UPDATE: Calling all female screenwriters – we want YOU to submit your best work for an upcoming Amateur Offerings Weekend that will showcase scripts written exclusively by women! Send a PDF of your script along with the title, genre, logline, and a ‘why you should read’ section in an email to carsonreeves3@gmail.com ASAP! :)
This is your chance to discuss the week’s amateur scripts, offered originally in the Scriptshadow newsletter. The primary goal for this discussion is to find out which script(s) is the best candidate for a future Amateur Friday review. The secondary goal is to keep things positive in the comments with constructive criticism.
Below are the scripts up for review, along with the download links. Want to receive the scripts early? Head over to the Contact page, e-mail us, and “Opt In” to the newsletter.
Happy reading!
TITLE: Gravity Kills
GENRE: Sci-fi thriller
LOGLINE: A man awakens without memory in the nightmarish world of history’s largest super-prison. As he fights for his freedom, he develops visions of a past he cannot recall, causing him to lose grip on the present — leaving only a matter of time before his past & present collide.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “Awhile back you gave some advice on how to generate a good starting point for your script. Basically, you had it down to: confined space, central hero, a mystery to solve, and keep them moving. I really took that into consideration when starting this script. But of course I was derailed along the way. I started it in March 2012, had a solid 60 pages. Then I got sick. Like, real sick. I was in the hospital for the first half of April 2012 (ruptured colon – not fun), then had no energy for the next few months to do any writing. Once I came back to Gravity Kills (which was called “Breakout” then), I realized I had strayed from your advice. I needed to get back to a clearer thru-line and stick to what I really wanted from this script. I love The Twilight Zone. And I had a great idea: a guy wakes up in a super-prison without any memory. It involves fears we all share: the innocent man accused, held against our will, losing our mind – really frightening shit. So that’s what Gravity Kills is…hopefully.
Gravity Kills is a bold science fiction thriller in the vein of Rian Johnson’s Looper (2012), Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010), Oldboy (2003), and Dark City (1998).
I’ve had scripts finish in the top 10% at Nicholls and the Austin Film Festival, and another top 20%-er at Nicholls. I believe I have good concepts, but have struggled to really break through and sustain the ideas through Act 2 and 3 (but the endings work). So I took extra care to keep the momentum moving and I think Gravity Kills enjoys a very tight structure.”
TITLE: Arab In America!
GENRE: Family Comedy
LOGLINE: As a young Arab-American Muslim in a post 9/11 world, no one will hire Osama Ahmed Abou-Bakr, but when he changes his name to Samuel Adam Baker, his old struggles suddenly become new opportunities. However, his pursuit of the American Dream is soon undermined by the multitude of lies he creates to keep his professional and personal life from colliding.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “Arab In America! is a thoughtful and whimsical family comedy in the vein of Mrs. Doubtfire and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Our journey began as a short film which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. It was also awarded the Grand Prize at LinkTV’s One Nation Many Voices Film Competition and was later featured in USA Today, NPR, Yahoo Movies, Huffington Post, CNN, and many others. Ironically, everyone thought a feature was already on the way (which it wasn’t), so together Nabil Abou-Harb, Colin Ferri, and I all hunkered down to adapt our successful short film into a feature.
The challenge of adapting a 15 minute story into a full length story was a difficult task, but we did get some traction on the screenplay (after many revisions of course). We were also trying to make this film ourselves, not just sell the screenplay, and knew we were headed on an uphill battle–the main character was an Arab Muslim in a post 9/11 world after all–but the fact that we had a short film, lots of press, and a well-produced pitch reel for the feature allowed our blind query letters to actually get through to some producers and generate a bit of interest. By 2011 (yes, it was 4 years later, but we were figuring everything out as we went, and trying to make a living any way we could in the process), we had Tony Shaloub interested in playing the father of our hero, and $1 million in LOI, and things seemed to be going up.
However, the moment Osama Bin Laden was killed, Arab In America! officially became dead in the water. Personally, I believed our screenplay was a unique comedy that touched on cultural differences, family issues, and the ever-human struggle to determine one’s own self-identity, but overnight, it seemed like the cultural story became irrelevant. You can be the judge of whether that’s true or not, but thinking back on all we accomplished (and all the mistakes we made along the way), Arab In America! really is a product of its time, and its much easier to see its strengths and weaknesses in retrospect.
Now in 2013, we’ve finally been able to look at the Arab In America! screenplay on its own merits, and be proud of what we accomplished, despite the film never getting made. Perhaps there is still an audience with another revision, who knows, but for now, Arab In America! is yours to exploit for the benefit of your many readers. I know there’s plenty in there for us to learn from as well. Enjoy!”
TITLE: What Doesn’t Kill You
GENRE: Dark Thriller
LOGLINE: When a child killer is sentenced to death under dubious circumstances, the investigating detective discovers that the very man being executed holds the keys that can solve the crime.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “You mentioned in this week’s review of Escape from tomorrow, “If you can find a way to break the rules in an interesting way, to create an excited discussion around your film or script, then the doors to Hollywood will open right up.
