Genre: Comedy
Premise: When four grown-up siblings come back to visit their parents on their 35th anniversary, they’re greeted with a devastating family secret that changes everything they know.
About: This script leapt up and grabbed onto the 2007 Black List with its fingernails, refusing to let go.
Writer: Peter Craig
Details: 109 pages, March 23rd, 2007 revisions

My new thing is using one review slot a week to dig up an old script from 4-10 years ago, and review it. The hope is to find something everyone forgot about. There are times where a couple of big specs hit and the waves they generate are so high that all the little guys get swept away. And maybe those little guys wrote something good. I’ve seen my share of strong scripts that were either passed over or entered development hell immediately, so I’d like to be the lighthouse that guides those scripts back to shore.

The question is, how clueless do I want to be in choosing these scripts? Do I not want to know ANYTHING other than the title and that they finished on the Black List? Apparently, that’s the call I made this week, and booyyyyyyy do I regret it. Okay so look. We all have off days. We all pick up or write a bad script every once in awhile. But does it have to be a back-from-the-dead-hopefully-this-will-be-awesome Scriptshadow review script? Humph.

Today’s script falls into that love-it-or-hate-it subgenre known as the “Wacky Family Independent Film.” Oh man! Those family members. They’re all so wacky! This was popularized by Wes Anderson and somewhere between the years of 2002-2005, everybody and their crazy grandpa was writing one of these. I think I wrote one too. And it was dreadful. So I feel you, Peter. But there was a success or two. Little Miss Sunshine did well, right? I mean, its writer is now writing the next Star Wars movie. But then you had your Running With Scissors’es…es. And those were just as unpleasant as the Sunshine’s were pleasant. Even Wes Anderson seemed to get bored of the genre he popularized, pumping out pale imitations of his earlier films.

Which I guess leads us to Relativity, which I’m relatively sure isn’t going to get a lot of feedback here on Scriptshadow. In fact, I’m willing to bet the comments will dive to subatomic levels, which is probably a good lesson for screenwriters out there. The comments section on Scriptshadow is pretty a pretty good indicator of the public’s general interest for a film. If an idea or genre is boring, people aren’t going to see it (or comment on it).

So with that said, let’s start butchering—er, I mean reviewing. I’ll try to be clean and kind. I’ll try to make this painless. Then I’ll broil the meat instead of fry it so we can have a healthy Monday Scriptshadow meal. Waddaya say?

50-somethings Claire and Franklin Fergusson should be at the precipice of a wonderful weekend. They’re about to celebrate their 35th anniversary with all four of their excitable grown-up children, who are coming home to joyously participate in the festivities.

Except Claire and Franklin have been hiding a deep secret from their children. All four of them were adopted! So when unkempt Charles, nervous twin Vincent, uptight Conrad, and artsy Judith, show up and hear the news, they’re…hmmm, well, upset to put it mildly. The biggest issue seems to be that all of them thought they were born into a rich prestigous family, when in fact they were all poor and deserted by their families.

Vincent is so confused by the news that he runs away. Charles becomes manically obsessed with the fact that Vincent isn’t his real twin and decides to celebrate his “individual” birthday as a sort of “fuck you” to the news. Judith learns she was the daughter of a Russian spy and a hooker and doesn’t know what to do with herself. And I’m not sure what happened to Conrad. He got shafted as far as storylines go because I can’t remember a single thing about him.

As far as the plot, that’s pretty much it. Our four 30-something adopted grown-ups just sort of run around and pout. There’s no goal. No real story. It’s just people complaining to each other. I’m not going to say it’s all bad. I did giggle a couple of times. And if you’re into this kind of humor, you’ll find it funnier than I did and that might help cover up some of the script’s other problems. But that’s the thing. Relativity had so many problems that they couldn’t possibly all be covered up.

So let’s pretend we live in an alternate reality where I’ve been asked to guide this script through development. I would start by adding an actual story. Currently, these kids come home to a 35th anniversary that nobody cares about, that has no festivities or schedule, and that has no stakes attached to it whatsoever. Why would you make that the story center? It’s boring! Make it a wedding instead. Probably Vincent’s, since he brings his fiancé home anyway. Now we have more of a ticking time bomb. We have something that can be interrupted and ruined, which means the stakes will be higher.

