.
I also like how this scene builds. It progresses. It isn’t just stagnant and one note like a lot of the scenes I read. Aliens start slinking out of the hive, bit by bit. So the threat is getting more intense. In other words, the situation is DIFFERENT from how it was one page ago. And the threat will be even worse one page later, growing again.
I also like how when the action begins, it’s told inside 1-2 line paragraphs (with an occasional 3-liner). I see a lot of bad action scripts that pile in 3-4 line paragraphs one after another during huge action scenes. If stuff is supposed to be happening fast on the screen, shouldn’t it be happening fast in the reader’s head? To do that, you have to keep the lines short and sparse.
Likewise, Logan’s prose was very clear. And you may be saying, “Shouldn’t that be a given?” The answer is yes, but it’s something I saw a LOT of writers in Scene Submissions struggle with. And here, it’s INCREDIBLY important, because we’re talking about an alien world, an alien setting, multiple characters, and a lot of action. It’s easy for a reader to get confused if a writer isn’t doing his job.
My worry here is that the scene (and concept) is too familiar. It’s a lot like a video game (Gears of War for me, and of course, Aliens on the film side), and the lava stuff reminded me of the dreadful CGI ending to Revenge of the Sith. This kind of stuff seems like it shouldn’t matter. But it does. Anyone who reads your script is going to get a little weary if it’s too similar to something else. We want to see originality, something new and different, and that’s not what I got here. When I said earlier, “None of the scenes I read propelled me to want to read the scripts,” for Harbinger, is was that “too familiar” feeling that did it in. I’ve been in this world numerous times already. So why would I want to revisit it?
With that said, I might give it 10 pages. Logan has proven he can write a scene. And for that, I have to give him props.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read (barely made the cut)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I didn’t see this in Logan’s script, but his sparse writing reminded me of it. — Isolate character names during big action sequences to create more of a “vertical” read. A “vertical” read just means that a lot of the text is near the left side of the margin and all the action lines are sparse, allowing a reader’s eyes to fly down the page “vertically”). I don’t like to see this used just anywhere in a script. But it’s a GREAT approach to adapt for action writing. For example, instead of:
Jetson lands hard on the concrete, shaking the room. He spins his gun out of his holster and shoves it into Frank’s face. Frank stares down the barrel of the gun, half an inch from his nose.
You’d write:
JETSON
Lands hard on the concrete, shaking the room.
He spins his gun out of its holster, SHOVES it into Frank’s face.
FRANK
Stares down the barrel of the gun, half an inch from his nose.
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: Sci-fi Thriller
Logline: (from writer) A callous identity-thief-for-hire, who specializes in genetically altering his clients so they can assume another person’s identity, falls for his latest victim and must risk his own life to protect her from his ruthless employers.
Why You Should Read: (from writer) I set out to write a fast-paced, action thriller with a hint of real-world sci-fi, grounded by an intriguing protagonist and a tangible setting that is a character itself. A movie with a marketable concept and a strong theme that would appeal to producers, directors, and actors. A movie inspired by gritty ‘70s thrillers that takes the audience on a breakneck ride. I’d very much appreciate the opinions of Carson and the Scriptshadow community to tell me if I’ve succeeded.
Writer: Mark Townend
Details: 107 pages
This sounds like it could be a Liam Neeson movie
Today we’re reviewing a sci-fi thriller, a genre I like a lot (and one that does well on the spec market). But I’ll be honest. I was hoping something else would win this week because we’ve reviewed a lot of these on AF already and maybe I’m a little sci-fi thrillered out. However, you can’t go against public opinion. And public opinion says that they want to be procured!
And I have to admit, it’s a nifty premise with a lot of possibilities. So if writer Mark Townend has really taken advantage of said premise, I’ll have forgotten all about my sci-fi thriller sunburn by the end of the review.