This script does just that! It’s a genre bending story that catches most readers off guard.
Just a note; it placed in the top 15% at Nicholls this year and finished in the top 10% in the PAGE AWARDS.”
TITLE: The 2Hr Rule
GENRE: Drama
LOGLINE: After his father falls ill, a down on his luck control freak learns to let go of the past when he meets a happy-go-lucky stripper saddled with amnesia and the lingering stigma of a mysterious scar emblazoned across her face.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “I’ve been a music video/commerical director for over 12 years. The last 5 years has been a gradual shift into long form, with a heavy focus on writing. I’ve always been a very driven individual, sacrificing a lot for my work. But when my father fell ill with Cancer my perspective changed dramatically and I was looking for an outlet to channel what I was feeling. This script is the result. Interestingly enough, it opened the flood gates for a lot of unresolved issues and, as it turns out, I’m pretty fucked up. Fortunately it’s been a cathartic experience. A lot of what happens in the story happened to me at one point or another including getting my tattoos from cholo gangbanger with a guitar string stuffed through a hollowed out Bic pen, powered by a VCR motor. Yeah, that happened. All five times. I know you have a lot of scripts come across your desk and honestly, I can’t say why you should read mine over someone else’s. I will tell you that Nichols told me I beat out over 5,000 other scripts and gave two positive reads. But more than anything, you should read it to meet some great characters and discover a world you haven’t seen before. The story echoes the sentiment of ‘Garden State’ with a more twisted edge.”
Submit your script for a Scriptshadow Review!: 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 it gets 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: Comedy
Premise: (from writer) The Sock Gnome aspires to be promoted within Legendary Inc to respected positions, like Santa or the Tooth Fairy, but compromises this when he accidentally steals money from a bellicose Drug Dealer and must bring him down to save his life.
Why you should read: (from writer) I’m Freddy and I’ve been doing stand-up for years… mostly in Minneapolis, but really all around. If I can find an open mic, I’ll grab it and talk and hope people giggle. It started as a way to hook up with girls (obviously) but then I really fell in love with it.
One of my buddies suggested I take my humor and give screenplays a shot. He told me they were a hundred pages and things needed to be spelled write so I of course said no. But he insisted I try and I’m glad he did. Since then I’ve written two. This is the second and I find it delightful (so does this bum I paid $15 dollars to say so). I’d be thrilled if you gave it a shot.”
Writer: Freddy Gee
Details: 107 pages
Zach Galifianakis for the Sock Gnome??
I have seen SO many people try to get this holiday mascots idea right. I’ve probably read 3 dozen different takes on it over the years. I’ve even seen a few get to the big screen (Rise of the Guardians). And strangely enough, nobody has figured it out. Every single version of this idea has failed. And the thing is, it SOUNDS like a concept bursting with comedic potential. You make Santa a badass. Make the Easter Bunny a weirdo. Come up with some wack-a-doodle plot. Hilarity ensues, right?
Except hilarity has definitely not ensued yet. The closest anybody’s gotten to ensuing was The Nightmare Before Christmas. And that only used two of the holiday mascots. Or wait, is Jack in “Nightmare” the Halloween mascot? Does Halloween have a mascot? I don’t know.
Anyway, you’d THINK this would deter me from continuing to read these scripts. But I admit the whole “sock gnome” thing made me chuckle. And with Legendary seemingly winning a close race with last week’s Amateur Offerings, I figured I’d give it a shot.
Lion is a 38 year old sock gnome. You know how there have been times when you looked in your drawer and found 18 different socks without a match? Well, this man is responsible for that. Now why would anyone purposefully do this? Well, Lion works for this corporation called “Legendary” that’s funded by companies like Hanes, and OBVIOUSLY it’s in Hanes’s best interest if your socks disappear. It means they make more money.
Lion is joined by Jess, The Stork of Unwanted Pregnancies, whose job it is to go into households and prick people’s condoms, and then Ari, a level 2 bogeyman whose job it is to shake people when they sleep??? This rag-tag little team goes from house to house, basically leaving unhappiness in their wake.
So one day, while on a job, Lion accidentally steals a sock stuffed with money from a couple of drug dealers, Buddy and Vince. Once they realize what they’ve done, they return the money, but the damage has already been administered. Buddy wants to take these weirdoes down.
And thus begins a strange chase where Buddy and Vince try to kill Lion, eventually leading them to kidnap Jess, which results in Lion and Ari trying to save her, and ends with Buddy resorting to his original plan, which is to kill Lion and Co. And that, my friends, is the screenplay.
Oh boy.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.
I sooooo want to be nice here but Legendary represents a LOT of what I find wrong in comedy scripts these days. However, it appears that Freddy is still fairly new to this screenwriting thing so I want to be constructive. But there are a lot of issues here.
To start, the plot doesn’t make any sense. Lion steals some money from Buddy. He then returns the money to Buddy. Buddy then spends the rest of the script trying to kill Lion. I don’t understand. If Lion has returned the money, why is Buddy trying to kill him?
