My favorite writer is back!  John Jarrell.  You may remember him from the awesome interview I did with him a few months ago.  The guy has a ton of screenwriting knowledge and unlike us hack bloggers, the man’s actually been in the thick of it for 20 years, fighting the good screenwriting fight, landing those six figure jobs we all dream of.  Which is why I’m more than happy to promote his new screenwriting class – Tweak Class — starting this January. Who better to learn from than the guy who’s seen it all?  Goddamit, he’s even taken his pants off for a publicity shot (that’s really him above!).  This man is dedicated.  And today, he’s going to share with us a couple screenwriting stories from Hollywood Hell.  I enjoyed this piece so much I told John he needs to write a whole book of this stuff.  Let him know if you feel the same in the comments!

“Will You Please Buy My Script Now, Please?” — One Writer’s Journey Into the Troubling Bowels of Development.

By John Jarrell

Back in 1995, I wrote a Horror spec called The Willies.  It was essentially Carrie with Evil Twins.  People are constantly abusing and shitting on these orphans, until at last, after making a pact with the devil, they take their bloody revenge.

My agent went out with it and immediately got a sadistically low-ball pre-emptive bid from a smaller studio in town.  By that point in my life, my dream of becoming a legitimate screenwriter was nearing extinction.  I’d been struggling in L.A. for four years, was stone-cold broke, about to lose my apartment, and my girlfriend and I were subsisting solely on the 49-cent value menu at Taco Bell.  Facing even more of that ugliness, I did what struggling young writers have to do sometimes — I sucked it up and took the shit money, simply glad to survive and hopeful I would live to fight another day.

First day working, I go into a story meeting with the company’s “Creative” VP and Head of Development.  We dug in and spent several hours doing notes starting Page One — discussing what they thought worked, what didn’t, and what I’d need to address in my rewrite.

At one point, the VP looks up at me and says, “Wow, John.  This description on page fifty-two is really good writing.  Would you mind reading it out loud?”

Flattery will get you everywhere with a screenwriter, and I’m sure I flushed with pride as I found the page and paused to clear my throat.

The set up was simple — a grieving daughter (our protagonist) looking through her deceased Mother’s belongings, which have been boxed up and stored in the attic.  The beat offered a brief respite from all the genre action, gave us a further glimpse into our lead’s character, and prompted her discovery of an important clue at the end.

This was the description I wrote, verbatim —

“She rifles several of the boxes, finding little more than old letters and checkbook stubs, key chains and their forgotten keys.  The meaningless remnants of our too brief lives.”

There was a long pause after I finished.  The VP and Head of Development were nodding their heads in synchronized approval.  Then the VP says —

“Yeah, it’s really great.  Great stuff.”

(HARD BEAT)

“Lose the poetry, John, cut it all out.  It’s slowing down the script.”

I’d never been quite so close to crapping my pants.  Did he just say LOSE… THE… POETRY?  a.k.a. LOSE THE GOOD WRITING?  Wantonly kill off two short sentences — two sentences he actually likes — which perfectly sell the moment?  And replace them with what, Mr. Hemingway?  “She opens her dead mom’s shit and finds a mysterious clue!”

Like every other indignant scribe in Hollywood history, I sat hooded in a queasy half-smile, cerebral cortex locking up.  Surely “development” couldn’t be like this everywhere?  Surely this exec must be a nutter, a lone gunman of sorts, some soulless script assassin who didn’t value lightweight artistry over the groan-inducing stock lines which had been stupefying readers for decades?

But I was wrong.  He wasn’t the slightest bit insane.  In fact, Mr. Company VP was the Gold Standard — an Industry veteran and Number Two guy at the whole company!  And if I didn’t “lose the poetry” voluntarily, believe me, he would have no qualms hiring another low-ball writer to lose it for me.

Way back at NYU, an older studio vet had once shared a bit of sage wisdom with me — “It’s better for you to fuck up your script the way they want then have ’em hire somebody else to fuck it up for you.”