Then, instead of this adoption information being offered up voluntarily, which feels beyond artificial (there’s no reason for the parents to bring this up now other than that the writer wants to so he can have a story), the information should come out by accident. One of the kids stumbles upon it at the house. Or another finds a semi-clue and puts two and two together. The kids confront their parents. The parents admit it. Now the situation feels a little more believable.

And here’s a question: Why do the kids have to find out all at the same time? It might be more interesting to have the news spread from kid to kid gradually. That could be fun, with Vincent being the one person the others know CANNOT FIND OUT HE’S ADOPTED. They know he’ll have a mental breakdown. And they know it will destroy the wedding. So everyone’s trying to keep the secret, but at a certain point, too many people find out, and then right before the wedding, Vincent finds out, and everything goes to hell.

I’m afraid that particular story improvement would only slow the bleeding though. This script has too many issues. My biggest problem was that there wasn’t a single authentic moment in the entire screenplay. Nobody acts logically. Choices are made for cheap laughs rather than exhibiting what the characters would really say or do in these situations. For example, one of the kids points out that they SAW the mom pregnant when they were young – which means at least one of the kids can’t be adopted. The mom counters that they suspected the kids might possibly remember an adoption, so to trick them, she stuffed her dresses with pillows to give the appearance that she was pregnant.

Oh. M. Gee.

Seriously???

I mean, come on.

Okay, look. I get that this is supposed to be broad. It’s wacky. It’s nonsensical. And that’s supposed to be the funny part of it. But there wasn’t one REAL moment in the entire script. And because nobody acted real or authentic, I didn’t care about them. Even in Wes Anderson films, like Rushmore, the characters have hearts and feelings. This felt like 7 Jim Carrey’s running around trying to out-overact each other.

Relativity also severely handicapped itself by making its main characters a bunch of rich snobs. These are by far the hardest characters to make likable. There are exceptions where rich people can be made sympathetic (actually, anybody can be made sympathetic by a skilled writer), but no effort was made to do so here, and as a result, everyone came off as stuck-up, ungrateful, juvenile or annoying.

Then you had the Quirk Factor Level 17. Everything was done specifically to try and be quirky. And I’m not going to get carried away with this. I’ve been there. I’ve written the same kind of characters and the same kind of situations. I think every writer goes through that phase. But when the family members were driving around in a bumper car that was decked out to look like a race car, or the grandfather announced that he had breast cancer (yes, the grandfather)…I just died a little inside. I couldn’t take it anymore.

These kinds of scripts are too artificial for me. I need something to be grounded in reality or to know Wes Anderson’s going to make it all alright on screen. This was way too wacky for my taste. I was thinking about giving it a “What the hell did I just read” but then I realized it wasn’t badly written. It was just not my thing. Hence, it wasn’t for me.

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

What I learned: When doing a character piece, particularly a companion piece, don’t leave your characters out to dry by not giving them a plot, as was done here. Since the 35th anniversary carried no weight and didn’t mean anything to anyone, there was nothing that needed to be done, and therefore nothing for anybody to do. That forced the characters to try and keep the story interesting via their wackiness alone, which they weren’t able to do. Instead, give your characters a looming goal or end game that carries with it HIGH STAKES. Something like a wedding would’ve worked great here. Now characters have things to get done (preparing, planning, creating) which makes all of them more active and more interesting. With an end game, you also give the audience something to look forward to. They’ll want to know if Vincent finds out about being adopted or not. And if he does, what is he going to do?? Look at Little Miss Sunshine. They had to get to the pageant. So they all had a directive, a goal, stakes. You give yourself a way better chance to write a good story going this route.

Unfortunately I’m on a plane and therefore won’t be able to post until later today.I’m typing this on my phone so I’ll be surprised if any of this makes it up.In the meantime, we shall chat soon. :)

Can it be true? Has a new amateur screenplay sliced and diced its way to an elusive “impressive” ranking?