40-something Simon Walker lives a very emotionless life. Maybe that’s because of his job. He’s a “procurist,” someone who kills people and replaces them with an imposter, someone who’s genetically modified to look exactly like the person they’re replacing. Walker facilitates this process by training the people taking over the lives of the target to be like said target, and then being a sort of ongoing tech support whenever they run into trouble (ring-ring: “Uh, hi, this is Daisy. Can you remind me what year I was born in again?”).
So Walker comes into work one day and is informed that their next client, a woman named Meredith Pierce, wants a 72 hour rush job done on a journalist named Natasha Lloyd. Rushes are rare and always carry with them an air of suspicion. Why the rush?
But Walker does it, only to find out before the assassination that Natasha is writing an article about the underground practices of his company, as well as other procurists. It appears that Meredith is coming in to replace her so that when the article goes live, she can say that it was completely made up, discrediting herself and letting the world know “there’s nothing to see here.”
That gets Walker’s Spidey senses tingling, so instead of killing Natasha, he saves her. He then goes on the run with her while questioning who this Meredith Pierce bitch is and why she’d want to replace Natasha. Walker’s main co-worker, a doofus named Barnes, is the first to catch on to Walker’s plan and becomes the primary guy chasing him and Natasha down.
Eventually, Walker’s own past is revealed (he’s replaced numerous people throughout his life, which is why he has no family life – they’re not his real family) and something about trying to save Natasha makes him question that past, and if he really wants to be living this life forever. He’ll have to decide soon, because it’ll only be a matter of time before Barnes and the rest of the company catch him.
Townend pointed out his 70s influences in his WYSR above, and you can see that in the script for sure. This had a Chinatown vibe (Townend? Towne? Can’t be coincidence, can it??), mixed with present-day works like Looper and Inception. It’s sort of a brilliant combination as the script can then appeal to young and old Hollywood alike. When you add how easy it would be to market a film like this, I can already see executives licking their lips, hoping for a home-run so they can snatch The Procurist up.
I would love nothing more than to announce that home-run, but The Procurist lands somewhere between a single and a double instead. You know, sometimes I forget to give credit to writers like Mark for simply getting their script to this point. The way this thing is written? As far as the sparse, clean, descriptive writing? It’s pro-level all the way. You can tell Mark knows his shit. But there were some things bothering me here, and maybe me pointing them out can help Mark both with the future of this script and others.
First, I never really understood the setup of the story. Okay, so there’s this guy who works for an organization that replaces people with imposters. They find out the person their latest client is replacing is writing a story exposing their business, and that the replacement plans to sabotage that plan by saying she made the story up.
Isn’t the problem then taken care of? Why snoop around and ask questions? It would be like winning a basketball game on a last second shot, then complaining to the ref that you got fouled. Uhh, you just won the game. Who gives a shit if you got fouled!
Then there was Walker saving Natasha. Why did he do that? The best I could come up with was that Walker “saw something” in her. That’s majorly lazy motivation. So it started the second act off on a strange note.
The script would’ve been better off creating a conspiracy that HURT the company. That way, action would’ve been required, instead of your main character taking action off a “gut” feeling, which isn’t very convincing.
On top of this, the script runs into a classic “on-the-run” thriller issue. Once all the cool concept-y stuff is out of the way in the first act, the script becomes a straight-forward chase. I think a good 40 pages went by with our characters on the run, and that’s all that was happening. They were just on the run. If I’m going to open a script with a cool premise like this one, I expect a lot of mind-bending plot points and reveals the whole way through, not typical thriller chase scenes that I could see in any of 500 Jason Statham movies.
I like my thrillers to evolve with plot as they move along, not promote chase porn. The exception is when I really love the characters and I’m really into them achieving their goals. But like I already said, The Procurist didn’t check either of those boxes. I couldn’t understand why everyone was making a big stink about someone who was trying to HELP them. And I couldn’t understand why Walker was trying to help this woman in particular.
I think Mark’s plan was that we’d be intrigued by Walker’s illogical obsession with Natasha. Because we didn’t understand it, we’d read on to see it explained. And the reason is explained later. But I don’t know. It didn’t work for me. I would’ve liked saving her to have a more direct correlation with the plot. Which would’ve happened if the Replacer (Meredith) was malevolent instead of helpful towards Walker’s company.
