Genre: Thriller/Drama
Premise: (from IMDB) When Keller Dover’s daughter and her friend go missing, he takes matters into his own hands as the police pursue multiple leads and the pressure mounts. But just how far will this desperate father go to protect his family?
About: This script sold for roughly a million dollars 4-5 years back. It was one of those dream scenarios as it was the writer’s (Aaron Guzikowski) first sale (a later script of his, Contraband, ended up getting made sooner). Who gets paid a million bucks their first time out?? Not only did he get the big money, but guys like DiCaprio and Bale wanted to star in his movie. Eventually, the musical chairs casting ended up with Hugh Jackman and Jake Gylenhaal in the lead roles. The film finally came out this weekend, finishing number 1 at the box office with 22 million dollars. There are some who say this is the first real Oscar contender to be released. Let’s find out if that’s the case!
Writer: Aaron Guzikowski
Details: 153 minutes!! Yowzers!
Okay, so here’s the deal. Five years ago, everybody was talking about this script. While it didn’t end up number 1 on the Black List or anything, a lot of folks tabbed it as their favorite script of the year. I read it and thought it was good. I even gave it an impressive rating (I was a little less discerning back in those days). What I remember is that the script had a strong sense of tone. It led us to a dark place and we believed in that dark place. That’s not easy to do.
I also remember that the ending completely fell apart and if they were going to make a good movie, they’d need to completely rewrite it. There was a common amateur mistake at play. Guzikowski set up a lot of fun little mysteries, but didn’t pay them off. In fact, the climax felt like a completely different film (the maze stuff came out of nowhere). I was interested to see how they would fix that in the rewrites.
Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) and his family head to Franklin Birch’s house for some Thanksgiving activities. The neighborhood they live in is a nice, respectable middle-class suburb. You’d feel safe raising your kids there which is probably why neither the Dover’s or Birch’s think twice about letting their 10 year-old daughters play outside.
But as the day turns to night, the families notice the girls haven’t returned and begin a frantic search for them. When they realize they’re gone, Keller’s son remembers a strange RV camped out down the block. Lonely Detective Loki, no relation to Thor, is called in to find the van. When he does he’s shocked to learn it was being driven by Alex Jones, a local man with the IQ of a third grader. Jones doesn’t seem to know anything about the girls so they let him go.
This infuriates Keller, who’s convinced that Alex is their guy. So he takes matters into his own hands and kidnaps Alex, locking him up in an abandoned apartment building he owns. With the reluctant help of Franklin, the two begin to torture him in hopes of learning where their daughters are. The question is, does Alex really know? Is he their guy? Or does Keller want him to be the guy so badly that he’s unable to see the truth?
In the meantime, Detective Loki suspects that some other weirdo is the kidnapper and eventually finds out where he lives. When he gets there, the walls are covered with mazes. Coupled with the man’s propensity for buying children’s clothes despite not having kids, Loki’s pretty sure he’s got the guy. When Keller hears this, he freaks out. Is he torturing the right man? Before anyone can get a definitive answer though, Second Suspect OFFS himself! This leaves everyone rolling in a heap of hearsay. It isn’t clear who’s telling the truth, who’s lying, and who has the girls. But they’re going to have to find out soon, because the clock is ticking, and without someone to provide food or water, the girls don’t have long.
Here’s what I liked about Prisoners. The setup was unique. And because the setup was unique it allowed for a lot of unique situations that we don’t usually see in these kinds of movies. A straightforward kidnapping story goes like this: A girl gets taken, they search for her, there are twists and turns and false leads along the way until they finally save her. This is the boring traditional blueprint for this kind of film.
But Prisoners institutes what I call the “Silence of the Lambs” approach. It adds a secondary element that throws all your expectations for the genre off. In Lambs, obviously it was Hannibal. Here, it’s Keller’s imprisonment of Alex. This isn’t something we typically see, so it confuses us, intrigues us, unsettles us. It’s not just about finding this girl. It’s about “IS KELLER TORTURING THE RIGHT GUY??” Is what he’s doing “right”? Is Keller going to kill the wrong guy? Is Keller going to get caught? What happens if he does get caught? These are all questions we don’t typically deal with when we’re watching a mystery procedural.
