What’s Fortune Cookie’s fortune? Crack open today’s review to find out.

Genre: (from writer) Contained-Dark Comedy/Suspense
Premise: (from writer) A young woman opens a fortune cookie with the prophecy that she will die if anyone leaves the restaurant. When the fortunes of her dinner companions come true, she takes the restaurant hostage.
About: This is…. Amateur Week SMACKDOWN – 5 scripts, all of which have been pre-vetted by the SRF (Scriptshadow Reader Faithful), vie for the Top Prize, an official endorsement from whoever the guy is who runs this site. Good luck to all!
Writer: William Mandell
Details: 90 pages

So far it’s not looking good for this week’s amateur entries. I was hoping we were going to find a few gems. Five scripts. All endorsed by at least SOME readers of the site. You figured at least one of them had to be good, right? Well we’re not done with the week yet so there’s still hope. But that hope is fading. Writers are bringing me “okay.” “Okay” doesn’t cut it in the spec world. There are tens of thousands of writers trying to break in with “okay.” If you want to sell a script or make some noise, you have to be heads and tales above your competition. I haven’t seen that yet.

Today’s script stir-fries its GSU in plenty of story sauce. Katie, Matt, Mikael and Robert are co-workers having dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Matt’s the company bigshot. Mikael’s the young up-and-comer with a lousy grasp of the English language. Katie’s Matt’s assistant. And Robert’s the veteran who’s more concerned with his wife’s impending childbirth than the latest company gossip. The four are eagerly awaiting another businessman to stop by so they can close an important deal.

Everything’s going splendidly until the fortune cookies show up at the table and each character checks theirs. Matt’s told he’ll become a millionaire. Mikael’s told he’ll get a promotion he doesn’t deserve. Rob’s told the baby isn’t his. And Kate’s told that if anyone leaves the restaurant, she’ll die.

It doesn’t take Kate long to realize that all of these fortunes have already or will come true (Matt’s just won a radio contest with a million dollar prize. All he has to do is show up at the studio within 90 minutes. Mikael will probably negotiate the deal which will get him the promotion. And everyone’s pretty sure that Rob’s wife’s baby is Matt’s. Everyone except for Rob that is).

Naturally, then, Kate figures that if someone leaves the restaurant, she’s going to die. So she commandeers a gun that she stumbled upon earlier in one of the restaurant’s drawers, and warns anyone that if they leave, she’s shooting. Problem is, it isn’t just the current Chinese restaurant roster she’ll have to keep from leaving. People keep showing up! First is the businessman they need to strike a deal with. Then Rob’s wife and mother-in-law arrive wanting answers. Then the cops are called in. And finally SWAT. That’s a lot of people to keep from leaving! But if Kate’s going to survive this night, that’s exactly what she’ll have to do.

Fortune Cookie has an intriguing setup. I liked that Matt won this contest and had to get to the station to claim his prize within 90 minutes, only for Kate to realize that if he does so, she’ll die. So we immediately have a suspenseful tension-filled situation. However, the tone here was really strange. I wasn’t sure if this wanted to be a comedy, a thriller, a drama. It just made some really bizarre tonal shifts.

For example, everything starts out light and airy as our characters discuss the impending deal. But when Matt realizes he’s won the million dollars, he calls his girlfriend and says, “Hi, baby. Guess what! Remember how we talked about buying a sailboat and just taking off to see the world. Well buckle up, ‘cause I just found myself in a position to make that a reality. But there’s just one problem… The cottage cheese dumplings you’ve got on your thighs. It kind of makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Yeah, and that brings up another issue. The sound of your voice makes my dick limp. Don’t cry… Look at this like a new beginning. You can start fresh with knowledge of what makes you a defective person. Oh yeah, and I fucked your sister.”

Then he calls his boss, and after railing on him for awhile, ends with, “Sorry to get you all hot and bothered, but I’ve got one more thing for you… I corn-holed your daughter.” Then he calls his mom. “Hi, Mom. Go fuck yourself.” Granted, we’re never supposed to like Matt, but this was just so vulgar and over-the-top that I turned on the script immediately. I mean I’m still not sure if I was supposed to be laughing at those lines or what. And that’s concerning.

