Hey, who says Hollywood’s wrong by not giving a shit about writing these days? Is it REALLY that bad to go into productions with unfinished scripts? They can all point to the fact that one of the greatest movies of all time, Casablanca, went into production only half-finished! You heard that right. Casablanca didn’t have a finished script when they started filming! But here’s what’s always bothered me about this often brought up piece of cinema history. There’s a difference between “writing the script during production” and “writing an already well thought-through tightly outlined script during production.” If all your scenes are in place. If you already know how your characters are going to evolve and change. If you already know where your story is going. And in some cases, you already have the scenes thought out. That kind of “writing during production” actually still has a chance of being good. But if you’re literally making up the entire plot as you go along, that’s a different kind of “writing during production.” As much as I love Gareth Edwards as a director (the guy is going to be a freaking All-Star), you can get a sense of what REALLY going into a production without a script results in by watching his first film, “Monsters.” You’ll spot a lot of repetition, a hazy through-line, and a lack of character development, all things that need to be ironed out ahead of time. My point being, don’t think that because Hollywood lore states that Casablanca’s script was unfinished when filming began, that the underpinnings weren’t in place. It was probably mostly there. There are lots of cool other things we could discuss about Casablanca if we had more time. There were four writers revolving in and out as the script was written. A few of them had different takes on the story, making it even more miraculous that the story came together. For example, there was a lot of internal discussion over whether they should ditch the flashbacks (I personally think they could’ve). To think that they were debating the flashback device all the way back in the 1940s! That argument will never go away! Anyway, since Casablanca is well known for its dialogue, I’ll try to focus a lot of today’s tips on dialogue. But there are some other lessons we can learn here as well. Let’s take a look.
1) Combine scenes whenever possible – This is an old tip, but a good tip. Our protagonist, Rick, digs some money out of his safe for Emil, his casino runner, WHILE discussing with Casablanca’s head policeman, Renault, his planned arrest of Victor Laszlo. An amateur writer would’ve addressed each of these situations separately, taking up valuable screenwriting real estate. Pro writers combine scenes so the story moves along faster!
2) Use a clever exchange/sparring to hide backstory and/or exposition – After Head Policeman Renault tells Rick that they’re going to arrest Victor Laszlo, the writer needs to get in some backstory that Laszlo escaped from a concentration camp, as his time at the camp is an integral plot point. Now a bad writer would’ve had Rick bring this up immediately in his response, resulting in an “obvious backstory” line like, “But he escaped from a concentration camp. He’ll probably escape you.” Instead, the writer diverts attention from the line by creating a playful sparring, allowing him to hide the backstory within the exchange organically: “It’ll be interesting to see how he manages,” Rick says. “Manages what?” Renault asks. “His escape.” “Oh, but I just told you.—“ “—Stop it.” Rick replies. “He escaped from a concentration camp and the Nazis have been chasing him all over Europe.” The sparring here makes the backstory line invisible.
3) For good dialogue, make sure each character has a set of clearly defined opinions about the world/life – The more you know about your characters, the more likely they’ll deliver good lines of dialogue. Let me give you an example. Early in the script, Renault tells Rick’s head waiter, Carl, to give our villain, the Nazi Major Strasser, “a good table, one close to the ladies.” Now say the writer knows nothing about his waiter, Carl, here. Most bad writers wouldn’t. They’d say, ehh, he’s a minor character. I don’t need to know anything about him. In that case, you’re likely to get a weak generic line, something like, “You got it, boss.” But had you given some thought to Carl, you may have decided he harbors a deep resentment towards Nazis, and likes to get in subtle digs at them whenever possible. Now as you approach his response, you have a lot more to play with. It is for this reason that we get the line in the script, which is a thousand times better: “I have already given him the best, knowing he is German and would take it anyway.”
4) When placing a bunch of characters together, make sure that every single character has an angle – This is what’s so great about Casablanca. There isn’t one person in this bar who doesn’t have an angle, who isn’t looking to push their own agenda. Ugarte wants to sell those Visas. Renault wants to impress Strasser. Strasser wants to take down Laszlo. Laszlo wants to escape to America. Rick wants to avoid Ilsa. Ilsa wants to talk to Rick. And to take it one step further, make sure a lot of those angles clash. That’s where you get conflict, which is where you find drama, which is how you entertain audiences. That’s basically Casablanca in a nutshell.
5) Whatever your character’s flaw is, make sure you write a scene that shows that flaw as a choice – Here, Rick’s flaw is that he only cares about himself. He doesn’t stick his neck out for anybody. Therefore, a scene is written where he can either save Ugarte (the man who gave him the visas) or let him be arrested. Ugarte pleads for help from Rick, but Rick just stands by as he gets arrested. Through that choice, we learn his flaw.
6) Stating one’s flaw out loud is no longer in vogue – It’s one of the most famous lines in cinema: “I stick my neck out for nobody.” And yet if you used it today, it would feel way too on-the-nose. Go with an action, as explained in the previous tip, instead. Action (show, don’t tell) always has more of an impact than words.