I have a feeling this choice was chalked up to, “It’s a comedy. It doesn’t need to make sense.” Nothing could be further from the truth. All the comedy spec sales I read have strong logic, strong motivation, and high stakes involved. Legendary has none of these, leaving the entire plot feeling empty and pointless.
Next was the humor. There isn’t a single joke in Legendary that took any thought to write. Every joke was crass and in our face and obvious. We’ve got dick jokes, rape jokes, blow up dolls, cum rags, little girl sex jokes. Every joke here was a line of dialogue meant to shock and there wasn’t any variation in that humor whatsoever.
I wanted ONE clever joke. Just one. I wanted comedy based on character (the way Phil Dumphey in Modern Family so desperately tries to be the perfect father to a fault), I wanted comedy based on situation (the way Jason Sudekis’s character in We’re The Millers must talk his way away from another family where the father is a D.E.A. agent), I wanted comedy based on misunderstanding (the way Tom Hanks in “Big” thinks he’s having a sleepover at this woman’s house when she thinks they’re having sex). I wanted SOME version of comedy that wasn’t, “Go fuck yourself with that cum rag, Sock Shit.” (not an actual line from the script – although this is how many of them sounded to me).
New comedy writers think it’s all about the crass, about the shock value. No. No no no no no no. It’s not that you can’t use shock humor. But you want to sprinkle it in there. You don’t want it to be THE ONLY JOKE YOU USE. We’ll be tired of it by page 3!
And I don’t mean to generalize here, but it made sense when I found out Freddy had only written two scripts. When you’re on your second script, you’re still at that stage when you think half-baked will do. And this script is very half-baked. Take Ari for example. I have no idea what his power is, what he’s doing, or what the point of his character is. He’s a level 2 bogeyman who becomes invisible when he’s vertical? Lion and Jess are actually trying to do things. What does being vertically invisible do?
Or Lion and Jess. Clearly, there should have been a love story here. Either Lion always liked Jess but was too nervous to make a move or Jess always liked Lion but was too nervous to make a move. Maybe Jess always liked Lion but he was in a relationship. This way, when Jess gets kidnapped, the stakes are much higher. We know there’s a potential relationship on the line here.
We needed a bigger clearer goal as well. Lion, who hates his job, has only ever wanted to be a real holiday mascot. He’s been trying to get out of this Sock Stealing gig for two decades. He’s finally given one night to [steal a certain amount of socks, steal one super important sock, solve a sock mystery, whatever], and if he does, he’s anointed to a real holiday mascot. But of course, on this night, something goes terribly wrong. Stealing drug money feels wrong for a holiday mascot. The sock he steals should have something a little more sophisticated in it. But he must solve all of that before the night is over or he’s going to be a sock stealer forever.
Now you have stakes. You have urgency. You have a clear storyline. As it stands, we’re never really sure why anyone was doing anything in Legendary, and that just can’t happen in a spec script. Once the reader is no longer sure why things are happening – YOUR SCRIPT IS DEAD. It’s dead. Plain and simple. People never finish a script and go, “Man, I barely understood what happened but that was awesome.” You, the writer, have to put in the effort and give us a strong story with a big goal that’s always clear. ESPECIALLY with comedy.
And that’s just for starters. That’s the easy part (especially if you read this site, since I always talk about it). The hard part is creating fresh characters that are going through compelling inner dilemmas, creating interesting relationships between them that need to be resolved, creating story beats that feel fresh and new, throwing in enough obstacles and twists to keep the story unpredictable. THOSE are the hard things. The structure? The part where you lay out what your hero needs to do and why? Then adding consequences and immediacy to that goal? That should be the easy stuff.
So there’s a part of me that wants to get angry here because I know how hard screenwriting is and I know how many people put in months (even years) to get all those things I just mentioned right in their script. And then you have writers who think they can slap something together in a month and it’ll stand up to the biggest scripts on the market but it doesn’t work that way.
That’s not how this business works. Readers know the difference between genuine effort and half-baked. But this is only Freddy’s second time around the block so I’m guessing this is the first time he’s hearing this. I want him to use this as a learning experience. If you really want to make a go at this, Freddy, learn about goals and stakes and urgency. Learn about character flaws and conflict and obstacles (check out some of the bigger articles here on Scriptshadow). Learn to push past those initial obvious first choices and to look deeper to those fourth or fifth choices when creating a character or a scene or a plot point. Learn to vary the comedy in the script. Don’t be a one-trick pony. And, of course, read a TON of comedy specs. I’m sure some people here in the comments can help you out with that. And I’ll be happy to send some to you as well if you e-mail me.
Good luck, my friend. Legendary may not have been ready for prime time, but if you keep working at it, one of your future scripts may be.
Script link: Legendary
[x] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Vary your comedy! Go ahead and use dick jokes. But make sure to include character-based humor, situational-based humor, and the classic misunderstanding as well. If you only use one type of humor, those jokes are going to get really stale really fast.