Then later on, when our businessman arrives to negotiate the deal, Matt’s been tied up and hidden away so he doesn’t screw things upl. This forces characters to dress up and pretend to be people they aren’t, in order to push the deal through. One of those people is a waitress, who’s recruited to play someone from a third company (although that never completely made sense to me). When the businessman asks where the waitress is, a random hippy character sneaks over and throws on the waitress’s uniform to take his order. At this point I’m thinking, “Are we going straight up broad sit-com humor now?” Because that wasn’t the sense of humor we started with. And that’s what was so confusing.

On top of this, I wasn’t ever sure what the deal was about. It was a major plot point – one of the biggest in the script – yet I never understood the stakes for landing the deal. What happened if it didn’t go through? Why, when a girl is going to die if anyone leaves the restaurant, are we worried about closing a deal? This led to other questions. How long did Katie have to make sure no one left the restaurant? That was never clear. So I kept thinking, “Is she not EVER allowed to let anyone leave?” Because if that’s the case, she should probably give up. At some point, SOMEONE is going to have to leave the restaurant.

Another issue was that nothing about this situation felt realistic. Granted it’s a contrived situation. I get that. But it’s our jobs as writers to create the illusion that this is happening, and therefore characters should act and speak in a way that makes sense with the context of the setup. So why is Matt telling Rob, who didn’t provoke him at all, that he fucked his wife and came in her mouth? Why is he telling Rob he should be happy that he fucked his wife because now “you’re not gonna have some ugly fucking chud of a kid.” I know Matt’s an asshole, but even assholes don’t tell other guys, unprovoked, that they had sex with their wife, and then just start making fun of them for it.

Character actions have to feel real. And I think one of the reasons they didn’t here was because William never established that tone. Since we don’t know whether this was a hardcore thriller or goofy comedy, we’re not clear on which responses are right.

If I were William, I’d go back through this script and for every single line, ask, “Would a real person say this line right here?” Don’t use “movie people” as your guide. Ask if a real-world version of Matt would say some of those lines above. Because I’ve never in my life seen anybody even come close to approaching the vitriol he dishes out in those phone calls and then to Rob. And for that reason, I stopped believing in the story. The curtain was lifted. I could see the writer typing away instead of being lost in the world he’d created. That’s why you have to have characters act logically and realistically. Because if they don’t, you tip the reader off that they aren’t real.

I think there might be something here if we can find the tone, but we should probably move away from comedy in the next draft. The comedy aspects just don’t seem to be clicking here. Also, I’d ditch Matt completely. Come up with a completely different character who isn’t so vulgar and over-the-top. Those things are going to go a long way towards helping Fortune Cookie. But I’m not going to lie. It’s going to require a substantial rewrite to get this script where it needs to be. I wish William luck and hope he gets there. He seems very dedicated to the craft, and that’s going to serve him well.

Script link: Fortune Cookie

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

What I learned: One of the easiest ways to find your characters’ truth is to ask, “Would a real person in real life, someone with the same general make-up as my character, do or say this?” If they wouldn’t, you probably have your character talking like a “movie character,” someone who just says or does things cause the writer wants him to. Those characters never feel truthful and always take the reader out of the story. So watch out for them. Matt was that character for me here.

Why this script isn’t ready for a script sale: Tonal inconsistency. This is unfortunately something that takes writers a long time to learn. You can’t jump around liberally on the tone spectrum. You can’t do a spit-take one second and a decapitation the next. Lightness and darkness must both exist a little closer to the middle of the spectrum, not at the extremes. This is why dark comedies are tricky for beginners. The tone is so hard to balance and therefore should probably be left to writers with a little more experience.

Today I take a train ride to Confusionville. All aboard!

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: (from writer) After witnessing UFOs and other strange phenomena, an insomniac on a cross country train trip suspects an alien invasion is underway, beginning with his fellow passengers, but when no one believes him, he must team with a fugitive stowaway to unravel the sinister agenda.
About: This is…. Amateur Week SMACKDOWN – 5 scripts, all of which have been pre-vetted by the SRF (Scriptshadow Reader Faithful), vie for the Top Prize, an official endorsement from whoever the guy is who runs this site. Good luck to all!
Writer: Brefni O’Rourke
Details: 105 pages

Holy Shozers.

