The writer of the best screenplay of all time takes on a mythical creature whose home is threatened by a new marina.

Genre: Um…Romantic Comedy? Drama?
Premise: In charge of bringing a new Marina to the community, a sailor has second thoughts when he meets a mermaid who lives in the area.
About: This was a huge project Columbia wanted to make back in the 80s. It was spearheaded by Warren Beatty. Millions upon millions were poured into its development. This was the last ditch effort to save the project – bring in Robert Towne for a half a million dollar rewrite. Remember, Towne is responsible for writing what many consider to be the greatest screenplay of all time, Chinatown. That’s the main reason I wanted to review this.
Writer: Robert Towne
Details: 121 pages – Sept 24, 1983 draft

When you open up The Mermaid, you’re taken back to another time. No, I’m not talking about the story. I’m talking about the script itself. As one of the site’s readers pointed out in an e-mail: “Screenwriting was just so different back then.” Indeed, large chunks of description detail everything from the look of a boat’s sail to the smell of a nearby reef. 10 line paragraphs are the norm, and it’s not that those paragraphs are bad (how could they be? They’re written by Robert Towne). But getting through them is a chore and something that today’s reader isn’t used to having to deal with.

What’s strange, though, is that in addition to all those giant paragraphs is a lot of talking. Like…a LOT! Like, this entire movie is people talking. Every single scene comes down to two people talking FOR-EV-ER. Scenes go on for pages and pages with characters repeating things we’ve already been told several times. It’s bizarre.

I know this is not supposed to be Pirates Of The Caribbean, but whoever’s decision it was to take a Mermaid flick and spend 95% of the screenplay having people talking in rooms needs to walk the nearest plank. That choice was inexcusable, so much so that it killed this script.

Ken Gaer is a sailor who, with his wife, Joan, are responsible for bringing a marina to the local community which will house over 1500 boats. It’s a big deal that a lot of people are going to get rich over.

The thing is, there’s something missing in Ken’s life. Maybe it’s because managing the marina will mean the end of his sailing career. Maybe it’s because his wife is a bitch who could care less about him. Either way, there’s definitely a hole in his life that needs filling.

Just when things are at their lowest, Gaer meets a strange woman swimming in the water. Except this is no normal woman. This woman has a fish tail! It’s a freaking MERMAID! Naturally, Gaer thinks he’s hallucinating, but Fin-Girl is so intoxicating that the two end up talking all night (LOTS OF TALKING!).

At the end of the evening, she asks him for one favor. Don’t blow up the large rock that’s sitting just off the beach because that’s her home! The next day, Gaer isn’t convinced that the mermaid he talked to was real, so he goes to his step-mother, Dorothy, to see what she thinks about the whole ordeal.

The step-mother, you ask? Why would he go to the step-mother of the wife he hates? Uhh, good question. In one of the kookier script choices in “Mermaid,” these two are the story’s primary relationship. Why you’d wrap your Mermaid story around a man and his 60-something step-mother is beyond me.

Anyway, a geological surveyor is called in to make sure the marina construction is kosher and, what do you know, he decides that they can’t do the marina unless they blow up that damn rock. The same rock that’s housing the mermaid!

Gaer goes searching for the Mermaid to give her the lowdown but assures her that he will not allow them to Michael Bay her rock. What he doesn’t know is that his bitch wife, Joan, has already ordered its detonation behind his back! Say what!

Luckily, before that fateful day, Gaer and the Mermaid fall in love. But will they be able to continue that love once her 500 year old home is stolen from her? Everyone knows that a Mermaid without a home is a Mermaid death sentence. Errr…or at least I think that’s the case. Either way, shit needs to get figured out if these two are to live happily ever after.

This thing is such a miscalculation it would blow up your calculator. To be honest, it feels like a casualty of the old development system, where production companies and studios would develop a script to death, grasping wildly at story directions and plot straws they hoped would turn their project into a “can’t miss” blockbuster. But somewhere along the way the script’s direction was lost and each successive writer who came in was basically trying to revive a story that was already dead.