I think that and the dogged determination of both Keller and Detective Loki to do their respective jobs is what made this film so watchable. I always tell you guys – the more determined your characters are to achieve their goal, the more we’re going to care. I mean Keller is ready to move mountains to find this girl. And Loki is going to stay up all night 7 nights a week until he’s got his man.
Which leads me to another thing Prisoners did well. It explored that gray interaction between the detective and the victim’s family we don’t typically get to see. Many times the victim’s parents are so mad, so angry, that they endanger the investigation, themselves, even innocent people. They believe vigilante investigation and justice is the only way to go. And since they place emotions before logic, they’re often wrong. This leaves the detective in a position of not only trying to find the victim, but trying to keep the family from hurting themselves. Prisoners did a really good job looking at that.
Here’s my big problem with Prisoners though. They never figured out the ending. It’s better than it was. But there are too many unanswered questions after the movie’s over (spoilers follow). Okay, so this Second Suspect had the girls’ clothes. How? As far as I could tell, he wasn’t affiliated with the real killer so why in the world would he have the girls’ clothes? And how did one of the girls escape? That was NEVER explained. And why wasn’t she able to tell them who she ran away from? Oh, and who was this mystery child killer the priest murdered? Or did he even murder him? That was never stated. Was he Alex’s mother’s ex-husband? If so, why wasn’t this clearly explained?
Sadly, the reason the first ¾ of this movie worked so well (its zig-zaggy plot) was because they never had to make the dots connect. Of course it’s a great twist when Second Suspect has the girls’ clothes if you NEVER HAVE TO EXPLAIN HOW HE GOT THEM. Certain choices seemed to confirm the director’s lack of confidence in the script. As we got closer to the end, we’d get more and more “artful” fades to black. These seemed to be used to cover up or divert our attention away from these emerging plot holes.
I’m not going to lie, there were things in that third act that upset me. But for the majority of its running time, Prisoners kept me on the edge of my seat. I think it wants you to believe it’s bigger and more complicated than it is, which is where the frustration sets in (because you want it to be big!) but the reality is that it’s a solid non-traditional thriller and that’s it. But hey, I’ll still take that over Transformers 8 any day!
[ ] what the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Breaking the fifth wall! Oh yeah, you guys have heard of breaking the fourth wall. That’s when one of the characters talks directly to the audience. But do you know what the fifth wall is? It hit me while watching Prisoners. At a certain point, I began to wonder what I would do if I were in a Keller’s position. My daughter is kidnapped. I think, but am not 100% certain, I have the guy who did it. Would I go to the same extreme Keller does? See, the fifth wall is the wall that invites the audience TO PARTICIPATE in the story. When they start asking, “Hmm, what would I do if I were in this situation?” you’ve officially sucked them in. This isn’t for every screenplay. But it’s a very powerful tool in the right script.
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: Abaddon
GENRE: Horror, sci-fi
LOGLINE: A team of marines and scientists board a spaceship, only to discover its crew have transformed into raging cannibals.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): “After countless attempts to write a epic fiction (trying to run before learning to walk), I’ve learned about my strengths (plot-mapping, dialogue) and weaknesses (flowery language, vivid descriptions). So began my love of script writing. My first (polished) script, ‘Abaddon’ blends originality with familiarity. It contains the conventions of good horror, complete with twists, turns, and interesting/flawed characters trying to survive aboard a spaceship swarming with zombie-like savages. I appreciate any constructive criticism the SS community of passionate readers and writers can provide. Thank you.”
TITLE: DEADMEN
GENRE: Black Comedy Western/Thriller
LOGLINE: A beautiful woman persuades a washed up gunslinger in the West to commit suicide, and he does just that.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): “I placed 2nd in this years Script Pipeline competition. This script has been developed since 2010, when the 1st draft was a semifinalist in the Austin Film Screenplay Competition.
What if Louie CK and Tarantino got together to do a Western…? That’s what Deadmen is.”
TITLE: SWAP
GENRE: Sci-Fi/Thriller.