Genre: Drama/Horror
Premise: (from writer) A secluded boy’s way of life is threatened when he befriends Rose – the girl whom his parents have imprisoned in the family attic.
About: I’ve started to include 5 amateur scripts a week in my mailing list, telling readers to read as much as they can of whatever they wanted, and to give me their thoughts afterwards. “Rose In the Darkness” has gotten a nice reception, so I added it to the Friday slate.
Writer: Joe Marino
Details: 107 pages
Status: Available

Black Friday. What the hell does that mean anyway? I heard it means that it’s the day that all the stores in America “enter the black” because it’s the biggest shopping day of the year? That’s a fine explanation but do you think they could name it something a little more upbeat like… “Fun Friday” or “Fantastic Friday” or “Kip Kalamahama It’s Time To Shop!”

I bring this up not to contribute to the marketing of a day designed to strip you of your 2012 savings, but because today is a great day. It’s only the second day in Scriptshadow’s history that I’m giving an amateur script an IMPRESSIVE! “Say whaaaat?” That’s right. And you know the last time I gave an amateur script that prestigious rating. A little script called “The Disciple Program.” Now “Rose In the Darkness” doesn’t have that perfect combination of elements to make it an easy sell like Disciple (a strong male adult lead, a good hook, and the easy to market “Thriller” genre), but this is still a movie that could be made for a cheap price with an easy-to-market horror angle. It’s kind of like Scriptshadow-fave Sunflower, and almost as good.

“Rose In the Darkness” starts with a great opening scene. It’s Mississippi in the year 1994. A young boy, Micah (13), is having dinner with his parents, Lily and Judah. While the three casually pass the potatoes around and say grace, there is a horrifying screaming going on above them, in the attic. It’s relentless, loud, violent. And yet nobody acts surprised or concerned.

Finally, however, wanting to eat in peace, the mother casually walks upstairs, and after a moment, we hear something (someone?) being beaten badly. Then silence. The mother comes back down, a huge bloody handprint on her dress, and the family resumes their dinner.

Over the next few days, we learn a couple more things about this odd family. First of all, Micah has never gone anywhere. He’s lived his entire life on this property. In fact, there’s a line of chalk that extends around the edge of this rural farmhouse that he’s never walked beyond. Second, the grounds are littered with dug-up holes, holes where, presumably, bodies have been buried. It turns out that whoever’s in that attic hasn’t been the first.

Religion’s also a big deal in this household. According to his parents, his family is the last of the righteous, and everyone else out there are demons. It is their job, then, to take down the demons one by one. That’s why his parents go out and capture people, put them in the attic, torture, then kill them. It’s the “right” thing to do.

Now up until this point, Micah’s gone with the flow. If his parents said the sky was purple, he believed the sky was purple. But Micah’s growing up fast, and he’s starting to get curious. So, when his parents accidentally drop the attic key, he snatches it up and goes into the attic for the first time. It’s there where he meets Rose, a beautiful 14 year-old girl who looks like she’s been through hell. She’s locked up in a cage and she’s terrified.

But after talking with Micah for awhile, Rose starts to cheer up. Micah goes upstairs to read to her whenever his parents are away. They form a friendship, and it’s through this friendship that Micah starts to learn that the world his parents have told him about may not be the one that really exists. According to Rose, there are good people everywhere, and it is Micah’s parents, in fact, who are the evil ones.

This is a lot for Micah to digest, and he’s not sure who he believes. But when his parents start becoming suspicious about his newfound curiosity, and he overhears them saying that they’re going to kill Rose within the next few days, he’s going to have to make a decision soon, a decision that will drastically change the rest of his life.

We’ve heard it all before and yet I continue to read scripts that don’t apply it. Hook us with your opening scene! Give us something interesting/exciting/mysterious so that we’re lured in right away. This opening scene where a family is casually eating dinner while someone screams above them let me know right away that “Rose In the Darkness” was a contender. Especially because it’s a slow-build type of script and Marino didn’t start with a slow boring scene. See, that’s the mistake a lot of writers make when they attempt the slow-build. They make it slow and boring from the very first page, not giving up the good stuff until at least page 40. Unfortunately, by then, the reader has already given up.

