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.

Michael Bay goes indie on us. Does he finally realize what a screenplay is in the process?

Genre: Action/Comedy/Crime
Premise: Based on a true story, a fitness trainer kidnaps one of his rich clients, eventually taking over his life. He must then fend off the man’s attempts to claim his life back.
About: This is Michael Bay’s version of an indie film – something he’s talked about doing for over a decade. It stars Mark Wahlberg and The Rock and comes out April 26th. Bay and Wahlberg got along so well during filming, Bay convinced Marky Mark (the busiest actor in Hollywood) to be in the next Transformers movie. P&G is written by big-budget scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who scripted the three Narnia screenplays, the first Captain America script, and are doing the next Thor and Captain America scripts respectively. However, because it’s Bay’s baby, and he was shepherding pretty much the whole writing process, I’ll be looking at this, basically, as his script.
Writers: Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (revisions by Jerry Stahl) (Current Revisions by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely)
Details: 116 pages – 1/21/11 draft

Awhile back, I heard that Michael Bay wanted to make a “smaller” more “personal” movie. Which was a little surprising. I mean this is a guy who was infamously quoted as saying, “I make movies so I can buy Ferraris” (which I can confirm is 100% true – I saw him out in one of these Ferraris once!). But you figure even the master of the ‘splosion would get tired of his 10,000th Transformer movie, even if they were paying him upwards of 100 million for each one.

So what does a “personal” Michael Bay film look like? Hmmm, well…you aren’t going to be getting Upstream Color 2, if that’s what you’re hoping for. If Bay can’t have big explosions, he’s going to have big somethings. And in this case it’s the big bulky frames of Mark Wahlberg and The Rock! You’re also going to have big soundtracks, like the irresistibly funky Top 40 hit, Thrift Shop! I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that Bay’s smaller personal films are still basically big snazzy films, dressed down slightly.

Where Bay has always faltered in his movies, though, has been the script. He just doesn’t give a shit about it. Either that or he doesn’t understand storytelling. That’s what keeps him from the heights of guys like JJ Abrams, Peter Jackson and James Cameron. True, the Transformers movies have made a ton of money, but they’ve come at the cost of respect. Audiences just don’t take Bay seriously because his stories are a mish-mash of clichés, huge leaps of logic, and good old fashioned bad writing. They are the epitome of style over substance. One would think, then, that if he was telling a smaller story without all the pressures 250 million benjamins brings, that he’d like to get a little more into the story, a little more into the characters. Well, let’s jump in and see if that’s true.

The year is 1995. The town is Miami. The man is Daniel Lugo. Daniel Lugo believes in America. He believes in the notion that hard work pays off. And he’s chosen to do his hard work in the fitness sector, a place where he can milk his charm to make others believe that if they work hard enough, they can look just as big and strong and buff as him.

But Daniel also realizes that there’s a ceiling to what he does. There wasn’t any reality TV back in 1995, so you couldn’t turn your fitness charm into a Bravo show just yet. You worked your butt off 12 hours a day and you earned 50-60 Gs max. Daniel believes that America rewards you for your time. But that reward wasn’t big enough in his opinion.

So Daniel comes up with a plan. Why not kidnap one of his rich clients, kill him, and take all his stuff? Sure, sounds like fun to me. All he has to do is recruit his Mimbo trainer friend Adrian (The Rock) and a former drug addict named Paul Doyle (desperate to be a part of, well, ANYTHING). The three kidnap one of Daniel’s rich clients, Marc Schiller, a slimy piece of work who made his fortune fucking over all kinds of people, then try to kill him.

But the killing doesn’t go as planned and Schiller survives. Here’s the catch though. Schiller’s scared to provoke Daniel because Daniel knows about all his secret illegal doings. If he goes to the police, the police will just find out about all his criminal activity. Daniel figures this out and just moves into Schiller’s place and starts living his life. I mean, what’s to stop him? Eventually Schiller gets fed up, though, and hires a private investigator to collect evidence on Daniel’s shady doings so he can take him down in court. Daniel will probably survive the investigation if he lays low, but when he’s presented with an opportunity to take another high-flying businessman down, he lets greed get the best of him. And that’s when things really start spinning out of control.

Oh boy.

Okay, I want you to imagine Fargo………………..directed by Michael Bay.

Are you imagining that movie?

Okay, well, that’s the exact movie you get with Pain and Gain.

A story dependent on its intricately woven plot and characters directed by someone who doesn’t understand plot or characters.

Now I’m of the belief that there’s no single template for a good script, just as there’s no single template for a bad one. However, there are a number of things you can do to sway the odds in or out of your favor. Here you have a main character who’s kidnapping someone so he can steal all his money, after which he’ll kill him. Okay, got it. We’re rooting for a character to kill people for his own selfish interests. That’s typically not going to go over well with audiences.