LOGLINE: When a homicide detective learns that the murderer of a Senator was the victim of a high-tech setup, he then uncovers a conspiracy that makes him question everything he believes in, even himself.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): “In 2003 I had a “concept” for a Sci-Fi movie but had never written a screenplay. My wife saw a news piece for a screenplay community on the Internet, where you could upload your work and get constructive reviews and help. I read the first ten pages of the “Terminator” to get an idea of formatting. Using Word templates and a few reference books, I knocked out the first draft of in a week. The formatting was terrible and the story was littered with mistakes. But I pushed on and learned/developed the craft though constructive feedback and hard work.
My ideas were always a little high concept (and budget) so I began to get interested in short scripts and independent film, to both learn and give me a chance at getting produced. 10 years later I’ve just started a draft of my 19th feature script and finished short script 120. So I guess it’s fair to say I’ve been bitten by the bug of screenwriting. I’ve had short films screened in Cannes, won and placed in contests (thrilled that Kenneth Branagh read and selected one of my scripts). But am I any closer to breaking into the business? Hell no! But I’m enjoying the journey and learning as I go.”
TITLE: STORM DRAGONS
GENRE: Epic Fantasy-Action/Adventure (in the vein of Game of Thrones, 300 and Gladiator)
LOGLINE: “In a mystical land where champions fight to the death to keep the peace, the revenge of a chosen warrior against the killer of his family risks starting the all out war he lives to prevent”
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): “With the growing general audience interest in the fantasy genre, specifically in adult epic stories like Game of Thrones (including yourself, right?), and after making the finals in 10 different screenplay contests, I believe that my script is ready to face your wisdom and get the answer to its main quest: Could it become the Game of Thrones of the Big Screen?”
TITLE: Blood Mountain
GENRE: Horror/Dark Comedy
LOGLINE: A group of friends filming a homemade comic book movie seek revenge on the bloodthirsty band of European vampires who murdered one of their actors.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): “My script has GSU, an inciting incident, and something that ups the stakes as the story moves along, just like the SS articles emphasize. But just because I have that checklist, it doesn’t mean a thing until it is scrutinized by the best amateur writing community on the web. I’ve read quite a few Amateur offerings screenplays the last few months, and I haven’t rushed this along before it’s ready, like some others I’ve read. This is no first draft. The only question is, and it’s the one question I can’t answer but hopefully Scriptshadow can, is it ready for the big time?”
Submit your own script for a 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: Action Comedy
Premise: (from writer) A bipolar theater geek heads to school and gets cast in a role he never expected to play: a real-life hero who must battle a band of goons to stop them from kidnapping a fellow classmate.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: (from writer) The script is a 2013 Nicholl Quarterfinalist, and it’s got a tone all its own. (Big talk, I know, but how else can I get you to read it?) if I were to pitch this is in one second, it would be: “Imagine if John Hughes wrote Die Hard.'”
Writer: Will Hare
Details: 110 pages
I was going to do a French script review today but of all the queries sent in, there was always at least one grammatical mistake in the logline. My experience has been if a writer makes mistakes in the logline, the quality of the script isn’t going to be very good. Now I know English is a second language for a lot of you, so I wanted to be lenient, but the truth is, Hollywood doesn’t provide any leniency, so why should I? Get those loglines and those scripts cleaned up, guys. We have an ESL editor working for us (scroll to bottom here) or just get one of your American friends to go through your script (and your logline!). You’re competing against perfect English so you have to have the same.
That brings us to today. I decided to give Second Place Hero a second chance in the Amateur Friday game. When it debuted during Amateur Offerings, it was getting a few too many rave reviews in the comments. I’ve been running this site for almost five years. I can count the amount of rave reviews for an amateur script on one hand. You commenters are tougher than me. So I went with another choice for AF that week. But a couple of people I trust did vouch for “Second Place.” Therefore I’d rather go with it than diving into the slush pile randomly. So, Second Place Hero, here’s your shot at redemption. Hope you deliver!
16 year-old Billy’s got issues. His mom killed herself. He’s got the same disease that did her in (he’s bi-polar). He uses a sock puppet to convey his feelings. And his only desire in life is to get the lead part in the school’s version of Guys and Dolls (that might be the most concerning of all his problems).