7) Be “disagreeable” in your dialogue as much as you can – A cute and simple way to spice up dialogue is to never have characters agree with what is said. Have them add resistance or conflict or obstacles or opposing reactions. So when the German, Strasser, says to Rick, “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? Unofficially, of course.” Rick doesn’t respond in the positive with, “Sure.” He turns it around and says, “Make it official, if you like.” If characters are just agreeing with each other all the time and having really easy conversations, there’s a 99% chance that those conversations are boring as hell.
8) Never underestimate the power of sarcasm during dialogue. It almost always makes the dialogue more fun – When Strasser asks Rick, “What is your nationality?” Rick doesn’t respond with the boring, “I’m a bar owner, in case you hadn’t noticed.” He replies. “I’m a drunkard.”
9) Add extra people to your dialogue scenes – There’s rarely a scene in Casablanca with just two people. I don’t think it’s any coincidence, then, that the movie is known for its great dialogue. Extra characters act as agitators and obstacles to dialogue, which forces characters to be more creative in the ways they talk with one another. Woody Allen, another great dialogue writer, uses this approach a lot as well.
10) Make the “other man” tough to leave, as opposed to easy – Remember that drama usually thrives on tough choices. If you make the choice for any character too easy, it’s obvious what will happen, which is boring. Make it difficult, and the audience will be hooked, as they’ll be unsure what choice the character will make. Here, the “other man” (Laszlo) is about as good a man as they come, so we really have no idea who Ilsa is going to choose, him or Rick.
11) Unless the boyfriend/husband is also the villain – There are certain situations/stories where the “other man” is also the villain. He’s beating our heroine or is the “wrong guy” for her. In those cases, it’s okay for him to be bad. But if the other man isn’t the villain in the story (here, the Nazi, Strasser, is our villain), consider making him a “good guy,” as that’ll make our heroine’s choice tougher, and therefore more dramatically compelling.
These are 11 tips from the movie “Casablanca.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!
Can this writer pull off one of the more ambitious concepts I’ve seen all year?
Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) If on one night every year, you could commit any crime without facing consequences, what would you do? Over the course of a single night, a family will be tested to see how far they will go to protect themselves when the vicious outside world breaks into their home.
About: Writer James DeMonaco got his career started by writing the 1996 Robin Williams vehicle, Jack, about a child who ages four times faster than other children. He went on to write The Negotiator and the remake of Assault on Precinct 13 and executive produce the TV version of “Crash.” He appears to have a good relationship with Ethan Hawke as they’ve been involved in several projects together (Assault, Little New York, and now The Purge). DeMonaco made his directing debut with Little New York, and appears to be going a lot darker with his sophomore effort. The Purge stars Ethan Hawke and comes out later this summer.
Writer: James DeMonaco
Details: 94 pages (July 6, 2011 draft)
I was very confused while reading this. The story was compelling, packed with conflict, explored its characters, moved along quickly, all things you’d expect to see from a professional screenwriter, yet it instituted the “WALL OF TEXT” method of writing, with endless paragraphs dominating every page. Okay, maybe not “endless.” They were 4-6 lines long. But if you pack enough 4-6 line paragraphs together, the task of reading becomes unbearable. It takes twice as long as it should to get through every page. So I was wondering why someone who so clearly understood drama and how to craft a story was making such a basic mistake.
Ohhhhhh, I said when I did research on the writer – he was directing the script too. Now it made sense. The director wanted to be as specific as possible so he could remind himself what he was trying to do when filming began. Well, don’t let that fool the rest of you spec writers. If you’re not directing your own material, you want to keep it lean – way leaner than this.
Now heading into The Purge, I was dying to figure out one thing – how the hell they were going to pull off this premise. One of the things you’re taught when you first start writing is the idea of “suspension of disbelief.” You have to create a scenario that an audience will buy into, that they’ll “suspend their disbelief” for. If you make it too hard for people to believe in your story, nothing else matters. They check out before the story’s even begun.
And this idea had “disbelief” written all over it. Under what circumstances would a country willingly allow its people to rape, maim, torture and kill for 12 hours a year? Well, the script answers that question in a semi-satisfactory way in that it introduces a world pretty foreign to our own. We’ve gone through TWO more world wars (not just one), which has left the U.S. government money-strapped. They agree to be bought out by one of the largest corporations in the world, who then go to work on solving the biggest problem on the planet – crime.
They realize that we, as humans, commit crime, in part, due to our biological needs. We are a savage species, and therefore need that outlet. That’s how the company, Arcon, comes up with the idea to “purge” this need once a year, for 12 hours. It’s a bit of a stretch but DeMonaco is a good writer. His attention to detail and the extensive backstory behind the corporation and how it operates makes the situation fairly believable.