Now this can sometimes work in a comedy setting IF the character doing the kidnapping is really funny. But that’s not the case here. At most you get a few hollow chuckles out of Daniels’ antics. There’s a mastery of tone required in this situation, tone that bounces back and forth between seriousness and humor, that is so hard to pull off. It’s a tone the Coens have perfected over time. And it’s something so alien to Bay that I’m surprised he chose to do this film in the first place. I mean, is Bay a secret Coen Brothers fan?

Another problem here is that there are only two interesting characters, Daniel Lugo and Marc Schiller. Daniel works because he’s a walking hypocrite. He says he believes in America and working hard, yet he’s constantly looking for the shortest shortcut to the top. Schiller works because he’s over the top and fun. But everyone else here is boring as hell. I mean The Rock’s character (Adrian) has absolutely nothing going on. He just jumps whenever Daniel says jump. Ditto Paul Boyle, whose only twist is a barely-there drug addiction. The reason this matters is because the script presents itself as an exploration of a bunch of wild weird people caught up in a crazy plot. But there were only two wild and weird people worth watching. Everyone else was boring.

Then there were just things that didn’t make sense. Schiller wanted his life back but couldn’t tell the police because he had too much to hide. So he hires a private investigator to put a case together against Daniel stealing his life. But wait a minute…If he’s putting together a case against Daniel, wouldn’t he eventually have to go to the courts to get his stuff back anyway? Doesn’t that put him in the same position he was in from the get-go? Having to go to the cops? Since that didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and since most of the plot rode on the assumption that it did, you just didn’t care much what happened. When you add on top of that the fact that you hated everyone in the movie, both bad guys and “good,” there wasn’t much left for Pain and Gain to offer.

This script was a hot mess!

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

What I learned: Instead of using “We see,” try to convey your imagery and action through description. Pain and Gain opens with our main character doing sit-ups on a roof. The description reads like so: “He crunches toward his knees and sees the parking lot. When he lies back down, he sees the sky. – Up, parking lot. Down, sky.” With this description, we can tell what the camera is doing (showing the crunches from Daniel’s POV), without physically saying, “The camera shows…” or “WE SEE the parking lot from his point of view, then the sky as he comes back down.” The reason this is important is because it keeps us inside the story. The second you say “POV” “the camera” or “We see,” you remind the reader that they’re reading a movie. Now I still see professional writers using these terms (especially writer-directors, who like to write specific shots into their scripts), and they’re by no means script-killers. But, preferably, you want to be as invisible as possible about your script being a script. You can’t whisk your reader away if you’re constantly reminding them that they’re reading a screenplay.

Author Ira Levin’s book about a woman impregnated with Satan’s child was deemed so commercial that legendary producer Robert Evans snatched up the rights before the book was even finished. He then recruited European director Roman Polanski to write and direct the film, which would become Polanski’s first foray into American cinema. Polanski wanted his wife, Sharon Tate, to play the part of Rosemary, but Evans convinced him to go with Mia Farrow, despite the fact that her husband at the time, Frank Sinatra, wanted her to quit the profession. In fact, when she officially accepted the part, he filed for divorce. The film’s adapted screenplay went on to get nominated for an Oscar and was a huge box office success, grossing ten times its budget. Some, however, believe that because of the movie’s subject matter, its principal participants were cursed. Polanski, of course, lost his wife in the Manson murders, then later sexually assaulted a young girl, forcing him to flee to France and never set foot in America again. And Mia Farrow, after being left by Sinatra, eventually married Woody Allen, which of course ended in tragedy when she found out Allen was having a sexual relationship with her adopted daughter from a previous marriage. Regardless of all that, Rosemary’s Baby is one of the best movies from the 60s, and therefore ripe for its share of screenwriting tips.

1) The Villain Goal – I often talk about giving your protagonist a goal, as that goal will drive the story. However, if your protagonist doesn’t have a goal, you can transfer the goal over to the story’s villain. That’s the case with Rosemary’s Baby. The story is being driven by a goal held by Rosemary’s elderly neighbors, Roman and Minnie Castevet. The two need a woman to carry Satan’s baby. And she’s been chosen.

2) DRAMATIC IRONY ALERT – Remember what Dramatic Irony is. It’s when we know something one of the key characters does not. And it works best when the thing we know is something that puts our character in danger. Almost all of Rosemary’s Baby is based on this device. We know that she’s carrying the devil’s baby and that all these people around her are manipulating her, but she doesn’t. We want to scream, “Run! Get away from everyone!” which is usually when “dramatic irony” is working best.

