So in last week’s newsletter, I sent out 5 amateur comedies to the Scriptshadow community to choose from for an Amateur Friday review. You can see these loglines discussed in the Amateur Offerings post here. The overall consensus was not good. People didn’t like what they saw. And keep in mind, these were the BEST OF the comedy loglines sent in. They weren’t just a random five people. Regardless of that, it got me thinking. What the hell is going on with comedies? The genre, in my opinion, is at an all time low.

Think about it. When was the last time you HAD to go to the movies to see a comedy? Six months ago? A year? I honestly can’t remember myself. And that’s a troubling development. Unlike superhero flicks and action-adventure films, comedies aren’t dependent on the big-screen experience. They can just as easily be enjoyed at home. Which tells me if this trend continues, comedies will follow the same route as dramas and indie movies: straight-to-digital. And as soon as that happens, the price for comedy specs goes way down. Why is that a big deal? Because comedy is the biggest market left for spec writers, one of the few genres left writers can consistently sell a spec script in.

Now I understand discussing comedies is tough. Sense of humor differs wildly from person to person. It’s the only genre where one person can absolutely hate a movie that someone else absolutely loves. I mean, believe it or not, some people actually liked Paul Blart: Mall Cop. This makes discussing the issue tricky. However, even with people’s widely divergent tastes in comedy, I think it’s safe to say that the overall quality of the comedy has gone down. I mean when a comedy like “Jack and Jill” can get made, the genre has to be suffering, right?

Good comedies have always been hard to come by, but in better times, we got at least one bona fide comedy classic a year. By classic I mean movies that you’d want to buy and watch again. So in 1993 we had Groundhog Day, 94 we had Dumb and Dumber, 95 we had Get Shorty, 96 we had Happy Gilmore (or “Scream” if you want to count that as a comedy), 97 we had Liar Liar, 98 There’s Something About Marry, 99 American Pie, and in 2000, Meet The Parents. I mean that’s a pretty good run. I haven’t seen anything approaching that run in the past decade.

Of course, maybe I’m just getting old. Maybe I don’t like the same things the kids these days like. Maybe the comedies coming out now ARE classics, and I’m just not hip to the new haha. Well, let’s go to the books, shall we? Below are the top 5 box office comedies in each of the last 5 years. You’ll notice that 2012 was the lowest ranking box office year for comedies of the five by over 100 million dollars. But that’s not what I want you to focus on. Focus on the movies themselves. Are these really the best Hollywood can do?

2012
Ted – $218 million
21 Jump Street – $138 million
The Campaign – $86 million
This is 40 – $67 million
Pitch Perfect – $65 million

2011
The Hangover Part 2 – $254 million
Bridesmaids – $169 million
Horrible Bosses – $117 million
Bad Teacher – $100 million
Crazy Stupid Love – $84 million

2010
Grown Ups – $162 million
Little Fockers – $148 million
The Other Guys – $119 million
Jackass 3-D – $117 million
Due Date – $100 million

2009
The Hangover – $277 million
Night At The Museum, Battle of The Smithsonian – $177 million
Paul Blart: Mall Cop – $146 million
Couples Retreat – $109 million
Zombieland – $75 million

2008
Hancock – $227 million
Get Smart – $130 million
Tropic Thunder – $110 million
Step Brothers – $100 million
You Don’t Mess With The Zohan – $100 million

Now there are some okay titles in this list. But I’m pretty sure the only comedy the majority of us would agree is a bona fide classic is The Hangover. I mean, we had one year off this list where the top two movies were, gasp, Grown-Ups and Little Fockers!!! The combined Rotten Tomato scores for these two films was 19%. No, I didn’t forget one of the percentages. One was 9 percent. The other was 10!! Jackass 3-D was the fourth biggest comedy of that year. A bunch of guys looking for inventive ways to land on their balls. The Other Guys was the only semi-legitimate comedy that year, and the plot for that film was unintelligible.

Which leads me to my big problem with today’s comedies. Nobody pays attention to story anymore. Instead, the trend is bit-comedy – little individual bursts of comedy that have little to no connection to one another. The rallying cry seems to be, “If it’s funny, include it, no matter what.” Miss Scriptshadow calls them “Youtube-able Moments” – bits that would play well in one or two minutes on Youtube (the “white trash name guessing” scene in “Ted” for example), but don’t have any story value.