On this particular day in high school, Billy’s showing around Persimmon, a dark and mysterious new girl. He’s kind of digging her, but he’s so pissed off about pretty boy Flynn getting the lead over him, that he’s not really able to concentrate.
Unbeknownst to Billy and the rest of the students, a pair of helicopters land outside the school and a group of dudes in masks storm inside. They take over the main office (promptly shooting the poor principal) and immediately begin searching for a student with a special tattoo.
Our naughty villain is a man simply known as “Pink Suit” and he’s only got a few hours to do his job. In short, the student’s parents will be testifying in a big case tomorrow against his client. He needs to kidnap the student to use him/her as leverage to deter the parents from testifying. Complicating matters is that he doesn’t know the name of the student. All he knows is that they have the tattoo.
At a certain point, Billy figures all this out, and it’s looking like Persimmon is our tattooed mystery student. So he’s got to keep running around, keeping her safe, all while the peanut gallery tags along (the fat kid, the bully, the angsty chick). It’s Breakfast Club meets Die Hard, with Billy playing the part of John McClane, using lessons he’s learned from his police chief dad to take down the baddies. He even uses his acting skills to cleverly stay one step ahead of Pink Suit. But eventually the two are going to have to meet. Can a high school kid really defeat a criminal mastermind and his thugs?
On the surface, Second Place Hero has a lot of things going for it. It has a complex main character. Billy is bi-polar. He’s dealing with his mom’s suicide. He and his father have a huge chasm in their relationship. There’s a lot more going on here than your typical teen movie.
The setup itself is perfect for a film. You have the classic contained thriller structure, modeled after Die Hard. So we have a goal, stakes, urgency, naturally built into the storyline.
And I always tell writers to take chances with their writing. Mixing an action thriller with a teenage comedy-drama (a la Breakfast Club) is really unique. In a sea of “the same,” it was nice to read something that actually felt different.
HOWEVER, just because something’s different doesn’t make it good. And while I respect Will’s strange genre-mixing experiment, I think that may be the first problem I had with the screenplay. I could never quite wrap my head around the mix. You have a theater kid running around, wielding guns, killing bad guys, getting into teenage-y arguments with his crew… I don’t know. I was trying to imagine this onscreen and it all felt too goofy, too ridiculous.
Also, while I loved how much effort Will put into Billy’s character development, I’m not sure I ever really believed it. There’s this fine line whenever you’re developing a character, where if you’re not careful, it comes off more technical than real. I mean I can make my hero a schizophrenic orphan with face blindness and OCD, but if it doesn’t feel honest, if it doesn’t feel truly embedded into the character, then it’s no different than giving your character no depth at all. In fact, it’s worse, because it feels false. I encountered that too many times here. Like with Billy using the sock puppet to discuss his feelings. That felt more like a gimmick than Billy TRULY NEEDEING a puppet to communicate. Once I detect falseness in a script, whether it be through the story or the characters, I start to pull away.
There were other false moments too. Like Billy (because he’s an actor) being able to mimic the voices of the bad guys when talking to Pink Suit on the radio. I know Billy’s an actor. So I can see why the choice was made. But a 16 year old being able to sound like a grown Hispanic man to his boss? I don’t know if I’m buying that.
Or then there’s this whole thing where Billy’s cried wolf too many times to his Police Chief father. Therefore, when he calls the police for help, they don’t believe him and don’t come to the school. That’s one of those things that makes sense to a writer when he’s all alone in a room (“Oh yeah, I’ll just make it so they don’t believe Billy. That’s why no cops show up!”) but come on. This is total movie logic. There is no way, especially in this day and age, that the police are going to take any chances with a potential school massacre. There’s just no way!
As all those little things added up, it took me further and further out of the story. You’re already trying to sell a very delicate marriage of genres. You’re already asking your reader to make a big leap in believing this setup. So anything falseness you add ON TOP OF THAT is basically like putting an industrial fan in front of a house of cards. The script just won’t be able to handle it.