With “Rose,” of course, we not only have this great opening scene to keep us reading, we have a mystery that’s been set up, one we have to keep reading to get an answer to (“Who’s up in the attic??”). I don’t see anybody opening this and not wanting to continue until they find the answer to that question.

But I liked how Marino didn’t stop there. He created an entire history for this household. We have the newly dug up holes in the backyard. We have the chalk outlined border circling the property, the one our main character refuses to go beyond.

And then Marino creates this really creepy mother and father. The way these two manipulate the bible’s teachings, doing so as a way to push their own hypocritical agenda is enough to get you revved up for hours. You’re thinking, “How could they be DOING that to this kid?” That’s when I know I’m reading something good. When I’m getting emotionally amped up about one of the characters, and not the writer.

Then the script has this nice little midpoint shift where we finally meet the girl in the attic, Rose, and the narrative shifts into a sort of “Let The Right One In” love story. I loved watching these two together and wondering if Micah was going to be able to save her. And of course, I loved the internal battle Micah had to go through himself. Who does he believe? His parents, who are the only people he’s known up until this point, or this girl who, up until a few days ago, was a stranger? I could actually feel that choice eating away at him. And it’s not easy to make an audience FEEL an internal battle going on inside a character. In fact, it’s damn hard!

And there were other moments that just screamed, “Good writer!” For instance, there’s a scene early on where Micah’s mother tells him a bedtime story about a princess. But as she tells it, we flash back and realize she’s really telling a story about her childhood. Not only was it a clever way to reveal backstory, but the story of abuse actually made you sympathize with her, which was essential for her character development later on.

But these stories only work if they have a good ending. You know? Because the whole point of a slow-build is that it’s all going to lead up to something big. If we’re going to allow you to take your time telling your story, it better have a damn good payoff. And “Rose In the Darkness” does! I won’t spoil it. You’ll have to read the script yourself. But, in short, it was cool!

If the script has one negative, it would be the dialogue. It didn’t quite work for me and I’m not sure why. It was a little too simplistic but, more importantly, the kids spoke like adults most of the time. Here’s an exchange between Micah and Rose near the middle of the script. Micah: “So that’s why you’re so resigned.” Rose: “We didn’t do anything to deserve what happened. But it didn’t matter. Not with them. And now not for me.” Does that sound like a 13 year old and a 14 year old talking? I guess Micah’s only ever been around adults. But Rose is a normal teenage girl. Why is she talking that way?

However, this weakness is only evident in spots. The scene construction was so strong (there was always tension or suspense) that the dialogue didn’t become much of a factor. That’s why I say, learn to construct scenes correctly. If you do, the reader’s more focused on what’s going on in the scene than they are the dialogue.

I really liked this script a lot. I’m in contact with Joe Marino as we speak. Check it out yourself and share your opinion in the comments section!

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

What I learned: I don’t know if there’s a specific lesson I learned, but my favorite part of the script was the late arrival of the police officer. 9 out of 10 writers would’ve stayed with Rose alone up in that attic. But adding a police officer to the mix gave the third act a fresh unexpected feel. I always love when an ending develops in an unexpected way, and you rarely see it, so kudos to Marino for coming up with that inspired late-story choice.

A thousand Twit-Pitches have been narrowed down to one winner.  Was your favorite chosen??

Months back, I decided to try an experiment (at the worst possible time, mind you – I was creating a new site and writing a book).  The experiment was to allow people to tweet me the loglines for their screenplays.  The catch was that they only had one tweet to do it in.  So they had to boil down an already boiled down logline to even LESS words.

I took the Top 75 of those loglines and I read the first 10 pages of each, tweeting live reviews on Twitter.  It was a pretty cool experiment.  I wanted writers to be able to get into the head of a reader AS HE WAS READING their script.  You could see exactly what they were thinking as they were thinking it.  And I didn’t hold back.  If something was dumb, I’d say it was dumb.