As baffling and counterintuitive as his advice had seemed, now I grabbed onto it like a life vest.   I labored at “losing the poetry”, beat after tight beat, good scene after good scene.  For nine agonizing months, they “developed” the script this way.  Any nugget of goodness was ruthlessly ferreted out, any clever turn of phrase or interesting character tick was quickly sandblasted into beige.  My reward, such as it was, was being kept onboard on as sole writer.

Finally, they were ready to go out with it.  And they did.  And in a matter of three short weeks, the company blew a sure-thing co-financing deal, flatlined similar offers via absurd distribution demands, then shelved the project out of self-loathing and/or shame, never to see daylight again.  Their epic fail also left The Big Question still looming — Had sacrificing all my poetry to the Commercial Film Gods made my script better… or worse?  Now, tragically, there was no way I’d know for sure.

Instead of my project — and I’m totally NOT kidding here — the company produced the urban side-splitter “Don’t Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood” in its place.  It survived three demoralizing weekends before being euthanized and laid to rest in the VHS market.

During what I thought a poignant last ditch appeal, before all the lights had been turned out, I’d made the case to the company that horror was an American genre mainstay, essentially a license to print money when well-executed.  This is what that same VP told me —

“Horror’s dead, John.  Nobody wants horror anymore.  It’s all about the urban audience.”

Scream opened that same December and made $173,046,663 worldwide.  In its wake, an uninterrupted avalanche of extremely profitable low-budget horror pics overran the coming decade.

And me?  Exactly one year after the sale, my girlfriend and I found ourselves back at Taco Bell.

* * * * *

Those first professional cuts for any young writer are excruciating.  Everything about your script — every flat character, every lousy throwaway line, every unnecessary parenthetical — feels personal and inviolate, gifted from the heavens and written in stone, like some multimedia take on Moses’ holy tablets.

“Change something?  Why?  It was plenty good enough for you to buy it in the first place, wasn’t it, douchebag?”

Some version of this is what the working writer yearns to bark in his benefactors’ (read: torturers’) faces.  If you loved it enough to put real money behind it, why in the fuck do you want to change every last thing about it now?  Why date a tall, skinny brunette if you really wanted a short, squat redhead?  Where’s the logic in that?

This mentality is, of course, completely understandable.  The script is quite literally your baby, your winning Powerball ticket, the lone vehicle by which you hope and pray to escape the nagging self-doubt and just-getting-by poverty of a middle class kid with a mountain of student loans.   This is your shot — perhaps the one and only shot you’re gonna get — and if it’s mishandled somehow, if somebody shits the bed and drops the ball, you and you alone will pay the ultimate price for that.

On the other hand… there’s a couple big problems with sticking by your guns every damned time.  One, without question, you’ll be replaced as soon as your steps are up, and most likely won’t work for that company or any of those people again.  Producers hate writers as it is, see them as largely unnecessary evils.  Certainly nobody wants to work with a “difficult” one sitting in meetings with his or her fingers jammed in their ears.

Two, and this can be a tough one for us writers to swallow, what if all these developmental numbskulls are actually right???  What if a few of those “shitty notes” you keep bad-mouthing to friends turn out to be gems, pure gold, BIG IDEAS that help take your script to that hallowed “next level”?   Some writers are so busy being defensive that they’re throwing away the very ideas which can dramatically increase their odds of success… and survival.

So John, you ask, how in the hell do I know when to do what?   How do I discern between the gold and the gravel, the shit and the pony?  How can I insure I do the right thing creatively while traversing such treacherous industry tundra?

And that, my friends, is the eternal question every writer faces, every time they book a gig.  Because there aren’t any right answers one-hundred percent of the time.  The whole endeavor is entirely subjective, a complete crapshoot, with the looming possibility of some ravenous tiger waiting to bite your head off behind every corner.

Your creative action — or inaction — affects not only this project, but the possibility of the many unseen projects yet to come.  Of prominent producers and execs putting in a good word, greasing the skids for a full-freight first draft at 100% of your quote… or not.  Of you being able to pay off those loans, buy your hard-working parents a house of their own, live the creative lifestyle you’ve always dreamt of and suffered so damned much trying to actualize…

Best advice I’ve heard?  “You’ve got to choose your hills to die on.”