Seth McFarlene has been leading the charge for this kind of comedy in the TV world. If you look at cartoons like The Simpsons and South Park – they put a lot of effort into building a story that the comedy can emerge from. Family Guy is the opposite. Nothing is connected. There’s no story to speak of. It’s just random bits of comedy that are born out of whatever the writer thinks is funny at the moment.

Now because a TV show is only 22 minutes long, this lack of coherence can work. But on an entire film? Outside of the Naked Gun and Scary Movie franchises, we haven’t seen it seep into “narrative” features much. But now we have Seth McFarlane’s “Ted,” which is about as “Youtubable Moment”-centric as it gets. And people came out in droves. It finished with 218 million dollars at the domestic box office, and was the biggest comedy of the year.

Now I’m assuming I speak for everyone when I say that Ted isn’t a classic. Or at least I hope I do. So what does its anointment mean? Does it mean that this is what audiences want now? Or does it mean that the comedy scene has gotten so terrible that this is what we’re left with?

Call me old fashioned, but here’s what I believe is going on. The wrong people are dictating the comedy scene, people who put the emphasis on the wrong things. It’s not that these people aren’t funny. Some of them are. But nobody’s taught them the value of story, and how if you pull an audience in emotionally, if you build a strong narrative with something at stake where the characters are charismatic and likable and interesting, then everything about the story becomes much better, including the humor.

A good story is like a spell. It makes you forget everything else around you. It pulls you in and makes you believe in its make-believe world. Once you do that, you can manipulate any emotion you want out of an audience, with humor being no different than fear or sadness or anger. What I’m trying to say is that a movie like Ted could’ve had everything it has now but a lot more. It could’ve been twice as captivating, twice as funny, and made even more money.

What kills me, though, is that this new comedy approach has begun to trickle down to the spec-writing community. New comedy writers are coming onto the scene and believing this is how they need to write comedies, without a strong story or strong direction. This has resulted in an overall “lowering of the bar” and now the best of these patchwork comedy specs are bought at prices ¼ of what comedies used to go for. The buyers need to buy something, but pay small amounts because…well because the comedies aren’t very good anymore. I’m trying to think of the last big comedy spec sale in Hollywood and I can’t. Can you?? Maybe El Tigre (about a middle class man who gets mistaken for a Mexican drug cartel leader). And that was horrible.

There’s actually good news to come out of all of this. The laughably low quality in the comedy genre for both scripts and movies opens the door for someone with a good comedy idea who can actually execute a story to cash in. Basically, you need 3 things. You need a marketable concept. You need strong funny characters. And you need a story that stays strong all the way through. Instead of trying to come up with funny scenes and building a story around that, come up with a funny story and let the comedy emerge organically from it. Also ask yourself, would your story still be interesting without the comedy? Would the audience still care? Would they still want to know what happens next? If the answer to those questions is yes, then you’re on the right track. I, for one, am wishing you luck. Because I’d love to start laughing again when I go to the movies.

Every day writers give up on their dreams. What can The Imperfectionist teach us about minimizing that possibility?

Genre: Comedy/Drama
Premise: (my best interpretation of it) A loser husband lies to his adoring mother, telling her he sold a manuscript. When the lie spreads beyond the family, he plays along, not realizing the devastating effects it will have on himself and his daughter.
About: This script finished with 5 votes on the 2006 Black List. The writer, Craig Hoetger, was never able to parlay the achievement into anything bigger, and has since moved on to another profession.
Writer: Craig Hoetger
Details: 120 pages

Seth Rogen for Dan?

So there I was, trying to do a good thing – trying to dig into these spec scripts of the past and find another forgotten gem. I didn’t know anything about this one other than that it was on the 2006 Black List, ranked fairly low (implying not many people had read it), and so it sounded like the perfect script to take a chance on.

And then I started reading it. And 30 pages in, I started regretting my decision. Why? Well, for starters, nothing was happening! And the things that WERE happening weren’t making a lot of sense. But I dutifully read on. Where others would’ve given up, I kept going, determined to make it to the end. And the script actually did start to develop a plot, but it was too late. By that point, I’d already given up.