The story centers around James Sandin’s upper class family. James lives in a perfect suburban community with his wife, Mary, his 16 year old rebellious daughter, Zoe, and his bizarre 12 year old son, Charlie. James sells upscale home security systems, almost specifically for that one night a year of The Purge. His security system basically turns a house into a fortress, and it isn’t just others’ homes he does this for. He’s fortified his own house with the Purge Stopper as well.
And you know what? That fortress works. What James has to worry about, however, are the members of his OWN family. As The Purge begins, James quickly finds out that Zoe’s boyfriend, Henry, is hiding inside the house so he can kill him, his logic being that James is preventing Henry and Zoe from being together.
Then his semi-retarded son, Charlie, notices a bruised and bloodied man running from, what he assumes to be, hunters, and actually OPENS THE DOOR for him. So now we have crazy Henry the boyfriend inside AND this mysterious bloodied stranger. As James tries to get a handle on the situation, Henry tries to kill him. James survives, but this allows the stranger to disappear into the house.
Soon after, a band of 20-somethings dressed in some really spooky outfits surround the Sandin house and begin demanding the release of the victim (our mysterious stranger). If James doesn’t return him alive, they will infiltrate the house and kill everyone in it. This task is made harder when Charlie rebels against his father and helps the stranger hide. And then when a third faction of people move in to also have their way with the Sandins, we get a front row seat to just how crazy The Purge can get.
Okay, first thing’s first. When you have a really big concept, it’s my belief that your first scene must represent that concept! You have to show off why the concept is so awesome and therefore why we should keep reading. This is a movie about people being able to commit crimes unimpeded. So this movie should’ve started with someone performing some horrifying crime on the streets, doing something unimaginable to someone, and a police officer standing nearby just watching, not doing anything. Show off your darn premise in that opening scene!
On to the actual story. The Purge was pretty good. But here’s my issue with it. When you’re doing something dark, you gotta go dark. If you go that “safe dark,” it always feels a little cheap. What I mean is, James kills someone in the early part of the story, as he’s participating in the Purge. But it turns out the guy WANTS to be killed because he has cancer and wants the life insurance to go to his family. He’s willingly offered himself to be killed. I think it would’ve been more interesting if our main character took full advantage of this day and committed some horrifying crime himself. Now I know how difficult that would be. It makes our hero “unlikable,” but you have to figure out a way around that. This is such a nasty premise. If you’re tip-toeing around it, you’re not getting the most out of it.
But the reason it still works is because DeMonaco knows how to keep the story moving (despite the wall of text). He does a great job building the suspense. We know the Purge is coming and we know it’s going to be crazy. So that first act zips along. Then when the Purge arrives and we find out Zoe’s boyfriend is in the house to kill James, things pretty much motor along from there. There is literally never a dull moment. Something is ALWAYS happening. And that’s not easy to do when you contain your story to a single location the whole movie.
To be honest, where The Purge starts to stumble is that TOO MUCH starts to happen. I mean we end up having four different factions looking to Purge at one point, and instead of achieving the desired chaos the script is going for, it just begins to feel sloppy. I’m not saying it’s bad. I just noticed my attention starting to wander. And the third act is where the reader’s attention should be its most focused, not its least.
I also had a huge problem with Charlie, the 12 year old son. I love when writers add depth to their characters, give them quirks and characteristics that make them stand out, that make them unique. But if those characteristics are never explained, the character ends up feeling false, like they were added to check some screenwriting book boxes, not because they were required for the story. Charlie “layers” here. He wears like 4 or 5 shirts and underwear at a time. A big deal is made out of this early on, so you’re expecting to get an explanation at some point. But it never comes. I also didn’t understand why he was so adamant about letting this criminal into the house, then hiding him, even though he understood that doing so meant his entire family would be slaughtered. It’s not like we experience some early scene where we see how important life is to Charlie. We instead get him putting on 20 t-shirts…????? This character just needed some damn explanation. You can’t create a weird character for the sake of creating a weird character.
But in the end, this “Hunger Games” meets “Funny Games” concoction has just enough to keep us entertained. I just wish the story was a little cleaner in the final act.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is a GREAT reminder that a cheap-to-shoot high concept idea will always be the most likely spec to sell. This idea is huge, yet its contained to one house. Someone was guaranteed to buy and make this, even if the writer wasn’t the director.
note: Scroll down for the weekend’s Amateur Offerings post!
Hey everyone. Carson here. Today we have a very familiar guest poster, professional screenwriter John Jarrell. You may remember John from his Hollywood Horror Stories post a few months back. John wanted to write another article for the site, but this time focus a little less on horror and a little more on hope. Hence, today, John will be discussing that moment every writer dreams of – his first screenplay sale. As you may remember from his last post, John runs an awesome screenwriting class here in LA, one of the few held by actual working screenwriters. This man not only tells how you how to write what Hollywood’s looking for, but explains how to navigate the elusive trenches that only those with experience in the industry know how to navigate. If you feel like your writing has stagnated, if you don’t know where to go next, or if you just want some really awesome instruction, check out John’s site to learn more about him, then sign up for his Tweak Class. You won’t regret it!