You know, as I was reading through The Procurist, I was wondering if a different story angle would’ve yielded better results. Whenever you write these trippy sci-fi thrillers, the best stories tend to come form the people experiencing the change as opposed to the ones executing the change. For example, with Source Code – how interesting would that script have been if we had started out with the people in the control room?
I couldn’t help but think it would’ve been cool to start The Procurist with a character whose wife (or husband) starts acting strange. They’re not being themselves. They don’t remember obvious things. And they finally learn that this person is a fake, maybe trying to get information from them (maybe our character is the CEO of a big company, or someone in the government). They have to get out, go on the run, and find out what’s going on. I don’t know, I just think you get more mystery and suspense from your main character being in the cold. The sci-fi twist ends up being a little cooler that way as well.
Then again, Inception tells the story from the “Inceptors,” so I understand it’s a choice that can go either way.
If I were Matt, I’d suggest one giant change moving forward. And I believe that change will solve a lot of the other problems along with it. Change the reasoning for why the client is replacing Natasha. It has to be something that threatens Walker’s company. This whole “newspaper article” plot is not only thin, but it has too many holes in it. I mean why go through this whole dog and pony show of “You publish the article, then we replace you and tell the media that we were just making the whole thing up?” Just kill Natasha before she hands in the article and problem solved!
I think Matt is a really good writer. Any agent who pops open his script is going to feel like they’re reading a pro. But that’s supposed to be the given part. You gotta bring sun-like heat with the story, and The Procurist feels more like a comfy space heater.
Script link: The Procurist
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Build the foundation of your story on something big, or else the rest of your story will feel small. The Procurist never had a chance after its weak setup. Cause you can’t put a skyscraper on a foundation meant for a 2-story home. The conspiracy had to be something bigger than a newspaper article. And it probably shouldn’t have been stated right away. Keep the reasoning for Meredith taking over Natasha’s life a mystery, and as the script goes on, Walker finds more and more clues that point to how big this thing is.
So I’m peering out at the specscape this diddly-do and it’s not looking so volcanic . “Diddly-do” is code for “day” by the way. “Specscape” is code for “spec landscape.” And I have no idea what volcanic means. Actually, before I continue, you should know that I quit sugar cold-turkey recently. And you have to realize, I was a sugar addict. It’s now Day 7 and my intelligence has gone waaaaaay down as a result. Like miles below sea level. I know it was already underwater to begin with, but that’s still low. I’m still going to write this blog post though because I’m feeling passionate about something. Quentin Tarantino when he talks about NO HARD EIGHT FOR YOU-type passionate!
Where was I? Right, so there have really only been 2 “true” spec sales this year (one about Greek Gods in modern day. Another about an astronaut trying to survive a hobbled spacecraft) and I’m thinking that’s not enough, man. True, lazy-ass Hollywood really didn’t get started until January 6th (you can’t put January 1st on a Wednesday and expect people to go balls to the wall for two days, go back to a relaxed weekend, then start up again – of course they’re going to wait until the 6th), but 17 days and only two spec sales isn’t enough. Especially with everyone geeked up to find the first great script of 2014. We should have had 5 or 6 big spec sales already.
Now some might say that Hollywood isn’t a spec-sale town anymore. And that’s true to a certain degree. It ain’t the 90s. These days it’s more about finding writers with potential, sending them to meetings everywhere in town, and hoping they book some assignments. But I think Hollywood is always ready to buy something if it’s good. And therein lies the problem. Nobody’s been writing anything good!
Remember back in the day when Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott used to write all those awesome screenwriting articles on their website? And we’d visit that site every week because they were guaranteed to give us something new to think about? There’s one article I remember quite well, though the title of it escapes me. It was basically about the fact that when you’re writing a screenplay, each page you’re writing needs to be worth a million dollars. Because that’s how much they’re going to spend on the budget of the film (110 pages, 1 million per page, 110 million dollar budget). So the question they posed was, “What makes your writing worth a million dollars a page?”