But hey, no pressure, right?  Best of luck on those pages.

* * * * *

Spring of 1999, I was coming off saving a film for a big studio.  My stock was high and I was starting to make my first legitimate splash.

After years of obscure, unpaid laboring, I was really feeling it, finally discovering my groove.  All that “woodshedding” had vastly improved my writing.  It was becoming much better crafted and far more intuitive.  Better still, proof of this breakthrough was now coming across on the page, for anyone and everyone to see.

A hungry young agency saw it and took me on, and they had enough juice to start getting me into the right rooms.  As every artisan in Hollywood knows, if you can’t get into the room, you sure as hell can’t get the job.  My new agents totally had my back in that department and very quickly it became plug and play — they’d send me out, after that, everything else was on me.  As you might imagine, this was a really good time for a young writer.

So… as a last ditch effort, the big studio had hired me, and against all rational odds, I’d saved their movie.  Not only that, but to everybody’s further surprise, it became a big hit.

In this town, you always strike while the iron’s hot.  My agents quickly set me up with a very famous director, one of the old school legends, in fact.  There was a new company in town spending real money, and he’d set up a project there.  All they needed now was a writer.

We met on his studio lot, the Director and I immediately hitting it off.  This guy was a blast, regaling me with wild tales of ’70’s Hollywood, each more x-rated hilarious than the last.  These were the classic movies I’d grown up with and deeply loved, back to front I knew them all.  Now here I was talking to the guy who’d actually made some of them!  For a good hour we jawed warp-speed, then spent maybe ten minutes talking broad strokes about his project.  It was to be a modern-day Robin Hood — the big twist was casting a famous Brazilian MMA fighter as the lead and setting it in the violent ghettos of inner city L.A.

Now remember, this is ’99, way before the whole MMA/UFC thing fully turned the corner.  But within two years, Dana White and Co. would radically reinvent the marketing of that world and find themselves sitting on a multi-billion dollar business.

So in a way — even though it wasn’t on purpose — the Director’s idea of casting an MMA superstar with international appeal in a kick-ass action film was perfectly timed.  By the time it was ready to roll out, the U.S. would be beginning its new love affair with the UFC.  And we’d be standing there waiting with lightning in a bottle, boffo box office certain to ensue.

I drove back home.  Two hours later (just two hours!) my agent calls.   Business affairs from this new company had called and made an offer — $100K against $275, or 100/275 in film biz parlance.  The Director was crazy about me and knew immediately I was the perfect guy for the job.  Just like that it became a spontaneous four-way love fest; Company, Famous Director, Agents, Me.  My cup runneth over with this highly-addictive first burst of adulation.

It was pretty hard to wrap my head around.  A guaranteed ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS for drinking a free bottle of Evian and listening to one of Hollywood’s most successful filmmakers tell epic war stories?   For just being (GASP!) me???

Abruptly, the lightbulb went on.  So THIS is what everybody was chasing.  Everyone knew there were heaps of money to be made — Monopoly money, from where I was standing.  But what about having all the heavyweight ego-stroking a film-addled shut-in like myself could desire?  Wasn’t that shit awesome, too?

Next came a company meet-and-greet to discuss our collective vision for the project.  My honeymoon continued unabated.  We were all on the same page! We all agreed EXACTLY what this film should aspire to!  From the top down, everybody on-board was euphoric with developmental glee!

Our homage to Robin Hood would be set in the impoverished jungles of East L.A. Our Lead, forced to flee Brazil because of his heroic actions against homicidal police, would join his Uncle in L.A. to start building a new life for himself.  But after witnessing dehumanizing oppression in the sweatshops, and running afoul of local gangsters who violently extorted and terrorized the good-hearted (but powerless) immigrants who had befriended him, our Lead is compelled to take the law into his own hands, seeing justice done, whatever the cost.  I was urged to think of the story as gritty, raw and realistic — “Robin Hood ’99” if you will, with someone like Jay-Z playing Friar Tuck.