Trust me — nothing will ever quite match the crack-high of earning your first real money from screenwriting.
Experienced this yet? You and your bros crash some screening, party, mixer. People (even women!) ask what you do. You admit that you’re a (cough) screenwriter.
Great, they say, wow. Anything I’d be familiar with?
Not yet, you explain, you’re unproduced and haven’t sold anything… but Lionsgate is really, REALLY excited about a project of yours, and it could be any day now…
And that’s pretty much where the pussy hunt ends.
Because other than credits and/or money, there’s no standard by which civilians and Industry insiders can possibly differentiate between those working hard to become legit screenwriters and the army of ass-clowns out there just playing at it.
So… what’s an aspiring screenwriter to do? How can we rid ourselves of this dreaded Wannabe Syndrome, shake the metaphorical monkeys clawing at our backs? Parents, classmates, landlords, loan collectors, the faux-hipster who spotted you Twenty at The Farmacy, and, most importantly, our own stratospheric expectations?
The answer’s pretty straightforward.
Get paid for your screenwriting.
Bury a fifty-foot putt. Knock the guy through the ropes. Or as DMX so succinctly puts it, “Break ’em off somethin'”.
Because rightly or wrongly, the business of screenwriting ultimately comes down to convincing a complete stranger to give you real money for something you typed into Final Draft.
Actually, this is great news – that part about strangers paying money for scripts. Because they’re still doing it, making the blank page the great equalizer for us all, every screenwriter’s secret weapon.
Yeah, sure, no shit, John. Love the concept. But where the hell does one even START in this godforsaken town? By what means do you actually propose to get this done?
Bottom line? By any and all means necessary. Hard work. Blind luck. Freak breaks. Perfect timing. Brute Force.
At least that’s what worked for me.
*********
Before you can get paid, however, you need an agent or manager. Getting my first agent is one of those bizarre, by-the-seat-of-your-pants Hollywood stories.
Summer 1990, my actor buddy Mike was cast in perhaps the most nonsensical martial arts movie of all-time — Iron Heart starring Britton Lee. Britton was actually Korean, not Chinese, and shouldn’t be confused with Bruce Lee, Bruce Le, Bruce Li, Dragon Lee, Bruce Dragon Li, or any other Enter The Dragon copycats of that era.
Shooting was in Oregon, and late one night Mike went to a wedding party at the Portland Marriot. The bash got crazy loud, completely out of hand. Two women from an adjoining suite came over to complain, but rather than turn the racket down, the Groom convinced them to stay and party instead.
The blonde one was hot, and my bro took a liquored shine to her. Mike’s a pretty handsome guy (he became a Network soap star years later) and so he followed Young MC’s advice to the Pepsi Generation to just “bust a move”. (Under 30? Google it.)
Small talk kicked up. “Where are you from?”, “What do you do?”, etc.
So she tells Mike she’s a literary agent in Los Angeles.
And Mike, bless his heart, blurts out — “Wow. I know about the best script!”
Cue needle scratching LP surface. This chick’s looking at him like, I’m on vacation, in Portland Fuckin’ Oregon, and I’m still getting scripts thrown at me!”
But he kept her talking (like I said, Mike’s pretty hot himself) and put it out there that I’d gone to NYU and long story short, she told him this —
“If you’re serious, leave a copy at the front desk and I’ll have somebody in L.A. look at it. I fly out at 6 a.m. tomorrow.”
Want to know if your best buddy is the real deal? Here’s the gold standard.
Mike hauled ass back to his hotel, got the only copy of the script within 3000 miles, penned a quick note with my contact info, then drove all the way back to the Marriot again, at 3 a.m., and left my script for her.
Raises the bar pretty damned high, doesn’t it? Saying nothing of the fact he could’ve gotten laid if he hadn’t decided to hook me up instead.
Next morning, Mike hipped me to what happened, and I was like, great man, thanks, really appreciate it… and promptly forgot all about it. I’d already had my ass kicked so many times over that script I’d given up all hope. Shitty coverage, angry agency rejection letters, demoralizing notes from two junior, junior, baby execs, all that. A man can only eat so much shit in one sitting.
But one week later I found a message on my Panasonic answering machine.
“Hi, I’m Susanne Walker, from the New Talent Agency in Los Angeles. I’d like you to call me back. I read your script and I think it could be very, very big.”
Completely blissed out and brimming with newfound hope, I drove down to L.A. in my ’66 Bug, $200 to my name, ready to take my rightful place astride the Industry’s brightest and best paid.
Susanne got me meetings everywhere. Mace Neufeld, Scott Rudin, Paramount, Warners – all the Town’s heavy hitters. This was Ground Zero of the ’90’s Big Spec Era. It was ridiculous then, like a cartoon when compared to today’s Business. Writers were selling dirty cocktail napkins sketched with story ideas for a million cash. As the trades boldly confirmed each morning, with a decent script, anything and everything was possible.
There was only one little glitch.
Bad timing.