Update: Bad Robot JUST ANNOUNCED TODAY that Michael Arndt was out and JJ and Lawrence Kasdan (Empire Strikes Back) were taking over writing duties. I think someone likes my little Star Wars 7 treatment. :)
A month ago I proposed the idea that it’s impossible to write a Batman vs. Superman movie. It’s too hard to mix the tones of the characters. Any attempts to have them working together or fighting each other would feel forced. It’s simply not the kind of setup that’s easy to turn into a movie.
But the difficulty of writing that film pales in comparison to the pressure of writing a new Star Wars film. I mean come on. That’s gotta be the tallest screenwriting order in Hollywood, maybe, EVER – right? Imagine sitting down and fading in on “A long time ago in a glaxy far far away…” It’s sort of like being asked to write a new Bible.
But since it’s happening, the folks at Bad Robot may want to keep a few things in mind, starting with something every Star Wars lover seems to have forgotten (even George Lucas!): The two most popular films in the series were steeped in urgency. In Star Wars, the Empire was chasing after our characters the whole movie. And in Empire Strikes Back, the Empire was chasing after our characters for the majority of the movie. “Slow-build” was a term nobody used back then. It was always go go go. Return of the Jedi at least tried to do this. The prequels, however, dismissed the approach entirely, attempting to go the “epic” route instead.
And there is our first lesson when writing sci-fi movies: sci-fi movies cannot be epic.
WHAT! Blasphemy, you say. Of course sci-fi movies can be epic! Well, think about it for a second. How many of your favorite sci-fi movies are “epic,” or even complex? Star Wars – it’s a heart-pounding chase movie. Empire – another chase movie. The Road Warrior – one man helps good guys beat bad guys. Aliens – contained horror. The Matrix – Guy finds out he’s living in a fake world and fights bad guys. The Terminator – A chase movie. Terminator 2 – A chase movie.
Now look at some attempts to be epic sci-fi. Star Wars Episode 1 – A wandering never-ending story about a Trade Embargo. Star Wars Episode 2 – A half-mystery half-planet-jumping fiasco where there was no time limit for anything. Star Wars Episode 3 – A long slow journey about Darth Vader’s rise. Matrix 2 – This was so confusing, I have no idea what it was about. Matrix 3 – Um, Neo turns into Jesus? Dune – I’ve seen this movie three times and I lose track of what’s happening by the 15 minute mark every time.
There are always going to be exceptions (you can make the argument that Avatar was epic) but the truth of the matter is, sci-fi works best when there’s some kind of immediacy and simplicity to the storyline. When the goal is big and clear and the timeline is contained, it’s much easier for the audience to enjoy the story. Once you start stretching your sci-fi timeline out over months (or, god-forbid, years), chances are you’re going to bore us to death.
So the trick is to do what movies like Star Wars did. You look for ways to MASQUERADE as an epic, even though your narrative engine is simple. Star Wars is jumping from ships to planets to space stations, making it SEEM epic. But all that’s driving the story is a chase. The whole thing takes place over a few days. The Matrix seems kind of complex, but that comes from the dual-world switching – the grimy underworld versus the Matrix world. But the story itself is about Neo learning he’s special and using his powers to fight the bad guys. Simple and easy. It also takes place within a few days.
So bringing this back to Star Wars 7, that’s the first thing we should hope they got right. And you’d think they would. Screenwriter Michael Arndt (our Ep 7 scribe) knows about contained timeframes, having written Little Miss Sunshine (a race to get to a beauty pageant) and Toy Story 3 (a race to save our main character’s friends before his owner leaves for college). He’s a guy who knows how to keep a narrative hurrying along.
However, even if they do get that right, they’ll run into another issue: You can’t just remake Star Wars. You can’t just put a young clueless hero on an abandoned planet. You can’t just build a new rising Empire. You can’t have our hero discover they have the force and were meant for bigger things, then pull them into the war, where they take on a new Dark Villain.
We’ve already done that. And no. Switching Luke Skywalker’s character to a girl (hinted at with the Star Wars 7 casting sheet) doesn’t change this. You have to do something new (For the record, I think the clever Abrams placed the female character on the top of that call sheet specifically to mislead the media about the plot).
So if you can’t redo Star Wars and you’re steering clear of the “epic” trap George fell into with the prequels, what story do you tell? My gut tells me that it’ll be something like this: A new type of evil is spreading throughout the galaxy. It is happening unexpectedly and quickly. Han and Leia have been living peacefully on a faraway planet with their son (now a young adult).
With fear gripping the galaxy, the aristocracy asks of Han and Leia what they’ve been fearing ever since their son was born. He is one of the last Jedi. And they need him to fight. The son is brought into this war, likely to try and stop some immediate threat, such as the takeover of a key strategic planet (think the fights over key Japanese islands in WWII – George loves WWII) that will allow the baddies to set up a launching point to take over the entire galaxy (which will happen in successive movies). Luke will likely be brought in to train him for the job, and possibly even join him as his master.