However, it wasn’t until I started doing research on the writer that I perked up and realized there was a lesson to be learned in all of this. It turned out that our scribe, Craig Hoetger, had given up on his screenwriting career, moved back east, and become a lawyer. He’d spent 10 years pursuing his dream before quitting. And all I could think was, if he’d had the right education, he could’ve made it. And how there are thousands of writers just like him. Talented, but for one reason or another, not getting the proper instruction on how to write a screenplay. These writers were quitting every day. Believing they didn’t have the goods and moving on. I want to talk about that in a moment, but first a quick breakdown on the imperfect Imperfectionist…

Daniel Merton was a childhood genius. He could spell his name with alphabet soup letters when he was two. His older brother, Kyle, was the opposite. A baboon in human skin, he’d be lucky to spell his name after graduating high school. As a result, Dan was tabbed the golden child by their mom, Cookie, who saw to it that he always got the best education, the best opportunities in life. He eventually graduated law school, living up to his promise.

Except that was ten years ago. Dan is now married to the monstrous nagging wicked bitch of the west, Cat. His only achievement in life is his adorable little eight year old daughter, Sophie. These days, Dan is anything but a prodigy. He loses every job he gets within a year. He doesn’t have any drive. He can’t even succeed at the simplest of tasks – like re-organizing his books (books he never finished reading, by the way). In short, Dan has turned into a loser.

And when he gets canned from his latest job, his wife has had enough. She leaves him and Sophie. Dan is so broke that he can’t pay the bills anymore, so having no other options, he takes his daughter and heads back to his mother’s house in Michigan. Cookie is more than happy to see the prodigal son return, but Kyle, his brother, isn’t. Kyle, of course, is still living at home.

Fearful that his mother will find out he’s a failure, Dan comes up with a story that he’s sold a manuscript for a cool $100,000. His mother is so psyched, she starts telling all her friends, who in turn tell their friends. While at a local town rally the next day, Dan’s achievement is announced to the entire crowd, and Dan finds himself being shuttled up to the microphone. He sees so many expectant eyes that he expands on his lie, telling everyone that not only did he sell the novel, but it’s going to be the next book on Oprah’s Book Club!

While this helps him achieve momentary celebrity status, Dan must explain to his confused daughter why it is he’s lying to everyone. She knows the truth, that Dan has written a total of 2 chapters of his “novel” in 4 years. Whatever the case, it doesn’t take long for the town to catch up with him and his lie to be exposed. Which leaves Dan at his lowest point of all. Will he find a way out? Will he resolve his issues with his wife, brother, and daughter? He’ll have to if he has any chance of salvaging what’s become one pitiful life.

The Imperfectionist has a lot of problems. Starting with the most obvious. It takes WAY TOO FREAKING LONG TO GET TO THE PLOT. A common beginner mistake. Now I’m assuming this script is about a guy who tells his town that he sold a book and then dealing with the aftermath of the lie. Here’s the thing though – we don’t get to that lie until AFTER PAGE 60! That means the plot of this movie isn’t introduced until half-way through the script!

Before that, I had no idea what The Imperfectionist was about (I didn’t have the benefit of a logline). The first act contained another common beginner error – the constant repeating of information we already knew. Dan gets fired. Dan’s wife tells him he’s a loser. We’re told Dan’s lost other jobs. Dan doesn’t pay his bills. Dan chooses porn over paying his bills. In other words, Dan is a LOSER. But we didn’t need 12 scenes to tell us that. We understood it after the first scene. No wonder we don’t get to the plot until the midpoint – we’ve spent the entire first act telling us over and over again that Dan is a loser!

There are a lot of other problems here (How Dan went from a super-genius to a super-loser is never clearly explained, leaving us baffled and confused for most of the story) but that’s not the point. The point is, Hoetger is like a lot of screenwriters. Guys come to Hollywood every day hoping to become screenwriters. Some spend a year or two here while others spend an entire decade (or more!). A lot of them don’t make it. And a huge reason for that is that they’re never told how to write a fucking screenplay!