My script was essentially Taxi Driver meets Romeo And Juliet. Two tough Irish kids, living in the burned-out bowels of Jersey City get in trouble with black gangsters and the Mob, gunplay and tragedy quickly to ensue. People loved the gritty action and characters, and it was the type of genre film Studios were still interested in making back then.
But then State of Grace opened, just as I was taking all these meetings, I’m talking same exact week. Even though it boasted Sean Penn and Gary Oldman, it completely cratered at the box office, sinking its home studio, Orion.
Everybody agreed, our stories were COMPLETELY different. But they did share the same world, and quite literally overnight, all my hard work turned toxic, Fukushima’d by State of Grace’s blast radius.
One veteran producer put it perfectly — “It’s a shame one big, dumb movie out there is going to kill your sale.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
My new agent had nothing for me after that. One unknown with one good unsold spec wasn’t any more likely to get an open writing assignment back then than they are today. All she could suggest was to write another spec — the last thing on Earth any aspiring screenwriter wants to hear.
I got pissed. Mega-testosterone, 24 year-old white-boy pissed. I cursed the Film Gods for crushing my quick sale and the lifetime of Hollywood leisure to follow. Bitterly, I resolved to knuckle down and write that second goddamn script, vowing it would be so good that some stranger would be forced to give me money for it — they simply wouldn’t be able to help themselves.
Mike moved down to L.A., and together we took shelter in an old beach studio. Venice in ’91 was a dicey shithole, not the Pinkberry/ iPad skinny jeans love-fest you know now. Borrowing a PC, desk and chair from our dope-harvesting landlord, I barricaded myself inside our place and went on a screenwriting killing spree.
Grinding day and night, punching out page after page, wearing nothing but a bottomless bowl of Cheerios on my lap, I summoned the gripping tale of a Brooklyn attorney who witnesses a murder committed by a Mafia client he himself got off in court. When the attorney threatens to testify, the Mob comes after him and his family, gunplay and tragedy quickly to ensue.
Twenty-four days later, I chicken-pecked “The End”. I entrusted my magnum opus to Mike, holding his Backstage hostage until he read it. He finished, grinned and said — “If someone doesn’t buy this, I don’t know what to say.”
Flushed with pride and riding the final, indignant fumes of my prior rejection, I pointed The Bug down to my agent’s place. I remember bulldozing into her office like I was storming the Bastille.
“Here it is, my new spec, exactly what you asked for,” I stammered, thrusting it towards her like a broadsword. “I believe this is The Big One.”
“Okay, swell, thanks for driving in,” she said, ward nurse handling potential mental patient. “I’ll call you the second I’ve read it.”
Standing next to her desk was a stack of client scripts maybe twenty, twenty-five specs tall; a Xeroxed, three-bradded Leaning Tower of Pisa. In harrowing slow-motion, she took my newborn masterpiece and discarded it atop of the pile. Number Twenty-Six.
Something about it just broke me.
In that dark instant I got my first, unfiltered snapshot of how infinitesimal my odds really were — and it ruined me. Like they say, when you’re walking a tightrope, never, ever look down…
Returning to Venice, expecting the very worst, I marched into my half of the hovel and hand-shred all my notes; stepsheet, page revisions, all of it. Then I staggered, crushed, to the Boardwalk, bought a pair of 22 oz. Sapporo’s, found an empty bench and got ridiculously, pathetically, shithoused blind drunk.
Like a little baby, I cried out there, a six-foot, 190 lb. pity party. I bawled my fuckin’ eyes out among the hacky-sackers and forlorn homeless, casting my broken dreams atop the invisible, flaming bonfire of their own.
So this was the real Hollywood, I thought. The one every B-movie, t.v. show, and Danielle Steele beach-book warns you about. A financial and emotional Vietnam from which cherry young recruits like myself never returned.
Fuck me. How in the hell could I have thought selling a script would be that easy?
*********
Alas, Dear Reader, I’d overreacted. Turns out, I had not been irrevocably voted off Screenwriter Island.
Susanne called three weeks later. The ol’ good news/bad news.
Good News — She liked my script and thought it could sell. You heard me — sell. For money. Awesome, right?
Bad News — She felt it needed an entirely new Third Act. She wanted to throw out everything I had and rethink the whole thirty pages from square one.
Sooner or later every screenwriter’s life reaches a crossroads where the whole of their career — the full possibility of what they may or may not become — comes to rest in their own fragile hands. In that brief instant, there’s nobody and nothing to rely on save your own gut instincts – not unlike the process when any of us face the empty page. All the solemn risks and rewards rest squarely on your slumped shoulders alone.
My own crossroads came very quickly. On this very call, in fact.
Susanne insisted on a new Third Act before she’d go out with it. Not only didn’t I want to do extra work, I honestly wasn’t sure it was the right call creatively. I was exhausted, beaten down, my self-doubt was flaring up, and the Imposter Syndrome had me by the throat. The concept of more time in isolation, the unique self-loathing only a screenwriter knows, was simply too much to bear.