Am I still alive? Am I living in the correct dimension?

I feel like my brain’s just been pulled out, sent to Planet Claxor, studied by several alien species, then placed back in my skull sideways.

I’m 83% sure that only 5% of what I just read made sense.

Okay, I have an assumption here and I may be totally off base, but I think a European writer wrote this. Why? Because it’s set on a train in America. And while trains are big in Europe, they’re dead in the U.S. I mean, it can cost twice as much and take 1000% as long to take a train from New York to LA. So people just fly. Whereas in Europe, train travel is much more evolved and makes much more economic sense. It’s part of the reason why Observation Car feels so weird. Nothing quite seems logical, or real for that matter. It’s like a daydream after drinking a case of Coke then crashing from the sugar high. You’re dehydrated. You’re confused. And your brain goes to Crazy Town.

Observation Car (we HAVE to change this title. I assumed it was about one of these new Google cars) is about a guy named Trevor who’s travelling on a train from the East Coast to the West Coast. He’s taking with him his lovely wife, and the two seem to be trying to escape something. It’s just not clear to us what. I often got the impression it wasn’t clear to THEM either. Every character here seems to be very… confused.

Anyway, on the first night of the train ride, while in the Observation Car portion (upper deck) of the train, Trevor sees a freaking UFO swoop down and nearly hit the train. What the! He starts barking to anyone who will listen, “Did you see that!?? Did you see those lights!!?” But no one knows what the heck he’s talking about, including his own wife.

That is until he randomly bumps into another passenger named Kowalski who says, “I saw that!” And the two begin considering all the alien possibilities. A little while later, Trevor falls asleep, only to wake up at some hospital, where he informs a doctor that he just had the strangest dream. He was travelling on a train with his wife. And it all felt so real!

Soon Trevor finds himself BACK on that train, where things get even crazier. Apparently, there’s a convict named Victor running around who the police want really badly. In fact, every time the train stops at a station, cops board to look for Victor. But these must be really incompetent cops because they can never seem to find the guy.

Then, while moseying down on one of the bottom floors, Trevor runs into Victor, who hands him a device and informs him that the world is being infested with aliens. They are the ones trying to capture him. However, this device keeps them from reading minds, so Trevor won’t have to worry about aliens stealing all his thoughts.

Back up to the Observation Car Trevor goes, where he sees the same UFO swoop down over the train car. But once again, nobody seems to be able to see this except for him (and Kowalski of course). To make things worse, all the policeman/agents looking for Victor on the train start focusing on him. There are references made to some government program Trevor may or may not have been a part of (it’s hard for him to remember and us to understand) but before long, it’s implied that Trevor may actually BE Victor.

What this means is that Trevor knows there are aliens and, for that reason, the aliens want to take him down. Or Trevor, in order to deal with this mind-numbing reality, has created this conspiracy involving all the people on this train, who aren’t actually real. Or Trevor may have been part of an experiment by aliens (and/or the government) and he’s escaped. Or he’s in a mental institution and is simply dreaming this all up. Got all that?

There are a lot of questions when one reads Observation Car, but I’m afraid not a lot of answers. I’m not going to lie. I don’t respond well to this type of material – the type where eighteen different realities exist at once and it’s up to the reader to determine which is real. Particularly when I don’t have the confidence that the writer knows the answers to all the questions he’s posed.

That’s the thing with this kind of script. They only work if the writer has total command over the page – if you get that confident feeling they know exactly what they’re doing. That’s not what I got from this. It felt too much like a writer making something up as he went along, and stopping about 9 drafts short of where he should’ve. This script just feels… shapeless. Government terrorist conspiracies and characters who are possibly dreaming and a UFO cover-up… Individually, all of these things make for good movies. But when thrown together in a blender, they feel like they’ve been thrown together in a blender.