I mean, these are basic problems in this script. You don’t need 12 scenes to tell us who your freaking protagonist is. A good writer needs 1. You don’t introduce your plot on page 60. You do it as soon as possible. Dan should’ve been fired by his boss by page 5, headed back to his hometown by page 10, and lied to his mom about the book by page 25. This is basic screenwriting 101 here. Get to your story as soon as possible! For whatever reason, tons of wannabe screenwriters don’t seek out the widely available number of books (or websites, or professional screenplays, or teachers) that explain how to do this stuff.

And in Craig’s situation, it was even worse! The Imperfectionist made the Black List (for what I’m assuming were a few clever moments sprinkled throughout) which told Craig that that was the proper way to write a script. You don’t need to move your story along quickly. You don’t need to get to the point quickly. So he continued writing screenplays for another five years believing that that was the correct way to write. No wonder he never found success. Had he gotten professional feedback or read a hundred scripts or a half-dozen screenwriting books, he would’ve realized that these were major mistakes that needed to be corrected, regardless of what his cheerleading agents were telling him.

I say this because I can tell, under the right guidance, Craig could have forged a career in this business. The writing here is pretty good. It’s just that there are some giant structural issues and inconsistencies in the way the characters were portrayed. Those things could’ve been fixed with the right feedback. It just terrifies me that there are all these aspiring writers out there like Craig who don’t know to study the craft and who are subsequently making basic correctable mistakes over and over again in all their screenplays, and who will therefore have to abort their dreams at some point. Study, people. Learn. Get feedback. Read scripts. Take classes. Know how to tell a story. By doing so, you give yourself the best chance at success in this business.

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

What I learned: This is the third script I read this week where the writer kept repeating the same information over and over again about his main character in the first act. If you do it right, all you need is one scene to establish your hero, then you get on with your story.

You may remember Trainspotting as one of those 90s movies that was changing the guard in Hollywood. Writer-directors Tarantino and Rodriquez were rewriting the rules on how stories should be told. Screenwriters like Shane Black were changing the way screenplays were written. And then this British heroin-addict flick came along and landed perfectly within that counter-Hollywood culture that many assumed would change the way films were made forever. Well, that change both happened and didn’t happen. There’s definitely more of a “do-it-yourself” attitude in today’s filmmaking community. But that brash no-holds-barred way of writing and shooting died off with the folding of most of the indie companies. It just wasn’t as easy to find money outside of the studio system anymore. So everyone started playing it safe again, and we really haven’t had a Pulp Fiction or Trainspotting for a long time. Frowney face. Based on the novel by Irving Welsh, adapted for the screen by John Hodge, and directed by Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later), Trainspotting was nominated for a screenwriting Academy Award in 1996. It’s also ranked 10th by the British Film Institute in its list of the top 100 British films of all time. It just so happens that Hodge and Boyle have reteamed for the new James Mcavoy flick, Trance, which comes out soon. There have been persistent rumors that a sequel to Trainspotting will be made, with Boyle leading the charge, but Ewan McGregor has stated he wants to protect his character, and therefore doesn’t want to make an inferior second film.

1) When you have a lot of characters to set up, create a situation/scene that allows you to show us their differences – Here we have Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud, Tommy and Renton. Instead of giving them each their own individual scenes to set them up, which would’ve taken forever, Hodge throws them all into a soccer (football) game. We see Sick Boy commit a sneaky foul and deny it. Begbie commits an obvious foul and makes no effort to deny it. Spud, the goalie, lets the ball go between his legs. Tommy kicks the ball as hard as he can. This game allows each of the characters an individual action that tells us exactly what kind of character they are.

2) Voice over tends to work better when the pace is fast – When the story’s slow, it draws attention to the voice over, which in turn sounds preachy, as if it’s trying to carry a boring story. Trainspotting has one of the best voice overs in history (“Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.”). And a big reason it works is because the story’s moving fast (we open on our characters running from the cops). It’s not that you can’t use voice over with slow material. It just seems to fit better when the pace is quick.

3) Write a story that’s opposite in pace and tone from the subject matter – One of the cool things about Trainspotting is that it’s about one of the most depressing subject matters out there – heroin addiction – and yet the story is fast and fun a lot of the time. This contrast in expected pace and actual pace gives the story an unpredictable exciting feel. I mean imagine if Trainspotting would’ve been slow-paced and focused on all the depressing moments related to heroin addiction. It probably would’ve sucked, right?