I think Will is a talented writer. But this feels like one of those early efforts we all have to go through. It has its moments, but there are too many things we have to buy into to enjoy it. I’d say to Will, at the very least, take some time away from this script, write your next one, and come back to it with some fresh eyes. You’ll be able to see a lot of these things I mentioned more clearly, and maybe even come up with some solutions. I’ll be keeping an eye on Will as he gets better, but this script wasn’t for me.
Script link: Second Place Hero
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: “The late night writer bubble.” Come on, we all know the place. It’s late at night. You’re in the comfort of your favorite chair. At that moment, you’re the only audience for your script. This can be a very dangerous place. Because when you’re in your late night writer bubble, you’re not as critical as you need to be. You can do things like decide that the reason the cops don’t come to the school that’s under siege by a high-level crime syndicate is because your main character has cried wolf too many times. TOTALLY makes sense in the late night writer bubble. DOES NOT make sense to the 3pm Rushed Reader with 2 other scripts to read besides yours. THAT’S the person your choices have to stand up to, not your cuddly little alter ego who rewards you with a bowl of Frosted Flakes after you’ve made it through a particularly tough scene. That guy isn’t able to criticize properly.
The pre-eminent writer-director
It’s coming off this week that I hate French cinema. Not true. I couldn’t blanketly hate every movie that came out of a country. Like I said, I liked The Intouchables. I liked Amelie. But I do think the majority of French films are pretentious, directionless, and badly written. One commenter had the audacity to say that it’s widely known that French cinema is the best in the world. Uhhh, what?? According to who, the French?
Part of the problem is that France doesn’t seem to think it has a problem. Since it doesn’t acknowledge it has a problem, it can’t fix the problem. So what is the problem? France doesn’t have a screenwriting industry. They don’t have a culture, like the United States, where writers can move up a system. Why? Because in France, it’s all abut the WRITER-DIRECTOR. The people directing the films there are typically the same people writing them. And those people don’t have to listen to anyone (and usually don’t).
Yeah yeah, I know. America’s not perfect either. Any system that can produce a movie like Smurfs 2 probably has some issues. But what Hollyood does right is they have a vetting system. A script must win over a series of people, starting with an agent, then a reader, then a small producer, a bigger producer, a studio exec, and so on up the ladder. Even after the script has been sold, it’s constantly being read during development by people who are trying to make it better. Because the script must constantly stand up to scrutiny, it keeps improving (unless you have a moron calling the shots, which is a different discussion).
In France, the director-writer has all the power, and I’m told will be offended if it’s even implied that the script needs work. There’s no filter. Only the filter within the director’s own sensibilities. Obviously, some directors’ sensibilities will be better than others, which is why some movies are better than others. But overall, because the writing never has to stand up to any outside scrutiny, bad storytelling is always finding its way into the films.
Take a look at a movie like A Prophet, one of the more celebrated films to come out of France in awhile (I know there were other writers on this but the director seemed to be the primary one). I watched this film and about forty minutes in, I was thinking, “Wow, this is pretty good!” It felt real. It felt gritty. Like an honest look at prison life in France. Then, around an hour and a half into the movie, our main character is released and the approach of the movie shifts to a traditional drug/crime film. Wait. Huh? I thought this was a film about prison. What just happened?? It would be like if an hour and a half into The Shawshank Redemption, Andy was released. It felt sloppy and confusing. I didn’t know where I was anymore.
This is one of the primary differences between American and French films. Things can just “happen” in French films that take them in a different direction than was promised, and we’re expected to simply go with it. I suppose we could debate whether this choice was that big of a departure for the story, but to me it was pretty glaring. I was actually watching the film with my brother, who isn’t in the business at all and simply likes watching movies. He has no preferences, no biases. He just likes a good story. I remember looking over at him 20 minutes after this change and seeing that glared over look in his eyes. He was done with the film. He didn’t know what it was about anymore.
To me, a good screenwriter could’ve helped here. This was a structural issue. You don’t just change your movie 2/3 of the way through. But people who haven’t studied the art of storytelling don’t think about that stuff. Which is why that separation between writing and directing is needed. You need someone who can tell you when your script has wandered off into the woods, who understands structure and pacing. Not just character, tone, and style, the strengths of A Prophet.