Things looked bad from the beginning. From the overly on-the-nose title to the ill-advised use of an American train setting to the fact that I never even knew why my main character was on the train in the first place. A simple, “He’s just been given a new job in California,” would’ve helped.

If I were the writer, I would set this on a train in Europe. And I would get rid of all the conflicting conspiracy possibilities. Settle on one. Tell us more about our main character (I know nothing about Trevor). What’s his backstory? What are his flaws? Where is he going now and why? You gotta give us SOME SORT OF foundation – SOME facts – about our people involved, or else nothing will feel real, and we’ll just be confounded the whole time. Also, map out your story ahead of time. Outline it. It shouldn’t feel like every story twist was thought up on the spot. There has to be purpose to the choices. Each one can’t feel like the writer trying to write himself out of a corner.

Mysteries work best when there’s structure, logic, and purpose to them. Because I didn’t see any of that here, I turned on the script quickly. However, if you’re into shows like Dr. Who (which I only know from someone explaining it to me) or you’re a David Lynch fan, you may find more value in this than I did. It’s a trippy script, and some people don’t need the sort of story conventions I do to enjoy a film. So I’m hoping it finds some fans. But since I was so confused so much of the time, and since I never got that big payoff that tied all the confusion together, Observation Car just didn’t do it for me.

Script link: Observation Car

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

What I learned: I think one of the most dangerous things a mystery writer can do is make everything up as he goes along. 99% of the time, it will feel to the reader like it was made up as it went along. Readers like writers who can craft a story, who can create a series of clever setups and payoffs that show a plan. It implies a writer who knows what he’s doing.

Why this script isn’t ready for a script sale: Lack of structure. More preparation (outlining) needs to be put in at the beginning of the writing process so things don’t feel so random. The writing here, like all the scripts this week so far, is solid. The sentences are well-written. They’re descriptive, clear. I don’t remember a single spelling mistake. That was never the problem. It was simply that the writer didn’t seem to know where he was going with the story, and that lack of planning implies someone who doesn’t understand the value of structure. In this business, structure is everything. Because you often won’t be writing for yourself. You’ll be writing for someone else. That’s where all the money is. And when these producers come to you and say, “What’s your plan for adapting this novel?” you need to be able to convey, from a structural (often 3-Act) standpoint, how you plan to wrangle in the story. You can’t just say, “Well, I fly by the seat-of-my-pants and just see where it goes.” They’ll have you out the door before you’re able to thank them for the opportunity.

Today’s script has marketable written all over it, and it was highly touted, even by non-vampire fans. But does its second half live up to its first?

Genre: Vampire/Thriller
Premise: (from writer) After their medical rescue aircraft crash lands above the Arctic Circle, a terminally ill flight navigator must lead the crew to survival in the face of plunging temperatures, the impending arrival of 6 months of permanent darkness – and a horde of vampires taking refuge in a nearby shipwreck.
About: This is…. Amateur Week SMACKDOWN – 5 scripts, all of which have been pre-vetted by the SRF (Scriptshadow Reader Faithful), vie for the Top Prize, an official endorsement from whoever the guy is who runs this site. Good luck to all!
Writer: Eye Gore (at least that’s what it says on the title page)
Details: 95 pages

Well, if there’s a script this week that had the best chance of being purchased based on the logline alone, this would be it. We have the eternally marketable vampires in the mix. We have a contained situation. We have a spooky Arctic backdrop. I’d say you’d be a rotten producer not to at least consider this screenplay.

As for me, I’m torn. I love set-ups like this. I love planes crash-landing in cold desolate places, crews stranded in the middle of nowhere (as evidenced by my love of The Grey). I’m just not sure how I feel about vampires sinking their fangs into this mix. There’s a certain lack of irony or any sort of logical connection at all when you think about it. Vampires in the middle of the Arctic? I mean, I could imagine werewolves. Some sort of deep-north wolf-were-hybrid you can only find in snowy places. That could be cool. But that ain’t the case. The only real logical way to connect vampires to a ship in the Arctic is if it would have been the Ship of the Demeter, which carried Dracula. Then again, what the hell do I know about all this? And in the end, it all comes down to compelling characters and a compelling story anyway, so let’s see if Mr. Eye Gore achieved that.