4) CONFLICT ALERT – Remember, movies do not work without conflict. You need to mine it wherever you can. Conflict between characters is a given, but not always a necessity IF you have a strong inner conflict with one of your main characters. Here, it’s addiction. That’s what Renton (Ewan McGregor) is fighting. That’s his battle throughout the movie. Without it, this movie doesn’t work.

5) Once again, use voice over to help a story in need – We saw this with Fight Club, but here it’s even more evident. The more you shun structure, the more you need voice over. The opening of this movie is guys trying to steal items to sell so they can buy dope. Then a sequence where they come off heroin. Then they try to get a job. Then they’re all hanging out, going to bars. Then they’re back on dope. 30 pages in and no story (no goal) has emerged. But it all flows pretty seamlessly because Renton’s voice over is guiding us along. Use voice-over to patch up a patchy story.

6) Talky friend movies need a theme or a unifying element – In these types of movies that don’t have much of a plot and are basically a bunch of friends hanging out, you need a unifying element – something the story can keep coming back to. Failure to do so leaves you with a bunch of friends talking, and those scripts are both boring and concept-less. The way to make these movies work is to add that BIG unifying element. Fight Club had fighting. Trainspotting has heroin (or addiction). It turns a situation that really isn’t about anything and makes it about something.

7) Give your characters personalities – I think one of the problems with writers is they’re so focused on creating character backstory, character flaws, and character relationships, that they forget to give their characters an actual personality. You technically have an “interesting” character, and yet the reader thinks all your characters are boring. So after you’ve added those elements, simply ask yourself if your character has a personality. Are they someone who people would find interesting in real life? Take Sick Boy, for example. He can’t stop talking about those damn Bond films. His obsession with them is a dominant personality trait that helps define him. A personality is what ensures your characters will be memorable.

8) In non-traditional storylines (stories without goals), try to give your characters problems – While your story won’t have the same drive as a goal-fueled story, a strong character problem will ensure that the reader will want to keep reading. Take Renton, for example. He has sex with a girl and it turns out she’s 14. She then threatens to tell the police if he doesn’t continue seeing her. The less structured your storylines are, the more in need they are of problems for your characters.

9) If you’re going to do dream sequences, make sure they’re motivated – There’s nothing more amateur than a trippy dream sequence slapped into a script. They’re often weird, random and pointless. One way to write a dream sequence that actually works is to make sure it’s motivated. That way, it’s no longer pointless. A great example of this is towards the middle of Trainspotting when Renton is coming down off his addiction. He’s locked in his childhood bedroom and has an intense dream that includes babies on the ceiling and his doctor as a cheesy game show host. The dream sequence works because it’s motivated. The character would obviously have these delusions when coming down off his addiction.

10) For better dialogue, look for a playful alternative to a predictable conversation – After a court appearance where he agrees to rehabilitation, Renton heads to his dealer’s apartment. Now this conversation could’ve gone like this: “Give me the hit of all hits.” “That’s going to cost you.” “I don’t care. I need it.” Borrrr-ing. Instead, we get this, RENTON: What’s on the menu this evening?” SWANNEY (DEALER): “Your favourite dish.” “Excellent.” “Your usual table, sir?” “Why, thank you.” “And would sir care to settle his bill in advance?” “Stick it on my tab.” “Regret to inform, sir, that your credit limit was reached and breached a long time ago.” “In that case –“ He produces twenty pounds. “Oh, hard currency, why, sir, that’ll do nicely.” Renton prepares. SWANNEY: “Would sir care for a starter? Some garlic bread perhaps?” “No, thank you. I’ll proceed directly to the intravenous injection of hard drugs, please.” Way more fun of a scene, right?