The “strategic planet” thing is a vague guess, as they need SOME big goal for the characters to go after. The problem with creating a script goal here is, Star Wars wrote itself into a corner when they used “destroying the Death Star” as a goal in the original film. There has never been a force more devastating than that. Which made the stakes higher for Star Wars than any of its sequels or prequels by far. They lucked out in Empire and Jedi as they’d created such strong characters with such big unresolved issues (Luke and his father) that those substituted for the lack of a giant universe-threatening weapon (even though they tried to re-do the Death Star in a smaller capacity in Jedi). But since our current film knows it can’t replicate the Death Star with anything (How do you get bigger than a weapon that can destroy a planet??) they’ll probably go with something simpler, like taking control of a key planet.
What do I think of this storyline? It could be okay, I guess. There are ways you can play with it. For example, you can have this new evil force’s army come in and slaughter Leia and Han, forcing their son into the war, which would feel different from Star Wars in that Leia is royalty. She’ll be living large. So the slaughter would likely be on a much grander scale with further-reaching implications. That, however, brings up another problem. The favored Jedi son of a celebrated war hero and queen isn’t exactly an underdog. And that’s what made us love and root for Luke Skywalker so much. He was the biggest underdog of all (Scriptshadow Master Tip: Underdogs are the most likable heroes you can create!). So should they really base the movie around Han and Leia’s son? The Star Wars equivalent of an entitled Trust Fund baby? I don’t know. Something feels wrong about it.
I’m also curious how Luke is going to factor into all this. Does he have a son as well? Or maybe a daughter? Do his daughter and Han and Leia’s son hang out? Do they like each other? Or maybe they both have sons and they dislike each other. Maybe they’re on completely different planets and have never met, leaving one offspring to head to the dark side while the other takes the light path. The trilogy would follow their ascension up the ranks of the good guys and bad guys, with a final showdown in the third film. That might be cool.
But what about if I were writing Star Wars 7? What would I do? I can tell you (and Disney and Bad Robot) are just dying to know. So here goes… Personally, I think it’s all about the main character, and I’d want to play around with mine. My hero wouldn’t be related to anyone from the past (I’m on Team No Old Trilogy Characters). I’d make him troubled, a kid growing up in the slums (imagine the streets of Bombay). He’s a young criminal of sorts, a kid who took the wrong path and hangs out with the wrong crowd because that’s all that was available to him (think any young kid growing up in South Central). This is a guy who all he cares about is his next score, about making it through the day. And then as this new evil force starts spreading throughout the galaxy and someone finds out he’s a Jedi, he’s called upon to either help or lead the fight against them. The most unlikely hero is asked to be just that, the hero.
See, to me, the problem writers make when they think about sci-fi, is they think about the plot or the worlds or the gadgets or all these things that are ultimately window dressing. You have to come up with interesting characters first and Star Wars has always been about this common theme of fighting that war within yourself – choosing good or bad. If there’s one flaw in the Luke Skywalker character, it’s that I never really believed he was going to turn bad. So despite that battle going on inside of him, we always knew he was going to choose the right path.
Then with Anakin in the prequels, we knew he would choose the wrong path because we saw the original trilogy and knew he’d become Darth Vader! So in both cases, picking good or evil was never in doubt. With a new character like this, someone who came from a bad place and tough circumstances, we’d truly wonder, during the 7, 8, and 9 trilogy, which path he was going to choose. This is a character we’ve never seen before in Star Wars. He’d have that original underdog quality Luke had. Plus he’d have a little bit of rebellious Han in him. He wouldn’t be whiny like Anakin. He’d be tough. He’d basically be the best of all worlds!
So once I had that character, I could build the plot around him, and it probably wouldn’t be too far off what I’m assuming they’re going to do now. If they had to bring in old characters, Luke could be called in to train this guy, who doesn’t listen to anything he says. And our new hero is thrust into a key first film battle that our good guys must win in order to stave off the bad guys strategic play for the entire galaxy.
But alas, I am not writing Episode 7. Like many fans, I will be waiting on the sidelines to see what they come up with. Which leads me to my next question – What would Star Wars look like in your hands? What would your plot be for the next film in the favored franchise?
Genre: Noir/Thriller/Period
Premise: The true story of a serial killer terrorizing the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
About: The Devil In The White City is one of the biggest books of 2005. It originally had Tom Cruise attached, but more recently Leonardo DiCaprio has snatched up the rights, with the hopes of playing the villain in the story. Any property that goes into Leo’s company runs the risk of disappearing, as he options a ton of stuff. But with #1 Black List screenwriter Graham Moore (The Imitation Game) doing the latest draft, it looks like Leo’s pretty serious about the project. Then again, you never know with Hollywood. Charlie Hunnam may be attached tomorrow.
Writer: Graham Moore (based on the book by Erik Larson)
Details: 3/16/13 draft
A lot of you may wonder, “Why does it take so long for projects to be developed?” I mean seven years til a movie gets made? Ten years? Fifteen years? What’s the deal? The last draft I saw of “Devil” had ‘2005’ on the title page. So clearly this project is yet another casualty of this confusing never-ending process.
Let me explain it to as best I can. When you sell a project, and it doesn’t mobilize immediately (like The Counselor or Safe House), you have no choice but to pull back for awhile. The studio’s cooled on you and trying to shove something down their throats isn’t going to solve anything.