The top 20 of those first 10 pages moved on to the final round, where I read the entire script and reviewed each of them here on Scriptshadow.  So how did the experiment end?  What did I learn from all this?  Well, I’m not sure I learned anything definitively.  But I will say this.  The winner and runners-up of Twit-Pitch stood out for two different reasons.  The first because it took chances, pushed the envelope, and didn’t go where you expected it to.  The second and third because they had smart contained concepts and were well written.  None of these scripts were home runs.  They all had their problems.  But I do think there’s a good lesson here.  You CAN stand out by pushing the envelope or just with good old fashioned solid writing on a strong idea.

And with that, let’s get to the winners.  Here they are…

***FIRST PLACE***

Proving Ground by James Topham – (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) 9 strangers wake in a deserted Mexican town besieged by killing machines: they must discover why they’ve been brought there to survive.

**RUNNER-UP**

Fatties by Matthew Ballen – (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

*THIRD PLACE*

Guest by Matthew Cruz – (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) After checking into a hotel to escape her abusive husband, a woman realizes guests in the next room are holding a young girl hostage.

One of the coolest screenplay ideas I’ve seen all year. But does the execution match the concept?

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A former criminal is convicted of killing his ex-wife and young daughter, who’s gone missing. Looking at life in prison, he participates in a unique experimental program where he will scientifically “hibernate” during the entirety of his sentence.
About: This script was picked up for Fast Five director (and future Terminator 5 director?) Justin Lin to direct. The script has been getting a lot of buzz lately. Let’s find out why.
Writers: Geneva Robertson-Dworet & Will Frank (story by Dave Hill and Geneva Robertson-Dworet & Will Frank)
Details: 112 pages – undated

I’d been hearing about this one for a couple of weeks now. Dozens of people have read it and almost all of them have e-mailed me with the same reaction: “Wow.” It’s not often that I see universal support for a script. There’s something about the art of storytelling that divides people. Some people want their stories to be direct and over-the-top. Others want them to be reserved and subtle. That’s why you get so many divided reactions and why Hollywood has such a hard time figuring out that elusive formula for box office success. How do you appease two polar opposite audiences? Isn’t that the definition of impossible?

But as I opened up “Hibernation” and read its first line: “Anna Bagnehold was skiing the first time she died,” I got goosebumps. Talk about roping the reader in immediately. Writers spend years trying to come up with a line like that – something that instantly gives you 20 pages with a reader. And then, once you get to the first act turn of Hibernation, it gets even better. This is a REALLY clever idea – one of those ideas that makes you groan and go, “Oh maaaan. Why couldn’t I think of that???” And I bet you’re all wondering what this idea is exactly. Well, may I tempt you with a story that pulls its inspiration from Scriptshadow favorites The Disciple Program and Source Code? Yeah, I have your attention now don’t I?

34 year old Sean Quinn is a big guy, the type of dude you’d see working on the docks, lifting heavy boxes. He used to be an enforcer for some not-so-nice criminal types, but has since left that life so he can be closer to his daughter, 5 year old Chloe. It’s not an ideal circumstance. His choices have put him and his ex at odds. But at least he gets to see his little girl every once in awhile.

If only Andrew Moran would see it that way. Moran is Quinn’s thuggish former employer. And as these thuggish boss-types usually go, he’s not a fan of Quinn quitting on him. And he lets him know it. But Quinn reiterates that he’s left that world behind. Sorry dude. Gonna have to find yourself a new rat.

Turns out that wasn’t the best idea by our guy Quinn. Because that night, after a couple of drinks, he passes out. And when he wakes up? His wife has been killed and his daughter, Chloe? She’s nowhere to be found. Before Quinn can even figure out what’s going on, the cops show up. And it isn’t difficult to see how this is going to shake down. All the evidence points to him as the killer.

So off to a lifetime jail sentence Quinn goes. Which would normally suck but there’s a new program the prison is trying out and it’s looking for volunteers. In order to lower the cost of upkeep, prisoners can choose to enter the “Hibernation Program,” which allows them to go into a state of stasis, sort of a cryogenic freeze, for their term. Go to sleep, wake up in 50 years. You’re still young when you’re released. Not a bad deal.

As a perk, they take you out of hibernation every five years, give you six hours of parole to reboot yourself, and back to sleep you go. With the alternative being growing old and dying in prison, Quinn decides to take a chance. So asleep he goes. For five years.