This writer-director business isn’t just a French thing. It’s present here in the U.S. as well, mostly in the indie scene, and increasingly to disastrous results. Drinking Buddies, Only God Forgives, Somewhere, Monsters, Blue Valentine, To The Wonder, Upstream Color. These are all movies that have some aesthetically pleasing things about them. Some even have moments of genius. But for the most part, they’re all terribly written. There’s no story to back things up. Many are lost in a universe of themes and abstract thoughts, the result of a director not recognizing the importance of having a dedicated writer on the job.
As you can probably tell, the writer-director thing has been bothering me as of late. I’ve stumbled across a handful of really bad movies over the last few weeks, movies that seem to have no focus, no point, that rambled. And it just so happened that in every one of those cases, I checked the credits and, sure enough, it was a writer-director. Again, because the writer-director scenario allows the production to bypass the vetting of a screenplay’s problems, the screenplays in that situation almost always have problems!
Yeah, yeah, I know. This isn’t always the case. There are notable exceptions from geniuses like Tarantino and Woody Allen and, on the big-budget end, James Cameron. But even the best of the writer-directors seem to lose their screenwriting mojo as their careers go on. M. Night is the most classic example of this. Wes Anderson’s films have gotten consistently worse. Robert Rodriquez. Cameron Crowe. Mike Judge. Oliver Stone. Spike Lee. Richard Kelly. The Wachowski Brothers. Even Christopher Nolan began to recognize his writing was suffering and started bringing in his brother to take care of screenwriting duties (thank God there are directors who can still put their ego aside).
I just have too much respect for screenwriting to relegate it to half of someone’s time (and in most of these cases, much less time than that). I think that’s why Tarantino is one of the few writer-directors who consistently delivers. He knows that the script is everything. He knows not a single captivating image will matter unless the audience is invested in the characters and the story. So he hunkers down, often for a year or more, and gets the damn script right. I don’t see the same amount of dedication from most writer-directors out there. Shit, Joe Swanberg, writer-director of the film Drinking Buddies, decided not to write a single line of dialogue in his script and just let the actors improvise them. And the finished product shows exactly what happens when you make a ridiculous choice like that. Would a true screenwriter ever make that mistake? Of course not.
So does that mean the writer-director is dead? Am I advocating that no one should direct AND write their film? No. I think that dual-role is a valuable tool at the beginning of one’s career, a necessity even. Young directors trying to get their name out there don’t have the money to hire good screenwriters and probably don’t even know where to find them (It’s hard for me to find them and I’m as plugged into the screenwriting scene as it gets). So they really have no choice but to write the script themselves. The result will be narratively clumsy (something like Monsters) but the result is a calling-card movie that gets you started in the business.
Ditto for writers. The spec market is a grueling literary rat race that, even when you have something good, can be tricky to navigate. Why not bypass it, then, and direct your own movie? You won’t be the best director in the world. But at least you’ll have a movie to your name, something that should start your career.
My problem comes more from the ego-centered “artists” who, even when they have access to the greatest writers in the world, shun them in favor of doing it themselves. Not recognizing the flaws in one’s own abilities is one of the biggest faults one can have. Coming back to French films, that’s where I have an issue. I mean how can you expect to write good stories if you haven’t even set up a proper system in your country where screenwriters can flourish? Jeez, you thought the screenwriter gets stepped on in Hollywood. It appears that over there, they don’t even have a voice.
In the end, it’s about understanding, respecting, and learning your craft. Screenwriting is its own thing. And it’s one of the trickier forms of storytelling out there. It needs people dedicated to figuring it out. I’m sure all of you who have struggled with the unique challenges of this craft can agree with that. Whether France ever makes that leap, we’ll have to see. But at least for the sake of this article, I’m glad they haven’t yet. It’s allowed me to see screenwriting from a different perspective, and learn to appreciate it even more.
Genre: Heist
Premise: An American thief living in Paris (Paris. See?? French Week!) is coerced into pulling off a complex heist in order to save his kidnapped wife.