I never forgot that. And sure, there’s an argument to be made that that’s the most unhealthy approach to creating art ever. But I don’t agree. Thinking in those terms can actually help you become a better writer. Because all it’s doing is it’s making you justify your choices and your effort.
And they need to be justified, because the stakes have gone WAY up since that article. These days, the budgets for major studio films START at a hundred million, and can go up to THREE-HUNDRED MILLION. Add marketing and distribution costs for not just America, but dozens of countries around the world, and we could be talking a 600 million dollar investment before a single person buys a ticket.
With the average screenplay being 110 pages, that equals out to almost SIX MILLION DOLLARS PER PAGE.
Welcome to the new state of movies. So do you believe your script is worth 6 million dollars per page? That’s a pretty intimidating question right? You can see why these studios lean so heavily towards intellectual property. That’s their answer to the question, “Why are our in-house scripts worth 6 million dollars a page?” Because Batman has proven to be a beloved bankable hero for 70 years. Because millions of people have read and loved The Hunger Games and they’ll come out to see a movie-version of the book.
But yeah, that six million dollar a page figure is a little scary. So let’s dial it back and be more realistic. Most big-time studio movies have around a 200 million dollar budget, which means each one of your pages needs to justify 2 million dollars spent. Do you believe each one of your pages justify that kind of investment?
That’s a really complicated question but here’s an interesting way to look at it. Can someone open your script to any page, read it, and say, “That page is worth 2 million dollars?” I don’t know. I mean not all pages are created equal. Some you need to have context to understand. Some are naturally more exciting than others.
Ah, but I’ll tell you this. Anyone can definitely open a script to a random page and say, with certainty, “That’s not worth 2 million dollars.” And I believe that’s the secret to writing a “2 million dollar a page” screenplay. Your job is simply to make sure that people can’t open your script to any page and be able to tell right away that it isn’t worth 2 million bucks. All that page needs to be is good enough so that that person can’t definitively say it isn’t. To know for sure, they have to read on. And if you’ve done your job, after reading the next page, they’ll want to read the next one, and then the next one after that and the next one after that until they get to the end. You’ve written a 2-million dollar a page screenplay if someone who picks it up CAN’T PUT IT DOWN until they finish. That is the ONLY surefire way to know if you’ve written something that a studio will invest 200 million dollars in.
Here’s the root of the problem for why we’re not seeing enough of these types of screenplays. Writers aren’t trying hard enough. I mean assuming you know the basics – how to come up with a marketable fresh premise, how to create a complex interesting main character, how to keep your narrative moving, how to structure your script – it’s up to you to give us 100%.
Want to know how to write 110 2-million dollar pages? Start with the scene. There are 50-60 scenes in every script. I want you to answer this next question honestly. Don’t bullshit yourself or me. That latest script you’ve been pushing to everyone, trying to get everyone to read? How many of those 60 scenes can you say you gave 100% on? That each and every scene in that script is as good as you can possibly make it?
If you can HONESTLY tell me that all 60 of your scenes are as good as you can do? That’s great. I am virtually making sweet love to you right now. But if that’s not the case, all I can ask is, “Why?” What in the world makes you believe you can put a script out there where you haven’t made each scene as good as it can be?
Let me let you in on a secret. From the amateur spec scripts I read (and I read about 10-15 a week), do you know how many scenes in those scripts I’d say, on average, are the best the writer could’ve done? Maybe around 5. 5 scenes in each script! For more seasoned writers, I’d say maybe 20-25. Which seems better, but it’s still less than HALF of what you need to write something great!
If you want to SELL something – if you REALLY want to play with the big boys – why are you holding yourself to that shit-ass standard? Why not, when you put your script in someone’s hand, be able to say “I did as well as I possibly could’ve done here?”
The one huge advantage amateur writers have over pros is THEY HAVE NO DEADLINE. A studio isn’t all up in their e-mail box asking where the new draft is. You’re free to spend AS MUCH TIME as you want on your script, to perfect it beyond perfection, so you have no excuse not to make it great.