Ship of the Dead starts off a long time ago with a ship that picked up a couple of sick folks floating around in a raft. One of those sick folks turned out to be VERY sick, as in “Vampire” sick. That’s, like, the worst kind of sick. Since you’re DEAD.

So this Robert Pattinson wannabe starts biting everybody in sight, turning them all into vampires before the ship is compromised and drifts off up towards the Arctic. Vampires are really good at sucking blood, but apparently terrible navigators.

Cut to present day, where a U.S. military plane flying near the Atlantic can’t handle the extreme cold and goes crashing into the ice. Luckily, these guys are a lot better flyers than those vampires were navigators, as they’re able to save everyone during the ditch. But this ain’t no Flight of The Phoenix. There’s no fixing this plane up. It’s dunzos. And since their S.O.S. signal apparently didn’t go out, nobody knows they’re stranded here. Well, that sucks.

Lucky for them, a mile down the snowy road is an old ship stuck in the ice. If you look closely, you’d notice this is the SAME ship our Twilight fans were sailing in. Uh-oh. Thing is, it’s really cold out here, and our guys need wood for fire. So they have no choice but to go say hi to Captain Vampire and his crew. They don’t know there are vampires yet, of course, since there are no such things as vampires. But they’re about to find out that fairytales do come true sometimes.

There are a ton of characters here, but Lieutenant navigator Reno turns out to be, well, our navigator. Reno’s had a tough life. His kid and his wife died, he didn’t graduate flight school, and he’s also got this really rare blood disease that’s probably going to kill him within the year. As a result, he’s not exactly organizing karaoke nights for the crew. He’s the human equivalent of a mumblecore movie.

One person who no likey Reno is the always agitated co-pilot, Hawke. After pulling in a surprise 35 million at the box office this weekend, you’d think Hawke would be a cheery dude (wait– this isn’t Ethan Hawke, we’re talking about?). But plane crashes tend to bring out the worst in people, and he doesn’t like that Mr. Don’t Talk To No One is in charge of getting them out of this situation alive.

Eventually, after a couple of wood runs, the long-gestating vampires attack our flight crew and start turning THEM into vampires, a situation that is so sucky it bums pretty much everyone out. And to make matters worse, the Polar Night is coming, which is like a 6 straight months of night deal wherein the only benefit is a non-stop Late Night talk show marathon. Unfortunately, before the debate can begin on who’s better, Jimmy Fallon or Craig Ferguson, the vampires leave the safety of their ship and attack the plane, hellbent on not leaving until they can officially call this place Vampire Land.

Ship of the Dead was a bit like reading a political article. At first you’re just trying to figure out what’s going on. Then it becomes surprisingly interesting. Then as you get to the end, you’re a little let down, wondering why the heck you clicked on a political article in the first place.

The first thing that threw me was I didn’t know Reno was our main character until about 20 pages in. So many characters are introduced during the plane crash that he got lost in the mix. There’s no rule that says you can’t do this, of course. In a chaotic plane crash, people will be introduced chaotically. But I just don’t like to be a fifth of the way through the script and still unsure who I’m supposed to be relating to and rooting for.

The good news is, once I was able to discern who all the characters were, “Ship” got a big burst of wind. I thought the setup was clever, with this Vampire ship being their only lifeline (needing it for fire), and the conflict that emerged from that (vampires attack!), while derivative, was still compelling. When you think about it, if you can set up a compelling conflict in your story, you’ve taken care of most of the story. Scenes will emerge naturally from that conflict and all you have to do is write them.

With that being said, once we hit the third act, I was feeling a bit exhausted. The vampire attacks were getting repetitive, and there seemed to be very little character development to keep us invested on an emotional level. Reno’s special blood disease that killed the vampires was a nice twist, but it was so forced that it never sat right. Reno has a dead son and wife. He’s a flight school drop-out. He’s supposedly responsible for this crash. And on top of all that, he’s dying with a rare blood disease. I’d wipe out all the other backstory and focus exclusively on this character who – coming into this crash – knows he’s dying because of this rare blood disease. That way it’ll seem more natural when his disease actually ends up saving him.