How much Towne was responsible for this dreadful draft is impossible to tell but one thing I noticed were his endless dialogue scenes that had absolutely nothing going for them. Compare this to Inglourious Basterds, which I broke down yesterday, where Tarantino uses impending doom and dramatic irony to make all of his dialogue riveting. There’s none of that here, leaving our characters and the writer flapping in the wind, not unlike a boat’s sail. Towne is literally using every desperate exchange he can to keep the dialogue lively but when people are talking for ten minutes about shit we’ve already covered in eight other scenes, there’s only so much gimmickry you can pull out of your hat.

Then there was this weird decision to severely limit the story’s locations. I have an unofficial rule that you don’t limit your movie to a small area unless you have an intense thriller or TONS of conflict. Otherwise, it’s hard to keep the story alive. And that’s pretty much what happened here. We have roughly 4 locations for the entire flick. The main country club building, the beach, the boat, and the water. We just keep jumping back and forth between these 4 places. Not only does this make the story feel smaller than it should, but since this is a drama with zero thrills and very little conflict, most of the scenes lie dead on the page within seconds of commencing.

As for the movie’s key relationship, that of Gaer and the Mermaid, all I can say is that it was bizarre. Their friendship begins when the Mermaid teaches Gaer how to do some twirly-dirly spritz thing with water that is so poorly described I could never imagine what it was, which was unfortunate because Gaer becomes obsessed with it and it then becomes a key plot point. When key plot points are murky, your script’s in major trouble.

And then there was Gaer himself. I believe every hero needs a life goal – their ultimate dream. The reason I find this so important is because the right life goal can tell us everything we need to know about a character. Luke Skywalker wants to fight the Empire. That’s his dream. That tells us everything we need to know about him. Here, it’s terribly explained what Gaer wants out of life. He kind of wants to race sailboats but kind of doesn’t. It’s never detailed or made clear and it makes him feel wishy-washy. Wishy-washy protagonists are inexcusable. And when combined with murky plot points? It’s no wonder this script died in the water despite the millions of dollars put into it.

The Mermaid feels like one of those bare-bones ideas someone came up with then wanted to develop (“I know. Let’s make a movie about a MERMAID!”). I say this because outside of the mermaid, there’s nothing remotely interesting about this story. If there’s a lesson here, it’s that even the best screenwriters can’t save a piece of shit.

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

What I learned: Drop boring relationships from your script. Take a look at all the key relationships in your script and ask yourself if they’re interesting. If one isn’t, change it so it is or drop it. This movie is dominated by this agonizingly boring relationship between Gaer and HIS STEPMOTHER!!! Are you serious? You’re going to revolve your movie around a young strapping male lead and his geriatric step-mother? And they’re going to spend most of the movie debating whether mermaids are real?? Kill me now! Then kill the most boring relationship in your script!

It took Tarantino ten years to finish Inglourious Basterds, mainly because he couldn’t figure out the ending or how to spell his title. The story grew in scope so much during that time that at one point he considered scrapping the movie and turning it into a TV show. After many “almosts,” he finally shot the film in 2008. The casting of Tarantino’s films is always a fun topic of conversation and Basterds was no different. Quentin originally wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to play the career-making part of Hans Landa, which eventually went to Christoph Waltz. Of course, Tarantino would later come back to DiCaprio to play his big baddie in Django Unchained. Landa was a huge problem for Tarantino during writing. He feared that the part was “unplayable.” He often mentions Waltz saving his film due to his unique interpretation of the part, a performance that would later win him an Academy Award. Tarantino was always careful with Basterds because he considered it to be his masterpiece. He wanted it to be perfect. I don’t know if I’d call it perfect, but it certainly is a great screenplay/movie worth studying.

1) Defy character type if possible (Make your villain polite) – You shouldn’t ALWAYS do this, but a common amateur mistake is to make your villain a really mean asshole of a guy. What a boring on-the-nose interpretation that is! Tarantino goes the opposite direction and makes his villain, Hans Landa, the most polite person in the story. Since we’re not used to this, it unnerves us, makes us feel uncomfortable, and therefore makes his presence way more interesting.

2) For the love of all that is holy, cut out scenes you don’t need! – If you read Tarantino’s widely circulated almost-shooting draft, you see a lot of scenes that were cut. For example, there’s a scene where Hans Landa explains to an officer why he let Shosanna go. It was unnecessary and therefore cut. There’s a scene where Shosanna is taken in by the owner of the cinema she ends up running. Tarantino realized he could move the story along quicker if they start with Shosanna already owning the cinema. You should always be looking for ways to move your story along and cutting out unnecessary scenes is one of the easiest ways to do this!