About: Today’s script finished low on the 2011 Black List. It was originally a pitch that started a bidding war, with Dreamworks delivering the winning bid over Warner Brothers. It’s currently in development at the studio. The writer, John Hlavin, wrote two episodes for the critically acclaimed show, “The Shield.” His biggest credit, however, came last year, when he wrote the latest film in the Underworld series, “Underworld: Awakening.” He also sold a spec to Warner Brothers a few years ago called “The Gunslinger,” which Roger reviewed for me. Oh yeah, baby. It’s a good old-fashioned professional spec script review here on Scriptshadow. ☺
Writer: John Hlavin
Details: 132 pages
I think this has Tom Cruise written all over it.
Wow, after yesterday, I’m surprised some of you are still reading. It’s always funny to me how up-in-arms people get when you criticize any historic pillar of cinema or screenwriting. It’s as if these things can’t be challenged, that just because they’re talked about in film school or influenced great filmmakers, we must all fall in line, nod are heads, and agree that they are great.
Personally, I think that’s a load of b.s. If you think the French New Wave is a bunch of New Wave baloney, say so. If it’s harder for you to suspend your disbelief when you watch a black and white movie, say so. If you believe the latest Oscar contender that everyone can’t shut up about is a boring piece of pretentious hyena vomit, say so.
I can tell you this. The WORST thing you can do is to pretend to like something you don’t. Storytelling and cinema are about finding the truth within yourself and your story so that what you create is real. That was the spirit behind the rebellion that was the French New Wave, and I’d think those guys would be happy to hear people rebelling against them for the same reason.
There’s too much bullshitting in Hollywood, born out of a fear that you’ll sound inferior or stupid if you hate something everyone else loved or don’t believe in something everyone else believes in. Stick by your opinion. It’s what makes you you.
Where does that leave us today? With a heist film, of course! This one a pitch to Dreamworks. The whole pitch sale thing always confused me. It’s so damn hard to write a good script. Even the best screenwriters in the business struggle to do so. And you really don’t know if you have something until you’re finished and the script is out there. So to bankroll a script that hasn’t even been written yet is always a huge gamble (unless it’s based off a well-known pre-existing property of course). I suppose if the writer is proven and has an extremely specific outline, so you know exactly what you’re getting, maybe then it’s worth going for, but in my mind, you just don’t know what you got until those 110 pages (or in this case, those 130 pages!) are printed up. So why risk it??
35 year-old Michael Kitson does one thing really well – he robs banks. He’s been doing it all his life and he’s never been caught. His current city of choice is Paris. Why rob those lame bunker-looking buildings in the U.S. when you can rob a building with some style and history, you know? Then afterwards, you can stroll down the street and grab a fresh pain au chocolate from the café.
But Michael’s getting tired of the grind. And the love of his life, his wife Elise, is starting to nag him about quitting. So Michael makes the call. He’s officially retiring. He and Elise will head off to some island with a pretty name and never come back again. I mean why not? He’s got all the money in the world anyway.
Well not ALL the money apparently. Becker, Michael’s go-to middle-man, has a new job for him. The “French Blues.” The “Blues” are a set of blue diamonds that were thought to be made-up. No one’s actually seen them. But according to Becker, they’re real, and his client wants them badly. Sorry, Michael says, he made a promise to his wife. He’s out for good.
Except when Michael gets home, he learns that he’s not out of shit. Elise isn’t home, and it doesn’t take long for Michael to realize she’s been kidnapped. The call comes moments later. “Do the job. You get your wife back.” Shit. Michael freaks. He’s typically calm under pressure but when his wife is involved, all that goes out the finetre.
He puts together a four-man team and tells the kidnappers he wants to talk to his wife. He specifically wants her to tell him the story of how they met so he knows it’s her. What follows is two weeks of prep to steal the French Blues from a wealthy businessman who happens to be a former MI-5 agent.
During this time, we repeatedly flash back to Michael and Elise meeting, falling in love, him telling her he’s a bank robber, and her eventually accepting it. What begins as a set of mundane memories, however, turns out to be a carefully constructed code the two agree on should Elise ever be taken. Via this code, she’ll be able to communicate to him where she is and who’s taken her.