So, brain racing, I decided to sack up and posit this —
Why not cherry-pick one of the many esteemed producers we’d met when I first hit town, slip the draft to them and get their opinion?
It seemed the perfect solution. We could get an objective, world-class opinion without exposing the script and burning it around town. Further, the producer’s take would be our tie breaker. If he/she agreed with Susanne, then I’d get to work on the third act straight away, without another whimper. Conversely, if the producer agreed with me that it was ship-shape and good to go, we’d fire things up and paper the town with it.
Susanne liked the idea. Now all that remained was to choose the producer.
We picked Larry Turman, the wise man who produced The Graduate. Larry was a real straight-shooter with a ridiculous wealth of experience.
Susanne messengered my script (remember those days?) over to Larry’s office on the Warner Hollywood lot, and a few weeks later his assistant called saying Larry wanted me to drop by and talk about what I’d written.
Enduring the endless crawl up Fairfax that day was awful. That Third Street intersection has always been a clusterfuck, long before The Grove arrived. Legions of ornery blue-hairs shot-gunning in and out of the prehistoric Vons parking destroyed traffic with a sadistic regularity.
Running way late, tragedy struck. I stepped down on the clutch and SNAP! the clutch cable broke. I actually heard it shatter, like a little bone, and the pedal sank straight to the floor, useless as a severed limb.
No clutch, no drive car. Simple as that. If your clutch goes AWOL, it’s game over. You pull over, Siri Triple A and wait.
But I still had one blue-collar trick up my sleeve. True fact — you can drive an old VW without a clutch. Here’s how. Turn the engine off, cram the gearshift into first, then restart it. Your Bug will lurch and whiplash terribly, then start grinding forward. If you match the RPM’s just right, you shift back into second, too — top speed, 20 mph.
So that’s what I did, said “fuck it” and snailed onward, my Bug’s antiquity a sudden asset in my favor.
This went down at Third and Fairfax, Clusterfuck Central. Hazards on, I politely edged to the shoulder, but that did nothing to halt the on-coming bloodbath. Apoplectic motorists began HONKING AND CUSSING ME OUT as they passed. Every single motorist had their horn pinned down and/or were commanding me to forcibly insert my Bug into my own colon. Zero mercy. Welcome to L.A.
This road-rape only encouraged me. Smiling my best “fuck you, too”, I continued surfing the glacial grind towards Warner Hollywood.
I was shown into Larry’s office a humiliating forty minutes late. Here I was, this Dickensian scrub, some hat-in-hand wannabe, accidently insulting the only ray of hope I had in Hollywood.
Besides being mortified, I also looked like shit now. Oil-smudged hands, pit stains pock-marking my only clean shirt, hair matted flat to my humid skull.
“Larry, I’m really, REALLY sorry. My sincerest apologies.”
I’d blown it, and I totally accepted that. No doubt, it was a colossal bed-shitting, one I’d have to live with forever. But Larry was legitimately one of the nicest guys I’d met since crossing over the River Styx — hell, he’d actually taken time to read my script as a courtesy! — so I felt it important he know my fuck up was not intentional.
“Believe it or not, I drive an old Bug, ’66 actually, and the clutch broke. Those last two miles I had to baby her in, at, like, ten miles per hour.”
Larry peered back. What sense he might make of these ramblings, I had no clue.
“Well, your car may not be working too well, but I know something else that is.”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Your brain,” Larry said. “You’ve written a really good script here…and I want to buy it.”
I am Jack’s completely blown mind.
“You’re fuckin’ with me, right?”
“Not at all, John. We’ve partnered with a venture capitalist, and I want to acquire your project with some of the development money we have.”
By naïve force of will, what Orson Welles once called, “The Confidence of Ignorance”, trusting my gut and a shit-ton of hard work, I’d fought my way onto the big board. I was now a paid writer.
*********
Money changed hands, and that changed my life, forever.
I was working a $125-per P.A. gig at Magic Mountain when I got The Call. Over the payphone, Susanne confirmed the deal had closed. Tomorrow, I’d have a check for $25K in my pocket, with the promise of THREE-HUNDRED THOUSAND MORE once we set it up.
Believe me, it felt EPIC. Something I pray every last one of you tastes someday. Think Tiger Woods, ’97 Masters, triumphant fist uppercutting Augusta sky, Barkley suplexing Shaq flat on his back, Hagler/Hearns with Marvelous alone still standing.
Oh, and by the way, Susanne was right — it did need a whole new third act. Five of them, in fact. And I started working up the first Day One/Page One with Larry.
Looking back, who knows? Maybe Susanne’s approach would’ve been best. Maybe if I had rewritten the Third Act in-house, we’d have sold it for even more money; started a bidding war, landed a massive, splashy spec sale putting me squarely on top.
But for me in ’91, there was no tomorrow. It was land this script, now, or beg my folks for airfare and crawl back to N.Y.C. busted apart. Many times, I’ve reflected about how not getting it done would’ve affected me, as both a writer and a man. Thank Baby Jesus, I never did find out.