We don’t get to talk about the action spec much, which means today’s review is going to be an education on the matter…

Genre: Action
Premise: (from IMDB) Disgraced former Presidential guard Mike Banning finds himself trapped inside the White House in the wake of a terrorist attack; using his inside knowledge, Banning works with national security to rescue the President from his kidnappers.
About: Writers (and married couple) Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt had been writing together for over a decade before they sold their first script, Olympus Has Fallen. Rothenberger had actually won the Nicholl competition all the way back in 2002 (with a Korean war epic – total Nicholl-bait!). They struggled with numerous near misses over the next decade before signing with Gersh and Kaplan-Perrone off a script they wrote called “Cali.” The reps read through their entire body of work – 20 scripts – and said that Olympus Has Fallen was the one they wanted to go out with. However, they first spent a year revising the script, mainly updating it from its original incarnation, which was dated. The movie was then purchased by Millineum and got Aaron Eckhart and Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman attached. Antoine Fuqua directed the film. It just came out this weekend and finished second at the box office with a 30 million dollar take.
Writers: Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt
Details: 115 pages

The reason I wanted to review Olympus Has Fallen was simple: Action. Producers want action scripts. Why? Action films have the potential to make more money than any other genre because action sells everywhere. The guy who lives in the middle of the desert in Nigeria isn’t going to turn on an action movie and go, “Wait, what’s going on? I don’t understand. Why are things blowing up?” Blowing-up is a universal language.

Artistically, I have a problem with this. It hurts to admit that the writing of a movie doesn’t matter to the guy in Spain who doesn’t understand English. As long as his action appetite is satiated with enough car chases and explosions, he’s happy. To that end, it’s appropriate to point out that the most important aspect of an action spec is the concept. If you’ve got something a little unique that we haven’t seen before that has the potential for a lot of great action scenes, your spec has a chance of getting picked up.

But here’s why that’s not all you need, despite most writers believing that’s the case. The guy in Nigeria may not be discerning of what your love interest’s backstory is. But the guy at a studio desk in Hollywood is. You see, he gets hundreds of action scripts to read. So he’s going to be weighing all of them against each other. Concept will be the biggest determinant. But he’s also looking at execution, originality, castablity, character, etc. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, quality does matter.

Mike Banning is your typical secret service agent. The guy is big. Looks former athlete’ish. Flashes that alpha male smile. Or at least, he USED TO flash a smile. Not after tonight though. While hanging with the prez at Camp David, Banning is unable to save Mrs. President from falling through the ice pond and dying a cold airless death! Banning never mentally recovers from the ordeal, and when we cut to two years later, we see that he’s now a Secret Service GROUP agent. That’s, like, the level BELOW the lead agents! Olympus has fallen? More like Banning has fallen! Right after the First Lady has fallen. Through the ice!

President Benjamin Asher doesn’t have time to dwell on dead wives though. Tensions are heating up between North and South Korea, and decisions have to be made on how the U.S. will respond. South Korea’s new president decides to come to the U.S. to personally ask the president for help, but soon finds out he’s got his own secret service issues. Once in the White House, the head of his security, a nasty little bugger named Kang, snaps his fingers and his entire team enacts a plan to take over the White House! Looks like Kang is secretly North Korean! And he’s come here to re-unite his country with his Southern brothers!

In the meantime, Banning is off on the outskirts of the city doing some menial task when he sees a bunch of explosions and stuff in the distance. So he hops in a sewer and starts the long underground trek to the White House. At some point during his smelly stroll, Kang reveals that he wants the codes to a secret defense project called “Cerberus.” Everyone in the U.S. cabinet looks at each other with bulged eyes. How does he know about Cerberus???? But that should be the least of their worries. Because it turns out Kang isn’t here to re-unite the Koreas like originally assumed. His plan is MUCH more terrifying!

Beep beep boooop.

Scriptshadow verdict computing……….

Analysis…….

Well, I’ll say this. Olympus Has Fallen is better than most amateur action scripts I’ve read. Which may sound like good news. The problem is, I rarely come across a good amateur action script. That’s because most action writers just focus on the explosions. They don’t realize that the totality of explosions equals in a movie is maybe 2 minutes long and that there needs to be this thing called a, um, STORY in between.

Olympus has a story. But besides a few nice flashes (literally) in the first half, it’s a little too standard. I’m thinking the studio must have really REALLY loved this concept (concept is BIG in action scripts! Don’t bother writing an action spec without one!), because they allowed for a bit too much in the cliché department. In my opinion, if you’re going to write an action film, you gotta give us something different here and there. And there WERE some cool moments. For example, I liked when the North Korean plane came in and set off that blinding light weapon so that nobody could shoot them down. I’ve never seen that before. And the Cerberus storyline (which amounted to taking all American nuclear missiles off-line) was slightly…..er…different-ish than many of the plans I’ve seen in these movies.