And if you follow that model, each page WILL be worth 2 million dollars because every page in every scene is going to have a purpose. It’s going to be there for a reason. And you’ll have added the necessary conflict or suspense or dramatic irony or plot twist or side-splitting dialogue that was necessary to make that scene great.
Look, I can’t promise you if you do this, you’re going to sell a screenplay. Because the truth is, a lot of writers don’t yet know how to write a script, how to pick a concept, how to arc a character, etc. But if you hold yourself to this standard NOW, when you’re still learning? Then by the time you DO understand all this stuff, and your skill level matches your craft, you’ll have the kind of discipline that’s going to give you a HUGE advantage over everyone else.
So get to it. Open your latest script up and make it 2-million-bucks-a-page worthy!
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: (set in 1941) A man wakes up in Mexico with no memory of his previous life or how he got there. Slowly, through the people he meets, he’s able to piece together his suspect past.
About: Today’s script is written by THE Orson Welles. You may have heard of this upstart. He co-wrote and directed a little movie called “Citizen Kane”? Oh, Orson. The man didn’t exactly have the career everyone thought he would after Kane, struggling to make films that, quite frankly, weren’t very good. This is one of those projects, a script that laid forgotten for 60-some years until it was recently found in RKO’s archives. They’re even saying they want to put this puppy into development! Find a new writer to modernize it. Well, let’s see if that’s a good idea.
Writer: Orson Welles
Details: March 25, 1941 draft. The “Third Revised Continuity” (whatever that means). 136 pages (though the over-spacing indicates it would’ve been shorter if put into proper format)
I love reading these old scripts because I love checking back on how they used to tell stories before the 10,000 screenwriting blogs and screenwriting books came around. Was storytelling “purer” back then? Did stories emerge more naturally, more organically, because writers weren’t following rules? Anti-establishment screenwriting folks will tell you, yes, of course! Books are bad! Rules be gone! Storytelling used to be a damn art form!
Oh, boy. If you think that, you are the president of Delusionville. Studios were just as strict about story and script-control back then as they are now. Case in point: When I went over to check what the studios thought of this script when it was originally turned in, they had the exact same problems with it that I did.
Storytelling is timeless. It’s followed a certain formula forever. And that’s because it’s a formula that works.
Okay, so what’s this Santiago script about? Before I tell you, let me tell you what the first line in the script is: “My face fills the frame.” You gotta love Orson Welles because lordy, lordy did he love himself!
Actually, Welles informs us before the script begins that because he’s starring in the film, he’ll be referring to himself as “Me, my, I” and whatever other pronoun can adequately capture his narcissism. So “me” wakes up in the middle of a room of people yelling at him in a dozen different languages.
He doesn’t know who these people are, how they got there, or why they care so much about him. All he knows is that he doesn’t remember anything about himself, so he can’t answer their questions. Pissed off, they eventually go away and “Me” learns that he’s in some Mexican city.
A kind, but suspicious-looking Mexican man named Gonzalez befriends “Me” and takes him into the city, where every single person who sees “Me” stares at him with scorn. Apparently our amnesiac is some sort of celebrity.
Eventually, “Me” is shot and almost killed, bringing to light just how sinister his former life must have been. He starts demanding answers from those around him and finds out his name is Lindsey Kellar, a Fascist radio personality from England. He’s trying to rally the Fascist movement wherever he can, and apparently his people sent him here to Mexico to transform them into like-minded, colonizing psychopaths.
I had to touch up on my history to understand what exactly this meant. Remember, it’s 1941, during World War 2, and the evil Axis powers wanted South America on their side. Hence, sending someone there to rile up Fascist sentiment would’ve been a big deal.