3) Look for your scares using human psychological elements – When most writers think about scares, they think of the cliché stuff. Ghosts, demons, witches, etc. Rosemary’s Baby is a horror film without any real “scares.” Its horror comes from its psychological nature, the fact that Rosemary is being manipulated. To me, the scariest situation of all is when the person you’re supposed to trust the most deceives you, which is a big part of why this movie works so well. Rosemary’s own husband has sold her off to the devil. If you can’t trust your own spouse, who can you trust?

4) When writing a horror film, jump into your mysteries right away – You need to hook your reader immediately in a horror script, and one of the best ways to do this is to introduce a mystery inside the first couple of scenes. Here, we see it when Rosemary and her husband, Guy, are checking out the apartment. They discover an armoire hiding a closet. Keep in mind, this is the 60s. If the screenwriter is jumping right into the mysteries in a 1968 film, you better hope you’re doing it in 2013, where audiences are 10,000 times less patient.

5) Contained movies require writers adept at adding conflict – Remember, when writing a contained film (almost all of Rosemary’s Baby takes place in an apartment), you need to add AS MUCH CONFLICT AS POSSIBLE. You do this in three main areas – internal level, relationship level, and external level. On the internal level, Rosemary battles with her desire to make everyone happy, even though inside everything’s telling her to look out for herself. That line of conflict stays present throughout the entire movie. On the relationship level, Rosemary is having marital issues with her husband, Guy, who seems to be putting his career ahead of Rosemary. This causes lots of conflict during their time together. And of course, externally, Rosemary is battling the invasion of her elderly neighbors, who are trying to control her life. Conflict should be present in all your films, but you better PACK IT IN if you’re writing a contained film.

6) Nice Villains Finish First – I continue to believe that nice villains (when done right) are the scariest villains of all. Asshole cruel dickhead terrible villains are often cliché and boring. Whereas there will always be situations where scary or “clearly bad” villains are necessary (i.e. Buffalo Bill wasn’t very nice), nice villains should at least be considered when writing your script. Here we have neighbors Minnie and Roman Castevet, who have orchestrated the rape and manipulation of our heroine, Rosemary. But they’re always there for her with a smile. They’re the first people to help here whenever there’s a problem. This movie just does not work if these two are forceful and mean and clearly cruel.

7) Don’t let your protagonist be wimpy for too long – In this kind of movie, everything is predicated on our character being duped. So for a good portion of the movie, the protagonist must play that role. But if this goes on for too long, we start to get frustrated by the character, sometimes even turning on them. We don’t like characters who don’t do anything to change their shitty circumstances. So at some point (usually in the second half of the second act) the protagonist should start rebelling. Here, it’s when Rosemary throws her own party. From that point on, Rosemary begins making her own decisions, as opposed to letting the decisions be made for her.

8) Build up suspense by allowing your audience to see their presents the night before Christmas – Waiting for the horror to finally arrive is one of the more enjoyable aspects of watching a horror film. But it’s a lot more fun when the writer teases that horror. It’s kind of like getting to touch and lift and shake your gifts the night before Christmas. It gets your mind spinning, excited and curious about what could be in those boxes. Here we get the armoire blocking the closet. We also get Rosemary’s friend, Hutch, warning her about all the strange deaths in her building. We see it later in the first act when Rosemary’s new friend seemingly commits suicide by jumping to her death. These moments are just like getting to hold and shake those unwrapped gifts. They make us eager to see what’s inside.

9) Whoever has the goal that’s driving the movie (even if it’s your villain) should encounter obstacles along the way – This is important to remember. When your hero is driving the movie with their goal, what makes their journey interesting are all the obstacles they encounter along the way. This same approach must be applied if your villain is the one driving the story. Since our villains’ goal is to guide Rosemary through her pregnancy so she has a healthy baby, Polanski creates ways to foil that plan. First, Rosemary’s friend Hutch shows up, who becomes suspicious of Rosemary’s neighbors. Then later, Rosemary insists on throwing a party with all her old friends, friends who could conceivably convince her how strange her pregnancy is. Regardless of who has the goal in your story, they should always encounter obstacles.

10) Go against the obvious with your horror ending – Again, most writers believe that a horror ending has to be the grandest scariest freakiest craziest spookiest scenario possible. As a result, a lot of the endings to horror scripts end up being similar. What separates Rosemary’s Baby and a big reason it’s such a classic, is that it does the exact opposite with its ending. Rosemary walks through a brightly lit apartment with people everywhere, sitting and talking in very non-threatening ways. Nobody really says or does anything when they see her. She’s allowed to be in the room without retaliation. What makes it so spooky is just how un-spooky it is!

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