And there were a few other things that told me I was reading a professional script here. Early on, as Banning is getting ready for work, he gets a phone call from a friend, and the resulting conversation tells us some things about his character. At the same time this is happening, Banning is watching the news, where reporters are telling us about the current North/South Korean situation. In other words, the scene is achieving TWO THINGS at once – exposition about Banning and exposition about the Koreas. Amateur writers would’ve typically separated these scenes. Pros are always looking to combine scenes so that they’re doing two/three things at once.

It’s also important to make the central plan in your action movie believable. You have to ask yourself, “How would this really happen?” and go from there. The more convincing you can be, the more you’re going to pull your audience in. I see too many amateur scripts where the writers don’t even consider this and as a result the reader is taken out of the story immediately. Within the context of the movie, the plan here was pretty believable. I had some reservations about the U.S. letting a C-130 cargo plane fly up to the White House (they do stop it but not before it’s able to help enact the plan), but the stuff on the ground was sound.

The big problem with Olympus Has Fallen – and I’m kinda shocked writers with ten years of experience made this mistake – is that its main character is sooooooo boring. Or maybe “boring” isn’t the word. “Standard” may be better. I’m actually not surprised that Gerard Butler plays the role of Banning because he’s the real-world equivalent of “standard” and “boring.” Despite Banning being the hero here, he doesn’t say or do much! I mean, he’s running around in the underground tunnels and running around in the White House, but I never really felt like I knew the guy because he didn’t say anything, ever!

It’s interesting, the White House Down spec (the competing White House hijack project that’s coming out this summer) took another approach. It paired its hero with the president, allowing for conversation between the two so we could get to know him. Then, of course, Die Hard has McClane talking to the cop (via radio) down below so we could get to know him. Banning doesn’t say much because he’s got nobody to talk to, poor guy. And in a movie market where we’ve seen a million agent-types before, you’re going to need any opportunity possible to get us into the head of your agent so you can differentiate him from everyone else. Of course, this was the sale draft I read. They may have changed it in the film. But it was a real issue in the script.

So the lead-up to the White House takeover was fun. But Olympus falters due to its bland hero and cliché second half. Which leaves a lot of you asking, “Well wait, I thought this was supposed to be an example of how to do it right.” That’s the scary thing – it’s actually better than most action specs. While it may not have been original, it was very competent, and 99% of the action specs I read aren’t even that. Those professional touches like having double-duty scenes, combined with a perfect execution of the three-act structure are things I don’t see in amateur screenplays. I’m still waiting for that kick ass modern-day Die Hard spec to give today’s audiences their first action classic, but scripts like Olympus Has Fallen will have to do in the meantime.

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

What I learned: This is a great reminder that these are the people you’re competing against as a screenwriter – people who have been honing their craft for over a decade, people who have won the Nicholl competition 10 years ago, people who have seen and experienced every kind of writing obstacle one can encounter and figuring out how to overcome it. Chances are, if you’re not throwing everything you can into your own writing, you won’t be able to compete with these guys.

Welcome back!

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: Home for the Holidays
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: A conservative family man looking to move up in his law firm struggles to balance his daughter’s pregnancy, his son’s bullying, and comes to terms with college son’s surprise boyfriend over the Christmas holiday.

TITLE: Revenge Date
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: A woman wins a charity auction and a date with the guy who left her at the alter.

TITLE: Closing Costs
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: A neurotic insurance agent is caught up in an ambitious starlet’s plan to make it to the A-list.

TITLE: Release the Beast
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: A hot young Hollywood playboy, an insecure football player, a groupie loving hip-hop artist, and a jaded female pornstar all enter a 30-day sex clinic seeking help. Only to discover that copulation is not the problem, they are. And now they must break years worth of bad habits and change, or risk losing their money, marriage, and love ones.

TITLE: Orange Crush
GENRE: Comedy
LOGLINE: Frazzled from years of bullying and humiliation, a too-school-for-cool college freshman concocts an epic week long plan to show his party side. But will the cool kids once again torment him or finally accept him?