After waking up, he’s given his first six hours of parole. And you know what Quinn is doing with that six hours. He’s looking for information on what happened to his daughter. So he snoops around, asks a few people what they know, with most of the focus centering on his former employer, Moran. Did he kill his ex-wife and daughter because he wouldn’t work for him?

But just as he’s starting to make progress, his time is up and he’s forced to come back to prison, where he’s put back in hibernation. And five more years pass. And he wakes up. And he’s let out. With six more hours to look for clues about what happened to Chloe. Except now it’s five MORE years in the future. And he’s less familiar with the world. And the evidence is getting older. And when those six hours are up, he goes back to the prison, is put back to sleep, and five MORE years go by. And the world is even more different. He’s even LESS familiar with it. And the evidence is five years older. And so on and so forth.

I mean, just stop and think about that for a second. “The Fugitive” except that with every fifteen minutes of screen time, the world reboots into something more futuristic and less familiar to our hero. How freaking awesome of an idea is that??? It ain’t going to be cheap to make. But unlike a lot of flashy ideas out there, the production of this one would actually warrant the cost. It’s that good.

Now, I’m not going all in here YET because, at least with this draft, things are still messy. This is the kind of idea that you have to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. When you have something this good, you don’t want a single messy plot point, a single bad choice. Reading the opening of Hibernation, before I knew the hook, I was getting a little impatient. The dialogue in particular was really…plain, and a little bit clunky. When characters speak to each other, I never want to think about the writer. I don’t want to think, “Ooh, they tried too hard on that line.” It has to be seamless. And the dialogue here wasn’t seamless.

I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the secondary characters either. I thought Sorenson (the main doctor) was strong. I thought Lara, the love interest, worked. But Andrew Moran, the bad guy, wasn’t bad enough. The bad guy’s gotta be memorable in your movie and this guy just felt thin. Austin, the brother of the bad guy, was a little more memorable, but felt like the kind of guy you’d be afraid of at the schoolyard, not as a criminal. Then Raj, the cab driver, well, I mean you got a guy named “Raj” who is a cab driver. So you can see why that choice isn’t very inspired.

And while I liked some of the futuristic stuff, I think it could’ve been pushed further. A lot further. That’s the big draw here – how this mission extends across many time periods, with each time period getting more and more futuristic. That’s cool! I mean I can see the trailer already, cutting between these time periods. But as you cut, each time period needs to be noticeably different, noticeably more advanced. And I wished we would’ve seen more advancement, especially in the last time period, where the futuristic aspect is barely even breached.

My final issue is one I just can’t ignore. Six hours? Huh? Why would this program give someone six hours of parole every five years? It’s so little time as to seem insignificant. And with Quinn being such a high commodity asset, I’m having a hard time believing they’d just let him walk around willy-nilly. The explanation for this could’ve been much cleaner. As of now, it sticks out like a candy cane at a Thanksgiving dinner.

I’m assuming that many of these problems are due to the script still being in its early stages, but the pillars to build the empire are there. Also working in “Hibernation’s” favor is its ending. Whenever you have these time-bending narratives, you gotta have a stellar ending. There’s nothing worse than going through 2 hours of a really cool time-travel script only to have some pedestrian climax. I won’t spoil it here but Hibernation definitely delivers on that front. There were a couple of quick “But wait a minutes,” but nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

Hibernation is the kind of script that stands out in the spec world. It’s got a catchy hook and an exciting fast-paced narrative. More writers need to be studying scripts like this as a way to break into the industry. I wasn’t thrilled with the execution in places, which I’d probably rate as “worth the read,” but since this is one of the best spec ideas I’ve run across in awhile, I’m bumping it up to “double worth the read” status.

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

What I learned: I’m always wary of forced ticking time bombs. They pop out at you like flaming roman numerals. A man gets six hours of parole every five years when he’s woken up from hibernation? Why six hours? Why every five years? What’s the point of it? I mean, yeah, this works great as a ticking time bomb. Only having six hours to do something as complicated as catch your daughter’s killer is intense. But it’s GOTTA make sense. So add your ticking time bombs, yes. But build them into the story in an organic way so we’re not questioning them.