“Me” (now Kellar) learns from his fellow Fascists that he must go meet someone in the town of Santiago. Thus begins a long trek to the mysterious town. Kellar meets many sordid types along the way and eventually learns (spoiler) that he’s not really Kellar! He’s a body double FOR Kellar. The real Kellar is planning to kill a bunch of heavy-duty politicians on some boat, and Kellar was part of the plan (though I’m not sure how). Kellar must do a 180, from helping the Fascists to trying to stop them, a job he is not even close to being equipped for.
You know, I’ll be honest with you. I’m not surprised Orson Welles never had that mega career everyone was so sure he’d have. Citizen Kane is one of those screenplays (extremely layered, jumping through time, lots of characters, unorthodox narrative) that can only come from someone who doesn’t really understand the medium. Your lack of knowledge in how to tell a story actually helps you, because you’re unaware of all the rules you’re breaking. Every once in awhile, one of these newish writers gets really lucky and comes up with something genius. The problem is, they can’t replicate that success because they never learned how to tell a proper story in the first place. I feel like something similar happened to Christopher McQuarrie. There’s a reason he’s never gotten close to another Oscar since The Usual Suspects. That script could’ve only be written by someone (as he’s admitted in interviews) who didn’t fully understand the medium.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Orson was a hack. But his legacy was more in his directing, how he was unafraid to try things and push the medium. That’s where he shined. Screenwriting is difficult. It’s a wonky way to write a story. So there’s no shame in it not being one’s forte.
And I’d argue we see these screenwriting issues here. I love a good amnesiac script (note: I have no idea if using an amnesiac as the main character was considered cutting edge or cliché in 1941), but while that definitely piqued our interest in the first act, after the excitement died down, there wasn’t much left in the story to get us excited.
I knew the script was in trouble when our main character randomly stumbled onto a tour bus for 15 pages. He does so to avoid his potential killers, which I guess makes sense. But did we need to stay with these people for 15 pages???
For those of you new writers who are starting to get feedback for the first time, you may have heard the note, “You need to tighten your story up.” Or “You need to tighten the second act up.” What that means is getting rid of sequences like these. Sure, the sequence is the first to bring up that Kellar’s a celebrity around the world, so you could make the argument that it’s necessary. But that one piece of information is placed amongst 15 pages of shit we don’t need at all. Just move that reveal to another scene and get rid of this sequence.
The more exciting stuff is when Kellar’s at the Presidential Party and everyone’s looking at him like he’s Hitler (and we’re wondering why). Have him meet his contact there, have the contact tell him he needs to go to Santiago, then the only scenes from there on out should revolve around him trying to get to that plane and leave the city.
Except that when we DO get on that plane and head to Santiago, we get stuck in another tiny town where a hell of a lot doesn’t happen. We’re looking for horses. We’re looking for lodging. It gets really boring really fast. I think Welles believed in his reveals and reversals (the man who’s supposed to be helping him is actually planning on killing him) too much and thought that gave him carte blanche to take his time.
The Way to Santiago had the story goal (get to Santiago), which gave the script some narrative drive. But it spent too much time in the waiting room, forcing it to come up with something to do before the next plot point. To that end, this script really could’ve used some urgency. If Kellar had to get to these checkpoints by a certain time, Welles would’ve had no choice but to not linger on these sillier unneeded moments.
I mean, look – this was a third draft. Obviously it wasn’t meant to be perfect. But it was the draft he was pushing on the studio in the hopes of making it and I have to agree with them in that it probably wouldn’t have made a good movie. The road to Santiago was too muddled and too slow for my taste.
You can read the script for yourself here!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: SHIT’S GOTTA HAPPEN. I’m sorry for being so blunt, but in screenplays, shit’s gotta happen! You can’t be going 15 pages on a tour bus with a bunch of non-characters (characters who we’ll never see again) bickering. You can’t spend forever with your hero looking for stuff like lodging. Shit’s gotta happen! Get through the mundane stuff quickly then move on to the next plot point because that’s what we’re going to be interested in. I’m not saying you should never take your time. But don’t extend those slow sequences out for too long and don’t pack them to close together.