3) The more doom you imply, the longer your scene can be (or “The Impending Doom Tool”) – One of the reasons Tarantino gets away with writing such long scenes is because of the impending doom he sets up at the beginning of them. Because we know something terrible is going to happen, we’ll stick around to see it. Look at the opening scene of Basterds. From the very first moment Hans walks in that house, we know this is going to end badly. We see this in Pulp Fiction as well, when Jules and Vincent (after discussing the sexual nature of foot rubs) go to Brett’s apartment to retrieve the briefcase. To demonstrate how powerful this tool is, note what happens when Tarantino doesn’t use it. One of the most boring scenes in the film is when Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is briefed by General Ed Fenech (Michael Meyers) about connecting with one of the Allies’ contacts. The scene is incredibly boring, and a big reason for that is that it’s one of the few scenes in the film where doom isn’t implied. It’s just two guys discussing exposition.

4) DRAMATIC IRONY ALERT – Tarantino LOVES dramatic irony. In fact, the bulk of his storytelling power comes from the impending doom tool and his use of dramatic irony. We see it in the first scene, when Tarantino reveals that there are, indeed, Jews under the floor. We know this but Hans Landa does not. Then later when Shosanna is called to lunch with the Germans, Hans shows up to talk with her. We know she’s the one who escaped the house that day. But Hans does not. We see it in the pub scene, where the Allies are posing as German soldiers. A German lieutenant starts asking probing questions. We know they’re not really Germans, but this German soldier does not. You’ll see some form of dramatic irony in almost all of Tarantino’s scenes.

5) Look for unique ways to stage your characters during dialogue – One of the most interesting scenes in the script occurs after the shootout at the pub. One of the Germans has survived and must negotiate with Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) the life of Bridget von Hammersmark. The entirety of the scene occurs with us never seeing Aldo Raine. He’s upstairs, yelling down to the soldier the whole time. There’s something about Aldo’s disembodied voice that brings the scene to life.

6) The Red Herring – Another really cool thing Tarantino does is introduce red herrings into his scenes – people or things we assume will be relevant, but turn out not to be. You see this in the opening scene with the dairy farmer’s three beautiful daughters. As Hans approaches them, we’re terrified of what’s going to happen to them. Is he going to rape them? Is he going to let his men rape them? Will he use their lives to get the truth of the farmer? In the end, they weren’t relevant, but we feared they were. Tarantino is always looking for ways to build tension into his scenes and this tool is a sly way of doing so.

7) Reverse Save The Cat – Remember that just as a hero should have a “Save The Cat” moment, your bad guy should have a reverse-save-the-cat moment. Who doesn’t hate Hans after that opening scene where he orders half a dozen helpless Jews to be murdered underneath the floor?

8) Always look for different ways to say things – This is one of the easiest ways to spice up your dialogue. Just take a few moments and come up with a more unique way for your characters to say what they’re going to say. When Aldo Raine orders The Bear Jew to kill a German soldier, he doesn’t use the amateurish line: “Kill this asshole.” He says, “German wants to die for his country. Obliiiiige him.”

9) The “Tell Me About Myself” tool – You never want a character to start talking about his own backstory. It never sounds right. (i.e. “I’m a killer. I like to kill Jews.”) So Tarantino’s developed this clever trick where he has the character whose backstory he wants to unveil say to another character, “Tell me what you know about me,” as Hans does in the opening scene to the dairy farmer. This way, the character isn’t talking about himself. Someone is telling him about himself. For whatever reason, this always feels more realistic.

10) Place your scene in an original (but organic) location – The other day I talked about putting your scenes in unique locations to add more pop. However, it’s important to note that those locations must still make sense, must still be organic to the story. There’s a great example of this in Basterds. It’s the scene where Fredrick Zoller hits on Shosanna for the first time. Shosanna works in a movie theater, so an amateur writer may have put her behind the candy display and had Zoller walk in and make his move. To make things more interesting, Tarantino puts Shosanna up on a ladder changing the marquee with Zoller on the ground, semi-shouting up to her. The distance between them adds a charge and uniqueness to the scene that you never would’ve gotten had they had a conventional conversation in the lobby.