I’ve said it before. A good heist script is hard to do right because they’ve all been done before. Which is why I tell heist scripters to focus on something besides money. Money is a great motivator in movies, but since we’ve seen heists for 10 million dollars, 50 million dollars, 100 million dollars, there’s really no dollar amount you can throw at us that’s going to get us excited.
Hlavin’s Heist script does a good job in this regard, making these mythical diamonds the centerpiece of the heist. And when you think about it, the heist is really about the girl. That’s what we’re hoping he gets back.
However, this is where Hlavin’s Heist runs up against the same problem all of these kidnapping scripts do: How to make us care about the person kidnapped. You only have a few options. You can do it the Taken way. Spend the entire first act setting up the person who’s going to get kidnapped so we know and care about her. Knowing the character for this long, it’s almost certain we’ll care about her. The downside of this is that we might get bored waiting an entire 30 minutes for the person to be set up.
This leads us to option 2, giving the kidnapped character a really quick 1-2 scene intro before they’re kidnapped. This keeps the story moving along, but you risk us never really getting to know the victim and therefore not caring about her. You have to be a really good writer and write a set of perfect scenes to get us to give a shit about a girl we’ve known for 5 minutes. But it can be done.
The third option is to keep cutting to the person once they’ve been kidnapped, like they do with Silence of the Lambs. We can get to know them that way. However, this way you’re only getting to know them AFTER they’ve been kidnapped. You’d like the audience to care about them before it happens if possible. We’ll be more invested if we care initially.
This leads us to the final option, which is always the least desirable in my opinion: flashbacks to the victim’s past throughout the story. A heist film is about prepping the heist. That takes a long time and has the potential to get boring if you don’t keep things bopping along. Interspersing flashbacks has the potential to slow things to a crawl, since you’re stopping the story completely to go backwards all the time. For this reason, this option rarely works.
So it was surprising to see Hlavin’s Heist make that choice. We kept getting these on-the-nose flashbacks of Michael and Elise getting to know each other. Sure, it made us care about Elise more, but at what cost? Boring scenes. A story that was stuck in reverse for 2-3 minutes at a time. I hated that.
Luckily, Hlavin redeemed himself. Cleverly, I may add. Eventually, after the 7th or 8th flashback, once Michael’s revealed to Elise what he does and she’s accepted it, he says, “Now there’s something we have to talk about. There’s a chance, however small, that one day they’re going to take you in order to get to me. If that day ever comes, we’re going to create a code so that you can tell me exactly where you are. You’ll be telling me the story of how we met, but what you’ll really be telling me is how I’m going to find you.”
And so we realize that this whole thing where Michael has Elise tell him the story of how they met is actually a cleverly designed code between the two. They’re fooling the bad guys, and he uses the information to get the jewels AND save the girl, in one hell of a finale.
You see, in THIS specific case, the flashbacks worked, because they were working towards a cool payoff. However, you’re still dealing with a pretty substantial tradeoff. It took us 80 pages to GET to the point where we realized the flashbacks had a point. That means for 80 pages, this was your average run-of-the-mill Heist script. And I was getting bored as a result. That twist changed everything, and the last 50 pages were non-stop craziness as a result (there are a few more twists and double-crosses), but it’s a big risk to write something that straightforward for that long before you reveal all your magic tricks.
Hlavin’s Heist is a tale of two screenplays. There’s the decent by-the-numbers first two-thirds of the script, and then there’s the exciting “nothing-is-as-it-seems” final third of the script. If you can get through the first part, you’ll probably find it was worth the ride.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: With heist scripts, you HAVE to make the heist impossible. If we don’t think it’s impossible, we’re not going to wonder how our hero is going to pull it off, and if you don’t have that element, you don’t have a heist script. So if I were you, I’d write yourself into a corner with your heist. Write the most impossible situation you can think of. Then figure your way out of it. The heist here had a former MI-5 agent at the helm, a house with all the latest MI-5 security measures, only one way in, a personally designed safe that there were no blueprints for in the entire world, 1/20th the prep time they’d typically have, etc., etc. Make it impossible. Then try and find a way out of it.