So you pull away, then in a year (or two, or three) you come back, with some fresh news attached. Maybe there’s a new director involved. Maybe there’s a new actor who loves it. Maybe there’s a completely new draft. Or maybe someone new rewrites the script.
Having a fresh new take on the material typically gets the buzz going again. And the bigger and flashier that writer is, the more buzz it’s going to get. Which means bigger agents will pay attention which means bigger actors will pay attention, which means bigger directors will pay attention. All of which increases the chances of it getting made. That’s why people pay these big name writers outrageous sums for a rewrite. Because they know that when they go out with the script, people are going to pay attention.
The thing is, if you don’t keep that momentum going and get all the way to the finish line, people get tired of the material. The director gets bored and drops out. The actor (who wanted to work with that director) drops out. And now you risk going back into deep freeze for another two years. And each time you try to bring back the project, it’s tougher, because everyone’s asking, “Well why didn’t they make this already? There must be something wrong with it.” Before you know it, ten years has gone by. It happens all the time.
Something tells me, though, that “Devil” is going to get there at some point. It’s just too lush of a setting to not turn into a movie. Nobody’s ever seen the Chicago World’s Fair in its big budget glory before. And the serial killer angle makes that setting a story. But I say all of that without having read the book. So let’s see if the script backs up my instincts.
Tis the late 19th century in Chicago. Back then, the greatest city in the world hadn’t yet built its 16,000 hot dog stands or had one of its sports teams throw the World Series, or lived through the wrath of Al Capone. It was known more for being a really really dangerous place to live. Walk down the wrong street and you could end up with a knife in your gut.
Seems like the perfect place for HH Holmes to set up shop. The dashing upstart hotel owner engages in one thing and one thing only: killing women. Lots of them. He gets away with it because his murders get buried under everyone else’s. The cops don’t have enough time or manpower to investigate these tragedies properly.
The best part of all this, for Holmes, is that the World’s Fair has come to Chicago, infusing the city with a fresh new crop of young girls hoping to get in on the ground floor of Chicago’s rebirth. Holmes simply waits for these women to show up at his hotel, gets to know them, takes them on a couple of dates, and, well, you know the rest.
Call Holmes intrigued then, when he meets the first girl who isn’t interested in him. Emeline Cigrand is secretary to the fair’s director, Daniel Burnham. Holmes originally approaches Emeline to gleam information about the investigations into the murders he’s committed. But he soon begins to like her, and wants to make her the Mona Lisa of his killings, as it were.
But head of fair security Frank Pickett begins to sense that Holmes isn’t the upstanding citizen he claims to be, and begins investigating him as such. What we then explore is a series of firsts. The first “official” serial killer. The first well-known use of fingerprints to catch a killer. The first ever Ferris Wheel. With each of these characters having something at stake in the fair’s success, they must go through one another in order to come out on top.
This seems to be a byproduct of a lot of these period pieces, and we can now add “Devil” to that list: There wasn’t really a main character in this script. HH Holmes probably gets the most screen time. But Emeline is the one we get closest to. And Detective Pickett plays the closest thing to a traditional protagonist, since he’s the one going after the killer.
I guess to a lot of writers, period equates to “epic” and “sprawling” so they feel they must cover a lot of characters or they’re not doing their job. When you do that, however, you run the risk of spreading yourself too thin. By not getting to know one character extensively, we don’t really connect with any. And worse still, since there isn’t a clear protagonist, we feel left out. We’re not really sure who to claim as our own.
And I’m not saying that multiple protagonists never work. All I’m saying is it makes telling the story harder. And I felt that here. I never really connected to anyone. In her description, I was told Emeline wanted to prove herself. Which is a character I want to see. That makes me think of someone tenacious and driven and goal-oriented. But I never SAW any of this in her actions. She basically just waited for people to tell her what to do. Had we given Emeline more time, got to know why she was here and seen that drive in her actions, of course we would’ve connected to her more.
Another issue is that the script moved at too leisurely a pace. This tends to happen when your main character isn’t active, as is the case with Emeline (I’m going to assume she’s our main character). Emeline is essentially waiting for the world to happen to her. She’s being told what to do by her boss, Burnham, and she’s waiting around for Holmes to keep courting her. So how can the story move if your main character isn’t moving?
Again, if your main character is waiting, we, the reader, are going to feel like we’re waiting, since we feel what our main character does. Now we DO have the threat of Holmes dating Emeline to add suspense to her plotline, keeping things with her somewhat interesting. But I don’t think that suspense ever worked as powerfully as her being a stronger character would’ve.
If I were these guys, I’d try to make Emeline more of a power player. She should be going after something, whether it be moving up the ladder at the company (instead of just being handed the job as Burnham’s secretary) or pushing her own big idea that she’s trying to get into the fair. Because it’s really hard to get on board with a character who’s so passive.
That’s not to say there wasn’t a lot of good here. I enjoyed HH Holmes’s character. He’s by no means unlike any serial killer we’ve ever seen. But he’s so ruthless and such a sociopath that he’s pretty damn scary. When you placed that against the backdrop of this beautiful fair, mixed still with a surrounding city that resembled the modern slums of Bombay, I could so see those images on the big screen.