I’m going to be honest. I’m not entirely sure why the second half of the script didn’t work for me. At first, I thought it might’ve been because it was sloppy. I see this a lot. Writers spend so much time working from the top down, that the second half of their scripts inadvertently get 1/5 (to as much as 1/10) as much attention. So a script that feels deftly crafted in the first half, all of a sudden feels sloppy and rushed in the second.

Then again, this structure is built to descend into madness. At first, everyone’s organized and focused, but as we get to the end, since everyone’s dying, it’s more of a mad scramble for life. There’s less talking, and more trying to stave off vampires. So you could argue it’s messy by design. Then again, I remember Aliens, which is constructed in a similar fashion, and Ripley always has a plan. No matter how crazy shit gets, she’s always got goals (get the remote ship down here, find and save Newt), so amongst the chaos, there’s still some order. I’m not sure I ever felt order in this third act, and for that reason, I mentally checked out.

With that said, there is something here. Without question, if I had to pick a script as a producer to go with this week, it would be this one. It just hits all those necessary market-ready sweet spots. So maybe there’s someone out there who wants to do the work and guide this one to a script sale. But as it stands, despite its potential, it was a little too messy for me.

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

What I learned: Beware too much clipped sentence writing (“CAPTAIN’S there. Waiting. Directing. Wishing he had a wife instead of a brigantine.” “The door CREAKING closed. Turly at the table, holding on. For balance. Then grabbing a FACE, yanking it. SLAPPING it.”) It shortens your sentences which keeps the page count lower, but too much of it and your prose loses its natural flow. The first act of this script has way too much clipped sentence writing.

What I learned 2: Don’t over-backstory your character. Too much backstory, though you may THINK adds more depth to your character, actually confuses or detracts from him. You don’t need multiple tragedies or sicknesses or issues. You only need the backstory that’s relevant to your present-day story. So in this case, with our antagonists being blood-sucking vampires, all you need to bring up is your protagonist dying from a rare blood disorder.

Why this script isn’t ready for a script sale: The second half needs to have the same commitment as the first half did. Too many writers spend all their time making their first half (or first act) amazing, then get sloppy. Readers can spot a drop in quality immediately, so don’t think for a second you can get away with this.

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: Murderer’s Creek
GENRE: Western Psychological Thriller
LOGLINE: When brutalized bodies begin to turn up in their homes, an unassuming sheriff must work with his brilliant-but-outspoken daughter to find and bring the serial killer to justice before the town they mean to protect tears itself apart in fear.

TITLE: Where Angels Die
GENRE: Crime Drama
LOGLINE: A suspended inner city social worker tries to protect a young girl and her mother from the girl’s father, a psychotic killer who’s just been released from prison.

TITLE: The Easy Way Out
GENRE: Film Noir Thriller
LOGLINE: To a young couple facing foreclosure, a bag stuffed with money sitting in an empty office is just too tempting to resist. But when the plan goes awry and they are forced to run for their lives, their relationship and survival skills are put to the supreme test.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ: “The Easy Way Out” was a second rounder at the 2011 Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition (top 10% of 5800 entries). The writer has also had multiple scripts optioned, with one currently being pitched.

TITLE: World Peace Can Go Suck A Dick.pdf)
GENRE: Sci-fi Comedy
LOGLINE: After wishing for “all humankind to be peaceful people,” the only three people who know how to break the spell have to fight and destroy a group of wizards who have started trying to destroy Earth.

TITLE: The Jaguar’s Fang
LOGLINE: When contact with an expedition on the trail of a mythical treasure is mysteriously lost, a paratrooper, a gentleman thief, and an archeologist must join forces, or risk losing them forever to sinister forces bent on the same prize.
GENRE: Action/Adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): It received a 8/10 paid review on the Black List, but more importantly it was your post promoting the Tracking Board Launch Pad screenwriting competition that got me to enter that competition. I ended up making the Top 25 semis, but I didn’t make the cut to the Top 10. I was hoping you might give my script a go and share some insight into how to make it into a script that would’ve cracked the Top 10.