Of course, here’s the punch line, the part I had no idea about —
This was just the first, brutal step of my climb up Screenwriter Mountain. Game One of a seven game series that would eat up a full decade, with a thousand times the agony of this little walk in the park.
Eventually, though, I’d pay off my student loans with a single check. Realize the Great American Dream and buy my parents a house, then grab a vintage Marshall and Gibson SG I’d always masturbated myself to. But meeting after meeting, script after script, I kept driving my trusty ’66 Bug as a reminder to keep my head on straight, come what may.
If you take nothing else away from my mangled musings, let it be this —
Screenwriters are special. Americans in general are taught never, ever to say that; never to imply any relative value between ourselves and our neighbors. But the fact remains — we writers have undertaken special challenges, endured special risks, absorbed a special amount of punishment and persevered with a special amount of grit, determination and (hopefully) integrity along the way. Screenwriters make a spectacular effort to scale our mountain of dreams while the majority of others huddle in the warmth and easy shelter of the base camps and ski lodges below.
So yeah, by any and all means necessary. Work hard. Trust your instincts. Fight like hell to spin every setback, every strand of Hollywood bullshit into gold.
And on that glorious day when you finally see an open kill shot, take it, my friend. Bury it right between the eyes.
Carson back again. I don’t know about you. But this sure makes me want to go write. Once again, John’s classes start THIS MAY in Los Angeles. So get over to his site now and SIGN UP! He only has a limited number of slots open!
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!
ITLE: Jugs, Iowa
GENRE: Comedy, Romantic Comedy
LOGLINE: A sleepy, provincial Iowa town steeped in a façade of Christian values faces a sudden budget crisis at the hands of an unscrupulous city treasurer, and must decide whether to accept a bailout from a racy New York-based restaurant chain.
TITLE: A Million Shades of White
GENRE: Ensemble Drama/Police Thriller
LOGLINE: Reclusive memorist Grady returns to his hometown to find the community still in shock over the decade-old murder of his high school sweetheart. When Grady’s home becomes a crime scene, he struggles to stay one step ahead of a dutiful cop, a vengeful killer, and an overzealous journalist as he connects the dots between past and present.
TITLE: The Still
GENRE: HORROR/SUSPENSE
LOGLINE: ” A group of graduate history students on vacation touring Civil War battlefields are terrorized by a motley crew of Confederate re-enactors who harbor a 150 year-old secret.”
TITLE: The Adventures of Absolutely No One
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: A young man’s failed suicide attempt sends him on a quest for friendship among a group of religious zealots. The Adventures of Absolutely No One is a comedy about growing up and standing out.
TITLE: The Couple On The Top Of The Wedding Cake
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: A woman attempts to scare off her very persistent “soulmate” by choosing as the location of their first date one of her required anger management classes, but he turns out to be a lot more determined than she expected.
One of the harder genres to get right is studied today as we bring you Amateur Friday a day early!
Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, a PDF of the first ten pages of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script and “first ten” 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
Premise: In 2049, a government employee is wrenched into an anarchist plot to destabilize a dystopian U.S. government.
Why you should read (from author): This screenplay is 1984 meets North By Northwest, by way of V For Vendetta, with a splash of Breaking Bad for good measure. It’s set in a realistic future, one not all that different from 2013, where the dystopian elements of society hide under bridges and behind CIA doors. It uses the classic Hitchcock trope of an ordinary man thrust into an extraordinary situation.
Writer: Casey Giltner
Details: 116 pages
What I’ve noticed since switching to this format, where you guys test drive the amateur options every week and choose the best ones, is that the overall writing level for the script I ultimately review has improved tremendously. There’s no doubt about that. Little to no spelling or grammar errors. Crisp and easy-to-understand description. A professional polish to almost every one. But like an imitation Rolex, once you look closer, you start to see the imperfections.
Those imperfections usually boil down to one of two things (and usually both) – our good friend’s story and character. With story, there’s often a lack of understanding as to what drama is. The writer doesn’t know how to consistently place his characters in situations that are entertaining to the reader, leaving large gaps of the script that feel plain and therefore boring. On the character front, I often read characters that are either a) not unique enough, b) not likable enough, or c) not deep enough.
This is one of the most frustrating levels a writer attains during his career. He’s reached a point where he’s taken seriously, but watches on, confused, as his scripts are continually passed over. The problem is they’re not yet good enough to understand what they’re doing wrong, and therefore can’t fix the issues plaguing their screenplays. The only way off Confusing Island is to keep writing, keep getting feedback, and keep improving upon their previous work. Eventually, they start to understand where their weak points are, how to fix them, and therefore how to get their writing up to Hollywood standards.
Operation Vertigo is a good example of this. I can see why it was the top pick of the weekend. It has a good opening, some solid writing, and a professional polish to it, but it quickly runs out of steam, not really giving us anything new or exciting to keep us satiated. I’ll get to all that in a second, but first let’s look at the plot.