I also thought Daniel Burnham, the fair director, really got better as the script went on. Whenever you write a character, you always want him to HAVE A HUGE STAKE in the outcome of whatever he’s pursuing, whether it be a trip to the store or creating the World’s Fair. Burnham has millions of dollars of his own money on the line. He’s constantly being pressured by the Mayor to get this right. Investors are all doubting he can provide a return on their investment. We know that if Burnham doesn’t pull this off, his career is over. And that’s stakes. You want to do this not just for one character, but for ALL your characters.
To me, figuring out this project really comes down to the main character. First establishing who it is, and if it is, indeed, Emeline, doing a lot more with her character. She needs a bigger personality. We need to know more about her past. She needs bigger goals and dreams she’s pursuing. She needs to be able to hang with the boys in this script. Right now she’s too thin and passive. I hope they figure it out, cause this project has so much potential!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read (just came in under the wire)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Sometimes in a scene, you need to use the action description to explain to the reader what’s going on, even though that’s not what action description is for. Action description is supposed to tell the reader what he’ll see ON THE SCREEN ONLY. A character walking. Two characters kissing. A character peering out from behind a curtain. But once in awhile, when there’s a potentially unclear plot point you need to get across, you can cheat, or else you run the risk of your reader being confused. Early on in “Devil,” HH Holmes goes to the cops as a concerned hotel owner, asking about the recent murders. But it turns out the cops don’t know anything and send him off empty-handed. Now at first, I didn’t know what the point of this scene was. But at the end of the scene, Moore includes this line:
ON HOLMES: Hmmm, How’s he going to get information?
Ah-ha! That’s what the scene was about. Holmes was trying to get information on what the cops knew about his murders. Okay, some of you probably could’ve figured that out via the scene alone. But not every reader catches everything. So it’s nice to clarify something just in case they don’t get it, even though it’s technically a no-no.
Genre: TV pilot
Premise: (from AMC) Set in the early 1980s, the series dramatizes the personal computing boom through the eyes of a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy whose innovations directly confront the corporate behemoths of the time. Their personal and professional partnership will be challenged by greed and ego while charting the changing culture in Texas’s Silicon Prairie.
About: This is one of the next big shows coming to AMC, the network that brought you Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead. As for the writers, I’ve actually reviewed one of their scripts before and WOW have they improved. I thought their spec effort, The Knoll, was below par, with my main beef being that it was stick thin. But this is the polar opposite. Very rich and detailed and deep. Good job guys!
Writers: Christopher Cantwell and Christopher Rogers
Details: 64 pages
Breaking Bad is over. Mad Men has only one season left (well, two halves of one season actually – in a sly or slimy move, depending on who you talk to). Which leads to the inevitable question, what does the network producing the best shoes on television have next? Word on the street (or from a Google search) says that AMC has over 60 shows in development. So they’ve got plenty of potential successors. “Halt and Catch Fire” is first trying to take the baton. Will it succeed? Let’s find out.
It’s 1981. You know, when E.T. came out? When Michael Jackson had only a couple of facial reconstruction surgeries in the rear-view mirror (the MAN in the rear-view mirror)? And when the personal computer was just starting to hit the world. Computer systems salesman Joe Macmillan is someone who knows the PC boom is coming. The problem is he’s also suicidal, and actually drives his car off a cliff in the opening scene in an attempt to meet his maker. But he survives. Bummer. Or not bummer?
Joe, who used to work at IBM (and hated it), decides to use this second chance to take over the PC industry. He’s heard of this computer innovator named Gordon Clark, a bar-brawling family man (yeah!) who spends his nights pulling apart and putting back together Atari 2600s. Joe specifically comes to IBM rival Cardiff-Giant (at the time just a software company) to work with Gordon. His goal? To build a PC that’s better and cheaper than IBM’s.
And that’s exactly what they do (with a lot of resistance on Gordon’s part). They take one of IBM’s PCs and they reverse engineer it. Which is kind of a legal no-no. But Joe doesn’t stop there. He actually CALLS IBM and tells them that he did it. Which gets every lawyer within 5 miles of IBM’s headquarters together to take down Cardiff. What’s going on? Is Joe trying to destroy his own company?
Not exactly. In a somewhat difficult-to-understand development, the only way for Cardiff to avoid getting sued into bankruptcy is to pretend like they were working on a PC all along. This forces Cardiff’s top brass to allow Joe to head up the PC side of the company, where he of course brings with him Gordon, and a plucky (yet attractive!) young computer genius from a nearby university, Cameron. The three will do the impossible. They will take on the biggest computer corporation in the world and try to beat them at their own game – making PCs.
Lee Pace will play Joe.