Today’s script is going to piss some people off because of its controversial writing style. But I liked it!

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: Comedy
Premise: (from writer) Three different graduating classes return to their small New Jersey town for a night of awkward reunions and drunken debauchery on the biggest bar night of the year – Thanksgiving Eve.
About: Black Wednesday barely beat out “Ship of the Dead” in last week’s Amateur Offerings showdown. There appeared to be a strong divide in the reactions. Lots of people were up in arms about the “voice,” particularly all the asides. And when there’s controversy, there’s Scriptshadow getting on his Controversy Scooter to solve it.
Writer: Thomas Grant
Details: 111 pages

Okay, Dazed and Confused is one of my favorite movies ever. But it’s also a really tricky movie from a screenplay perspective because there’s no real story. It’s just a bunch of people living their life on the last day of school. For that reason, writing a “Dazed and Confused”-like script is typically a losing endeavor. And believe me, I’ve watched a lot of people try over the years.

You see, when you don’t have a traditional story, you have to be awesome at other things in order to distract the audience from the fact that there’s no story. One of those things is dialogue. The dialogue has to be really good. Now most of the people who write these types of scripts THINK they’re good at dialogue, but they aren’t. You have to remember that the best dialogue comes from dramatic situations. And dramatic situations come from a well-told story, since good stories are built to create dramatic situations. Since you don’t have that in a movie like this, the dialogue is sort of off on its own, asked to be flashy and fun without any underlying help. That’s a skill not a lot of writers have.

This was just one of the things I was worried about going into Black Wednesday. Let’s see if the writer was able to overcome it.

Black Wednesday is about that night before Thanksgiving – the one where everyone comes back to their small home town from all over the country and reconnects with all their friends at the bars before being asked “What the hell are you doing with your life” by their parents the next day. It’s potentially a really depressing time in that you’re forced to face where you are in life.

“Wednesday” follows a hell of a lot of people in that situation. There’s 32 year old Brandon, who’s reluctantly become an assistant football coach at his former high school. There’s Randy “Tag” Taglianetti, who’s now selling alcohol to minors at a local liquor shop. There’s 32 year old Nikki, who’s hot and bitchy and who still hasn’t found a husband. There’s 26 year old Sophia, who doesn’t realize how pretty she is. There’s 26 year old Dan, who’s trying to make it as a comedian in LA but failing miserably. There’s even 17 year old quarterback Vince, who’s hellbent on enjoying the night before the big game tomorrow, despite his coach’s warning not to do so.

There are a LOT more characters than this, most of whom are trying to survive the night in some way. Brandon’s trying to figure out how so many of his former classmates became successful while he’s still stuck in Nowheresville coaching football. Dan’s out of money and debating if he should give up on his comedy dream and move back home. Nikki is trying to use this night to find a suitable man, maybe not to marry, but at least to have as a boyfriend. Sophia’s trying to break out of her quiet shell. And that’s pretty much what we got here. There’s no real overarching story to get into. It’s just a lot of jumping back and forth between these characters.

One of the reasons these scripts are so hard to write is because of the character count. There are always a ton of characters to keep track of and how the writer presents these characters in order to make them memorable can either make or break the script. I mean, I’m finished with the script and I’m STILL kind of mixing Dan and Brandon up. I’m still getting Nikki and Paige mixed up. You have to be a master in character creation if you write a script like this. You have to be very particular about how you name everyone, so their name instantly invokes a unique face. You have to give them memorable opening scenes. You have to know when to eliminate characters that aren’t necessary, since they crowd the name pool. Even something as simple as the LENGTH of a name can make a difference in how (or if) that character is remembered. Thomas did a pretty good job of that here, but he walked into a minefield. It’s tough for us to keep track of everyone, and I definitely struggled at times throughout the first half of the script (when everyone was introduced) as a result.