BONUS TIP – Find humor in the non-humorous – This is one of the tools that has made Tarantino famous. He always mines humor from situations that aren’t typically humorous. We saw it in Django when all the men put on Klan masks but start freaking out because they can’t see out of them. And we see it here too, with scenes like Hitler going bonkers when he hears about the Basterds. The reason it works is because it’s unexpected. We’re not USED to laughing at the Klan or at Hitler.

These are 10 tips from the movie “Inglourious Basterds.” To get 500 more tips from movies as varied as “Aliens,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Hangover,” check out my book, Scriptshadow Secrets, on Amazon!

Disclaimer: I did NOT see all of A Good Day To Die Hard. I found it to be so terrible that I walked out 45 minutes through. I have no idea (but will gladly assume) what the final 50 minutes were like.

Genre: Action
Premise: Errr… a former NYPD cop goes looking for his estranged son in Moscow and stumbles onto a complex plot involving weapons grade uranium…or something.
About: Skip Woods has written a lot of mediocre action flicks that are, surprisingly (or I guess not surprisingly) almost exactly alike. Which movies, you ask? How about I offer you Swordfish, Hitman, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and The A-Team. If you’re looking for subtlety, depth, cohesive plot, a narrative, words that make sense, then you’re probably not looking for these flicks. Which I guess makes sense. Woods’ background leads one to believe he’s more interested in ‘splosions than any sort of plot or story. He’s a partner at Wetwork Tactical, a weapons handling and tactics consulting firm. Woods is also writing Ten, which is a movie about a group of DEA agents getting hunted down by a gang they busted. That flick will star James Cameron vets Sam Worthington and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Writer: Skip Woods
Details: 95 minutes of pure torture (45 minutes of which I saw)

Shame on you Bruce Willis.

Shame on you Skip Woods.

Shame on you John Moore.

While A Good Day To Die Hard wasn’t as bad as, say, getting tortured by the Viet Cong, it was still pretty damn bad. And I’ll tell you when the moment occurred that I knew it would be bad. It was the scene where John McClane was in the cab after arriving in Russia. The scene has McClane and the cabbie engaging in a goofy (awkwardly directed) conversation. Because the writer is so lousy, he doesn’t understand why you’d have a scene like this in the first place and likely included it because he remembered the scene in the original Die Hard where McClane engaged in that fun conversation with the limo driver.

Here’s the thing though. That original fun conversation with the limo driver actually had a purpose! First, it introduced us to the charming McClane (he sits in the front seat with the limo driver, showing us he’s just a normal guy). But more importantly, it sets up the relationship between him and his wife, which will dictate us CARING when she’s held hostage and WANT John to save her.

This Moscow cabbie scene is a classic Screenwriting 101 mistake. It doesn’t tell us ANYTHING we don’t already know. It tells us John is here looking for his son (already knew that), that John has a daughter (already knew that), and that John is from New York (kinda learned that ohhhh, 25 years ago). So what’s the point of this scene? It’s the definition of pointless.

That doesn’t even begin to infringe on some of the other screenwriting 101 errors though. We follow a scene talking in a car (with his daughter) with a scene talking in a car (with the Russian cabbie). Two boring car talky scenes in a row (that reveal nothing or next to nothing). Are you asleep yet?

Oh, and then there’s the classic screenwriting neophyte tell of characters who repeat their line for emphasis. “Dammit John. You shouldn’t have come here.” Dramatic pause. “You shouldn’t have come here.” This “repeat-line-for-emphasis” move was used at least a half dozen times throughout the first 45 minutes.

Oh, and don’t forget the quirky villain character who’s quirky only because we need him to be, NOT because it’s a logical extension of who he actually is. Our villain here EATS CARROTS. No, I’m not kidding. He just munches on them. Every one must’ve been patting each other on the back after that one. “It will be so ironic! A bad guy who eats carrots!” Except it looks STUPID unless it actually makes sense. Darth Vader doesn’t have that raspy breathing thing because it’s cool. He has it because he can’t breath on his own. It’s embedded into his character’s history. Oh, and they didn’t even stop there! The Die Hard villain also tap-dances! Yes, our villain tap-dances!!!