What I learned 2: Don’t let your script get stuck in the waiting room. This is where you’ve pre-established (for yourself) that a plot point is going to happen at “X” point in your story, and you realize you still have 5 (or 10, or 15) pages before that plot point occurs, so you have your characters “wait around” in the meantime. Long dialogue scenes. An unneeded foray into a store (or a tour bus) to pass the time. You don’t realize that, by doing this, you’ve pulled us into the boring waiting room as well. To combat this, create a goal and give that goal some urgency (they have to be at “x” by “y” time). That should keep your characters active during these sequences.
Genre: TV Pilot – Cop Procedural with comedic elements
Premise: The most underfunded police department in the state is shaken up when a seemingly perfect FBI agent with unlimited resources moves in across the way.
About: Breaking Bad’s Vince Gilligan’s new show he’s doing for CBS. He originally wrote the script 10 years ago (which is the draft I’m reviewing) but couldn’t get CBS to commit. I’m thinking the success of Breaking Bad might have something to do with their newfound interest.
Writer: Vince Gilligan
Details: 57 pages (12/26/02 draft)
Writer and Creator Vince Gilligan
Like a lot of people, I avoided Breaking Bad at first. Cancer is such a depressing subject matter, it’s hard to get excited about any show or movie that features it. It wasn’t until I heard a couple of DJs talking about the show on the radio and mentioning (spoiler) that Walter’s cancer goes away that my curiosity piqued. I then started, like many, my binge watching obsession with the show.
But Breaking Bad is over and thus begins a new chapter in creator Vince Gilligan’s career. Here’s the scary part about that. It doesn’t matter how high up you are on TV’s power pyramid. If your show ends and you don’t come up with another good one, you become forgotten.
Remember Chris Carter? That man was the king of the world when X-Files was on. Now he’s desperately trying to scrape a sad third X-Files movie together. Yes, the fall in this town can be fast and it can be dramatic. So there’s a lot of pressure on that first show back. At the very least, the show has to stay on the air. And in TV, you just don’t know if that’ll happen or not.
In many ways, it’s even more uncertain than movies because not only are there tons of variables involved, but things happen a lot faster and a lot cheaper. The shooting schedule is tight. You don’t get to do 72 takes like in film. So yeah, audiences will give you a few episodes because you’re Vince Gilligan. But after that, if your show isn’t good, they stop tuning in. I like Michael J. Fox. I was pumped when he came back to TV. But there’s a reason no one watches his show. It’s terrible!
Battle Creek begins in, appropriately, Battle Creek, a mid-sized town outside of Detroit. Russ Agnew, a cop in the town, is pissed. Why? Because it’s impossible to do his job. What, with his department scraping by on a budget meant for the local Sizzler. To give you an idea of how bad it is, when he and his partner, Detective Fontanelle White, set up a fake drug deal to catch a criminal, Russ has to steal his sister’s baby monitor for their snitch’s wire. Yeah, it’s that bad.
Enter Special Agent Milton Bradley, an FBI agent who’s about to make things worse. Milton sets up an FBI satellite office across the hall from the precinct. And he’s got FBI money to back up his high-tech pursuit of local criminals. Plush leather couches. State of the art computers. To make matters worse, Milton looks like a cross between Brad Pitt and George Clooney… only taller.
Russ, the alpha male of the office, is quickly dismissed in favor of this new shiny toy. And Milt quickly makes his mark in the workplace, lucking into a homicide, a homicide that should’ve been Russ’s had he just picked up the phone. Oh, but that’s not the worst of it. The murder victim? His body’s been there for decades. (spoiler) Oh, and it’s JIMMY HOFFA! All of a sudden, a media storm sweeps in and Milt is a superstar. Russ can only watch from the shadows, wondering what could’ve been.
But Russ starts doing some investigating and finds out there’s more to this homicide than meets the eye. And that maybe it isn’t Hoffa. However, he soon learns that the investigation isn’t the job. The job is battling Milton, a man who, we learn, weasels his way into offices, manipulates the people and the evidence around him, and ALWAYS comes out on top. For Russ, the war has only begun.