Well, I don’t really know what I just read. I just know it was good! Almost an impressive. See, here’s what has me tripped up. This is a show about a company called “Cardiff-Giant” competing with titan IBM in the early days of the personal computer business. The thing is, I’ve never heard of Cardiff-Giant. Are they an also-ran company that eventually succumbed to IBM? Did Cardiff-Giant merge into some other famous company that’s still alive today? Or is this all just fiction? I mean, the Cardiff Giant IS one of the most famous hoaxes in history – a ten foot tall mummified man. So is the company title a hint that there’s more to this show than meets the eye? I don’t know!
Luckily, this is a really well-written pilot with a lot of good stuff going on. The first thing you notice about “Halt” is the irony (always use irony in your ideas if possible guys!). This is the computer business, a place where we expect dorks to huddle in their closets and basements and build computer boards. Which does happen here. But one of our two leads starts bar fights and the other is a ruthless closer that would make Alec Baldwin’s character on Glengary Glenn Ross feel like a spineless chump. These don’t feel like the geeky techies we associate with this industry, instantly giving the show some edge.
And Chris and Chris not only built those characters ironically, but used them to instill a lot of the conflict that drives the script. Joe is a suicidal dick who never takes no for an answer, and Gordon is a frustrated family man who isn’t afraid to tell someone to fuck off. The two don’t really like each other (or each others’ contrasting styles) and that adds a lot of fire to their scenes. Conflict, conflict, conflict people. It’s the oldest dramatic tool in the book. It’s gotta feel natural (you can’t force it) but if you set the characters up right and they’re naturally butting up against each other, the scenes will write themselves.
And the script just made some cool choices along the way. One of the easiest ways for me to spot a bad writer is to read a scene play out the exact way I’ve seen it play out 6000 times before. Only the good writers say, “How can I do this differently?”
There’s a scene early on where Joe needs an engineer for their group. So he goes to the local college to look for one. Now it’s important to see how this scene would’ve been written by a bad writer. We probably would’ve shown a professor type lecturing his students, and then a particularly difficult question would’ve been posed that stumped everyone, and our plucky young student, Cameron, would’ve answered it in an unexpectedly clever way. Joe would’ve been waiting in the wings, witnessing this, then caught up to Cameron afterwards and asked if he could talk to her.
Here’s how the scene went instead. Joe works his way in front of the class and tells everyone who wants to be an engineer to raise their hand. He’s going to list off several categories. Every time he lists a category they don’t have experience in, they have to lower their hands. He lists a bunch of stuff (electrical engineering, software design, microprocessing, etc.) and each time, more and more hands go down until there are three left. Of those three, he asks each to tell him one thing that will be true about computers 10 years from now. They each give their answer. Cameron ends up giving the best one. Macmillan says, “See me after class.”
I haven’t seen that scene before. And those scenes don’t just come to you off the top of your head. You have to fight for them. You have to go through a couple of cliché scenes until you find them. And the writers who are willing to put forth that extra effort and find that fresh take on a scene are typically the ones who succeed.
Speaking of Cameron, I loved how the Chris’s added ANOTHER layer of conflict within this three-person team. Later on, after Joe discovers Cameron, he gets drunk and sleeps with her. Realizing he screwed up everything, he ditches her the next morning. Later, however, when he becomes in charge of Cardiff’s PC division, he needs that engineer still. So he must go groveling back to this girl that hates him and ask her to join the team. She reluctantly does, and now we’ve got one big unhappy family.
We also have a boss who hates Joe. We have a rival (his old boss from IBM) who hates Joe. Everyone seems to hate these guys. And that’s PERFECT for a show because it creates drama. It creates resistance. It creates conflict. That’s what you need!
Now not everything is blueberries and soft shell tacos here. I had a couple of issues. Gordon’s character was inconsistent. He starts off as this guy who beats people up in bars. But when he meets Joe, he becomes meek. This tends to happen when you try and create two alpha males. In the scenes, one of them has to become dominant, and by association, the other’s going to disappear a little. However, Gordon disappeared too much. I liked him better when he would beat somebody’s ass. I hope they go with that guy in the show.
And also, this pilot was so heading for an impressive before the “Cardiff PC Division” plot point. This whole time, Joe looked like he was cleverly orchestrating this really cool plan that was going to outsmart everyone – an outsmarting I was dying to see – but it turns out they sort of accidentally get asked to start this new PC division because of a weird legal loophole that was never clearly explained. It drives me NUTS when major plot points are fudged over by unclear plot developments. I was hoping for more there.
Still, everything else here was top notch. Is it the next Breaking Bad? Too early to tell. I gave AMC show Hell on Wheels the same grade I’m giving this and thought it was headed for big things. But that show was bigger than AMC was capable of making it. It needed Boardwalk Empire dollars to do it justice. “Halt” doesn’t require a big production budget, so it will be all about the characters and the story. They’ve got some cool characters. Let’s see where the story goes from here.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: QUESTION MARK CHARACTERS – In a lot of good TV shows, you have characters who are question marks. You don’t know what they’re capable of or what they’ll do. You need to almost present them as ticking time bombs, waiting to explode. Here we have one protagonist who’s willing to beat the shit out of people (and get beat up) if they get in his way, and another who drives his car off a cliff at the beginning of the show, trying to commit suicide. Those are two big question mark characters if you ask me.