The year is 2049. We live in a state of government oppression. Everywhere we go, we’re watched by the man. Every time we turn something on, it’s logged. This all-watching system is known as THE GRID. And while the government spins it that the GRID is a good thing, it’s pretty obvious that it’s being used to control us.
James Donovan is a senior department technician for the company that operates THE GRID (I think – I’m still a little unclear on that). But right now, the old GRIDDLE is the least of his worries. It turns out his wife is banging a freaking senator! That sucks no matter how far in the future you are. So James decides he’s going to take things into his own hands and kill her, or the senator, or both. So he sneaks into their little rendezvous hotel room, but just as he’s about to kill them, somebody ELSE wearing a mask comes in and kills them FIRST!
Okay, that’s a pretty cool opening. I’m intrigued.
James is quickly targeted by someone named “Investigator” (that’s her name throughout the script) from the CIA. She thinks he had something to do with the killing but can’t prove it. James is so torn up about the whole thing that he goes drinking late into the night (not easy to do as there’s a curfew in this future world) only to be approached by a chick named Zooey, who wants him to join her cause called “Vertigo,” (a bunch of people trying to expose the government for their evil ways).
When a bomb then blows up the bar they were JUST IN, James finds himself at the mercy of CIA agent “Investigator” once again! Investigator thinks it’s really suspicious that James happens to be around all these places where bad things happen. But she keeps lacking evidence so she has to let him go. Eventually, James hooks up with Zooey again, who introduces him to her underground crew of fellow Vertigoians, and they tell him they need him to be an inside man for them, since he has access to the all-powerful GRID.
Now that he’s been seen cavorting with the enemy, the CIA makes a strong move to take down Vertigo, forcing James and Zooey on the run. The agency eventually captures Zooey, and Vertigo tells James that they can help him break in and save her. But they’re going to need him to turn off the GRID first. James does exactly that, but quickly realizes that he wasn’t meant to go in and rescue Zooey after all. This was just one giant setup, and he’s the sucker who just got duped.
Okay, so I’m Asshole Producer Guy with no filter. You may think this is a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing. Nice Producer never tells you what’s wrong with your script. He just ignores your phone calls and e-mails and never calls you back. Being Asshole Producer Guy, this is what I would say if asked what I thought of Operation Vertigo: “There’s nothing special here. There’s nothing new. I mean this movie is basically The Matrix without all the cool stuff.”
Okay, I’m putting Asshole Producer Guy away now. But I admit that I agree with him. This script is lacking that big hook. Everything explored here (the overbearing government, the lack of privacy, etc.) has been done to death. We’ve seen it already so it comes off as generic. And that’s not to say you can’t still explore these issues, but you need to do so with a new angle.
However, even if you get past that, the story isn’t that fresh either. You got a guy on the run. He hooks up with a renegade operation. One of them gets kidnapped and he has to save her. It’s a very basic storyline that follows the template for these thrillers way too closely. To fix this I’d advise the exact same thing. Give us something NEW. Give us a plot development we DON’T expect as opposed to a dozen that we do. The scripts I hate most are the ones where I’m 30-40 pages ahead of the story. And here, I was probably 40-50 pages ahead of the story. The mark of a good storyteller is to anticipate the audience’s expectations and then give them something else. Make their anticipation work against them. That never happened once here. Even James getting double-crossed at the end was telegraphed.
Finally, the characters are stereotypes and way too bland. None of them are struggling with any internal conflict (i.e. Neo struggles with his belief in himself in The Matrix). They’re not involved in anything other than straightforward relationships. I don’t want to sound like I’m piling on, but you can tie this issue into the first two. The concept is too generic, the execution is too generic, and the characters are too generic. In other words, you’re not pushing yourself here. You’re not asking questions every writer should be asking before they write a script or a character or a scene, which are: “Is this something I’ve seen before?” and if the answer is yes, then, “How can I make my take different?”
It’s not easy asking yourself those questions and it’s even harder to find answers for them. But that’s the thing you have to remember – if it’s all coming too easy, it’s probably because you’re writing a version of something you’ve already seen before. By asking those tough questions – even though it ends up taking you a lot longer to write everything – you’re more likely to end up with something original.
Start by asking, “What can I add to the concept here that gives it that special unique quality?” In previous movies it’s been bending the laws of space and time (The Matrix) or people being arrested for murders they haven’t committed yet (Minority Report). But it’s gotta be SOMETHING. It can’t just be a garden variety take on government oppression in the near future. We’ve seen that too many times before. We need something more!
Script link: Operation Vertigo
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned 1: Don’t give one of your main characters a generic monikor as their character name. Major characters need official names. Here, “Investigator,” is probably the most memorable character in the script, yet she’s called “Investigator,” which doesn’t make sense.
What I learned 2: Sci-fi is a concept-driven genre. Therefore, when writing sci-fi, you absolutely have to have to have an idea that’s never been done before or have a unique take on an old idea. If you aren’t doing one of these two things, your sci-fi script doesn’t have a shot. I can guarantee you that.