Also, because there’s no story in a script like this, everything rests on the characters. You have to be an amazing character-creator, and the trick to that is, every character must be going through something that this night is going to challenge. If you look at Dazed and Confused, every memorable character there is going through something. The football player must decide if he’s going to sign the drug form, the main character, 13 year old Mitch, is trying to rise above his sister’s shadow, Adam Goldberg’s famous character must learn to stand up for himself, his buddy has to break out of his shell and talk to a girl for once. If there isn’t something for your characters to overcome, then we’ll quickly get bored with them because there’s no story to look forward to to take our mind off that lack of character development.

Black Wednesday has mixed results in this area. Characters like Brandon, Dan, and Nikki were all memorable because they were going through something. But Kevin Africa and Colleen just seemed to want to have a good time. For that reason, while their storylines were occasionally amusing (ending up at a high school party when Colleen was a high school teacher) they didn’t resonate. Even if it’s the smallest thing, it’s still important to have your character going through SOMETHING that the situation in the movie challenges.

Another thing with these movies is that they must be driven by a theme. You need something to reign the randomness in. There were flashes of themes here and there in Black Wednesday, but I’m not sure if we ever really settled on one. There was this moment on page 50, actually, where one of the older (sort of degenerate) characters was talking about how he watched MILF porn earlier in the day, and realized that those MILFS were now their peers. Yeah it wasn’t exactly Socrates, but it was the first moment I felt a potential theme shining through. You grow up fast so you have to enjoy your life. Remember, the best themes are usually the simplest, and I felt like that theme was perfect for this kind of movie. It just needs to be explored in more of the storylines.

Now I’m guessing one of the big problems some people had with the script was the voice. Thomas, here, LOVES to write asides. Like more than actually write the script sometimes. And this always divides readers. I mean, we get things like “This isn’t the Hollywood your friends and family are thinking of,” and “one of those shitty apartments off Hollywood boulevard you live your first year in LA in because you don’t know any better” and “The American Dream this is not.”

Okay, so, note to writers. THIS TYPE OF WRITING MAKES CERTAIN READERS ANGRY. Not all readers. Probably only half of them. But half is enough to be careful about this writing style. If you’re automatically alienating half your readers right away, you’re severely limiting your opportunities in a business that’s already short on opportunities.

Now there are some caveats here. First, if the writer is really good, then these asides aren’t as annoying, cause they’ll be funny and entertaining. Also, if you don’t go overboard and you pick and choose WHEN you use asides, readers are generally more tolerant of them. Thomas DROWNS his script in asides, which you just can’t do. It starts to feel like you’re trying too hard, and once that happens, the reader doesn’t like you anymore, and they don’t like your script either. So it’s a dangerous game to play.

I think Thomas is a good writer so while there were definitely times where I was like, “C’mon already! Enough asides!” it never got so bad that I gave up on him. Which brings me back to the dialogue statement I mentioned at the beginning of the script. Conversational (as opposed to story-relevant) dialogue, is super-dependent on writing ability. I’m not sure Thomas is as good as he thinks he is, but a lot of these conversations felt natural, like the way people coming back together on Thanksgiving Eve for a night of craziness would actually sound. So to that end, I commend him.

Which leads us to the end of OUR night of craziness – aka, this review. One thing Black Wednesday reminded me of is that these types of scripts are so “gotta make it” scripts. The writer has to go make the film himself (Richard Linklater with Dazed and Confused, George Lucas with American Graffitti, Paul Haggis with Crash) because the stories are so specific to the writer’s voice. I just don’t see these do very well in the spec world because, again, the spec world celebrates stories with high concepts and clear narratives. That’s not this kind of film.

So if I were Thomas, I’d go out and make this. Once you make the theme more prevalent and make sure all the characters have something going on, this is pretty much ready to go. It wouldn’t be an expensive film to shoot by any means. And the only other real major problem I had – not being able to remember who’s who – would be solved, since once we see actors on a screen, we don’t forget them.

Black Friday was tough to get into with all the asides and the memory game we had to play with the characters, but once it got going, it was a fun ride.

Script Link: Black Wednesday

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

What I learned: Aside or not to aside – that is the question. Only use asides in a comedy script (or a script with comedic elements). It’s the only real time they work. And even then, use them sparingly. Too many asides and readers will throw you over the side…of their boat…into the Sea of Forgotten Scripts. Can’t risk that!