10 pages into Battle Creek and I was thinking, “Nooooooooooo!” Early Vince Gilligan was not nearly as good as Breaking Bad Vince Gilligan. And we would have to endure a subpar TV show because he’d clung to this old dingy relic. The opening sequence is an uninspired engagement meant to establish how poor the Battle Creek police department is (zoinks! Russ has to steal a citizen’s camcorder during his daughter’s recital in order to tape the drug bust). I was thinking to myself, “This is going to get old fast.”
But then Milton entered the picture and all was good with the world. You had conflict. You had fun. This is where the pros separate themselves from the amateurs. They take an idea and look PAST the obvious execution of it. Anyone else with this idea may have stopped at “Wacky adventures with low-tech outdated equipment.” That’d be good for five episodes. But going a step further and adding irony – a nemesis for Russ who has access to the most advanced equipment and resources in the U.S. – that’s what really transformed this into a memorable pilot script.
And Gilligan kept proving he had the goods. This isn’t the stale rambling True Detective, which was clearly written by someone who was so ignorant to screenwriting that he thought Final Draft had something to do with Vietnam. For example, in the beginning, Russ, via VO, writes a letter to 60 Minutes asking them to come and do a piece on his busted police department in the hopes of getting more funding. Because we’re so focused on the letter, we don’t realize that Gilligan is cleverly using the segement for exposition purposes – to introduce us to the department and its key problems. In essence, he sets up the entire show with that scene. And we never notice.
What I also liked here was that Gilligan never wasted a character. If someone showed up early – even if they were seemingly unimportant – those characters would find their way back in the script somehow. For example, early on, a lonely old women always called and annoyed Russ about “a man in red shorts and a big mustache from next door who would keep bothering her,” an obvious reference, Russ came to realize, to her favorite TV show, Magnum P.I. Except later on, we learn that she WASN’T, in fact, referring to Tom Selleck, but in fact a key figure in the case. That payoff, then, ends up becoming a key late-script plot point.
Also, these sort-of “Underdog vs. Super Hero” situations, particularly in comedy, almost always work (check out Toy Story to see it done to perfection). We set up Russ as the hard-working underdog who’s trying to get by on the worst police budget in America, and this perfect asshole comes along and does everything Russ ALREADY does, yet gets commended for it because he’s taller, better looking, and has the deep-funded pockets of the FBI behind him.
And this is another example of the unexpected villain. As I’ve said before, asshole in-your-face one-dimensional villains are usually boring. Here, Milton is polite, he’s thoughtful, he’s seemingly always trying to help everyone. But it’s a façade. He manipulates and uses people in order to come out looking like the hero. And for that, we hate him way more than if he was a straight-forward dick.
One thing Battle Creek taught me about TV is that – at least for the kinds of TV I like – the best part of the show shouldn’t be about that episode’s mystery. It needs to be about the people solving the mystery. Because when you think about it, on these cop shows, every single type of murder case has already been done. So the audience is usually ahead of the writer on that front. But the reason they’ll keep tuning in is because of that battle between Russ and Milt. We want to see Russ win. That dynamic between the two is what viewers are going to latch onto.
The only reason this pilot didn’t get an impressive (and it had one until 5 pages to go), is that the ending wasn’t as clever as it could’ve been. Things kind of come together coincidentally and it felt a little too easy. Then again, Gilligan has had 10 years to perfect this pilot, so maybe he fixed this problem. Let’s hope so, because if he does, this show (or at least the pilot for this show) could be perfection.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Today I learned about the “ADDITIONAL ELEMENT.” Every plot has become cliché, especially on the cop/detective procedural. For that reason, your characters simply “solving the case” isn’t going to be satisfactory enough for the viewer. You need an ADDED ELEMENT to the show/movie/plot that’s going to give the audience something ELSE to look forward to. Here, it’s Russ beating Milton. That’s what’s keeping us watching despite the familiarity. Sure, trying to figure out who killed who is fun. But it’s going to be extra fun if we have something else to keep us entertained, like wondering which man is going to win this episode.