Oh, you say, but what about plot? Was that any good?

That depends on if you like movies. Particularly good ones. I’ll try to explain.

Die Hard starts with John McClane deciding he wants to look for his son, Jack, who’s recently fallen off the map. He gets word that Jack is in Moscow, so he books a flight to Russia to catch up. Meanwhile, there’s something going on in Russia where a high ranking official has incriminating information about Russia’s president or something. Jack, who’s an undercover CIA agent, is aligned with this official for some reason, who’s on trial for something else (are ya following all this?). When the trial’s about to begin, a third party of bad guys blows the courtroom up and goes after the official. Jack shuttles the official away to a safe house but before he can get there, John POPS UP in front of his car and demands to come along.

The three agree that they have to get the official to America or something, but he refuses to leave without his daughter. So they go and meet her at a meticulously scouted warehouse. John thinks something is off and is proven correct when it turns out to be a trap. The daughter is in cahoots with the baddies! The baddies want this secret file as well, but before they can get it, John and Jack join forces and kill a bunch of people and escape. That’s the point where I walked out of the movie. But I hear that John and Jack then head to Chernobyl of all places where they discover there wasn’t any file to begin with. It was all a cover for some weapons grade uranium that was going to be used to blow up the world…or something.

Here’s what I don’t get. Don’t writers realize that if the plot is muddled and/or stupid, that we’re not going to care?? The whole reason we care what’s happening in a movie is because we understand that if our heroes DON’T succeed, something bad will happen. In other words, there’s something at stake! If we don’t understand what our heroes are doing, there’s nothing at stake. After the embarrassingly clumsy plotting that connected our two main characters (John McClane literally BUMPS INTO his son, Jack, in the middle of Moscow. How convenient!), we don’t have any idea what our characters are doing or why they’re doing it. We’re told of some sort of disk or file that’s needed, but it’s never clear what it is, what it holds, or why it’s important. So we’re supposed to be involved in a pursuit that we don’t even understand! I mean compare this to Die Hard. What’s the plot? SAVE HIS FREAKING WIFE! That’s the plot! How freaking simple is that? How clear are the stakes?? That’s why we’re invested. Cause we understand what the heck is going on!

But, none of this compares to what they turn John McClane into. They rewrite this cinema icon into a PASSIVE HERO! Like, that’s the first thing you learn in A screenwriting class. MAKE YOUR HERO ACTIVE! ESPECIALLY in an action movie! The only way you could do worse is if you MADE the most active awesomest hero of all time passive! The original John McClane was great because HE MADE THINGS HAPPEN. He did things. He ACTED. Here, he’s just following his son around like an annoying little child who keeps asking, “Are we there yet?”

I don’t know if this is because they’re trying to do a “pass the torch” thing with the son, but even if that’s the case, it’s a mortal sin. We didn’t come to this movie to see boring buzz cut no-name actor kick ass. We came to see Bruce Willis kick ass!

In the end, all I ask with the writing is that you try. SHOW. ME. THAT. YOU. ARE. TRYING. There isn’t a single moment in this script that indicates anyone was putting any effort into the choices. I’d be surprised if this script made it past a second draft. That’s how sloppy it feels. I mean it didn’t even get the tone right. Die Hard films are supposed to be fun! Whoever directed this thought he was directing The Bourne Identity or a new Bond flick. Where was the fun???

And don’t buy into the company line that “IT’S AN ACTION FLICK. LOOSEN UP AND ENJOY IT!” Just cause you’re making an action flick doesn’t mean that things like plot, story, and characters don’t matter. I know this because I’ve seen action movies that have done it right. Where the people actually cared about writing a good screenplay. They were called Die Hard.

And it’s not insignificant. If you make a good movie, you make more money! People will keep buying your movie 20 years from now. Just like they still buy Die Hard, the original. So there is incentive to get it right. I’m just shocked that hacks were allowed write this piece of garbage.

Try. Next time, just try. That’s all I ask.

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

What I learned: Don’t write scenes that tell us things we already know! You will bore us. Who isn’t bored by the random weird Moscow cab scene in A Good Day To Die Hard? And the reason we’re bored is because it doesn’t advance the plot in any way, it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know, and it doesn’t reveal anything we need for later. It. Is. Pointless!

It turns out that Charlie Kaufman writing Killing Charlie Kaufman (which I reviewed here) was just a big rumor and NOT TRUE!  I was contacted by Charlie’s people themselves who confirmed that Kaufman had nothing to do with the screenplay.  That rumor has been going around Hollywood for a decade now so I guess we should be glad that we’ve finally cleared it up.

I tend to get hung up on character and structure and story a lot. You know, those things that “supposedly” make your script better. I don’t often get into the nitty-gritty, the smaller details that, when added up, really make an impact on your script. Which is what inspired today’s article. Here are 10 small things you can do to improve your screenplay right now. Enjoy!

1) Cut out the least important character in your script. See, here’s the thing. We’re character whores. We love adding people to our scripts, even if it doesn’t make sense. We just think, “Another character. Yay!” The problem with this is that we all of a sudden have a bunch of characters who don’t matter. So here’s a simple tool to help you. Find the least important character in your script and get rid of them. You’ll feel better afterwards. I promise.

2) Eliminate the 3 scenes that have the least to do with your plot. Writing pointless scenes is an epidemic. Even top-level professionals do it. I just read a 3-page scene the other day where our hero meets a really fun character, who disappears afterwards and is never seen again. Why, then, do we need that scene in the movie? Get rid of your three most irrelevant scenes right now. You will send me an e-mail within the week and offer me cookies for this. I guarantee it.

3) Combine 6 scenes into 3 – Combining scenes is a power skill that will turn your script into a lean and mean power machine. Do you really need two separate scenes for your hero asking the girl out to the prom AND applying for a job? What if the girl he’s asking works at the store he’s applying for a job at? Now you kill two birds with one stone! Take six scenes and find a way to combine them into three.

4) Twitterize your paragraphs. Look at every four-line paragraph and see if you can cut it down to 3. Lean scripts are just easier to read. And I’ve found that with a little creativity you can take most long paragraphs and make them a lot shorter. So just go through your script and everywhere you have a four line paragraph, get it down to three. You can do it!

5) Give every character in your script either a memorable introduction or a memorable description. Easy-to-forget characters are a time-honored tradition in amateur screenwriting. Don’t be a part of that tradition. The best way to make your characters memorable is to make them stand out when we first meet them. Do this by showing them doing something interesting, or have that kick-ass description that makes them immediately visible in the reader’s eye.

6) Stop being derivative. Go through every scene in your script and ask yourself (honestly) if you’ve seen that scene before in another movie. If you have, change it. Find an angle, even if it’s tiny, to make it feel fresh. One of the biggest problems with amateur scripts is that they feel too similar to stuff we’ve already seen. This is an easy way to prevent that.

7) Take your three heaviest exposition scenes and find a way to SHOW that information rather than TELL it. For example, instead of a character telling someone their girlfriend just broke up with them, show them burning all her pictures.

8) Simplify your writing. Stop trying to impress us with your hundred-dollar words or Pulitzer-Prize-worthy prose. Scripts are about understanding what’s going on. Just tell your story simply. You still want to add some flavor, but where I see scripts go south is when writers over-flavorize their description. Get complex with your plot. But keep your writing simple.

9) Place your character in un-obvious locations. Too many writers have their characters talking in coffee houses, restaurants or living rooms. Because these settings are boring, we’re bored reading them. Spice up your locations. Maybe the characters are fixing the satellite dish on the roof while talking. Maybe they’re at a drag race. Maybe they’re at a puppy daycare. Have fun with your locations. They’re going to spice your scenes up.

10) Never EVER cheat your margins (both horizontal and vertical). It took me awhile to figure out why – all else being equal – some scripts read slower than others. It’s because the writers cheated their margins. They fit more words onto a line and more lines onto a page, usually by invoking the old Final Draft “tight” formatting tool. Good God never do this. I’ll be sitting there feeling like I’m on page 20, look up and see I’m on page 10 and, besides being pissed off that the script is taking forever to read, wonder how that can be. On almost every occasion, I check the margins and, sure enough, the writer’s cheating.