Robin Hood is one of the oldest legends in all of Western Civilization, and for good reason.  The timeless themes of rich vs. poor, the corrupt haves vs. the honest have-nots, still speak as loudly to audiences today as they did in Medieval times.  So our ripped-from-the-headlines take involving sweatshops and immigrant labor, oppression and cultural inequality, would fit perfectly alongside the honorable intent of the original.

After a few frenzied white-guy high-fives (“I love this guy!” from one goofy exec), and another complementary bottle of Evian, I was sent off to knock out a treatment so we could quickly proceed to first draft.

* * * * *

Ensconced back in my bungalow, I set about creating my masterpiece.  Like I said, I was totally in my wheelhouse at this point, doing the very best writing of my young career.  I buckled down and poured my heart and soul into the idea.  I skipped concerts, cancelled dates, ate nothing but bad Chinese and Mexican delivery.  Day and night, I labored to make the story not just a kick-ass MMA thrill ride — the essential dynamic of the entire project in the first place — but a film which would actually have something to say as well.

I saw it as a classic have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too opportunity — killer action and ultra-cool, franchisable genre characters, with a timely message to the contemporary audience nestled behind all the head-butting and hard talk.

Listen, end of the day, if all you wanted was to see somebody’s trachea stomped into tomato soup, or some asshole’s nutsack blown off, yeah, you would get that in spades.  I mean, this was a MOVIE afterall, mass escapist entertainment.  But for the more discerning genre lover (like myself) there would also be a legitimate subtext they could hang their hats on.  A little something… more.

One month later I submitted my twelve-page, single-spaced treatment.  I was anxious, but extremely confident.  Never had I felt better about the work and what I was trying to accomplish.  I believed it awesome that Hollywood execs were willing to push for a meaningful story, even within the confines of a tiny little genre pic like this.  Maybe the self-serving, head-up-ass development stereotypes I’d been brutalized by before would be proven wrong this time around.

A week passed.  Then a second.  Neither my agent nor myself heard so much as a whisper.

Believe me, if there’s anything a writer learns in Hollywood, it’s this — the silence is deafening.

Silence is never good.  Silence says disinterest, displeasure or — scariest of all — disappointment.  When you put finished pages someone paid for in their impatient little palms and they don’t get back to you a.s.a.p. something is terribly and irrevocably wrong.  In my experience, there are no exceptions to this rule.

Sure enough, start of week three we finally got word.  It wasn’t good.  Let’s just say nobody loved it.  The company didn’t hate it initially, per se, but the Director’s people did.  They loathed it with a passion.  Which meant the company had to start hating it as well.

Judgment Day came in the company’s flagship conference room.  Picture a Hudsucker Proxy-sized oak conference table, all five of my company inquisitors massed at the far end, and me — best of intentions, isolated, confused — docked in a half-mast Aeron chair at the other.

The Head of Development led the prosecution.  He was a real trip, an IMAX D-Guy Cartoon, 3D cells brightly penciled in by Pixar.  We’re talking Aliens level development exec here, with him playing the egg-laying Queen, not one of the day-player xenomorphs.   For the safety of all involved, let’s call him Producer X.

“This treatment is too preachy, too grim, too goddamn G-L-O-O-M-Y,” his first salvo whistled across my bow. “Where’s the fun in this world, John?  The Lethal Weapon III of it all?  The wink-wink, the hijinx, the Wow Factor?”

Where’s the fun in… illegal immigration?  In the callous rich taking advantage of the struggling poor?   Is that what he was asking?

“Look, John, trust me — it’s not THAT BAD down there.  There are plenty of happy stories to tell.  Happy stories which give those people plenty of hope.”

Whoops.  My Spidey Sense began an ugly twitch.  “Down there.” “Those people.” This couldn’t be going anywhere good.

“To some, you know, this might sound controversial.  But I’m going to go ahead and say it anyway, ’cause frankly I’m not a P.C. person and I don’t give a damn,” Producer X leaned forward now, Sunday smile, as if confiding in me.  “You know what?  I have a maid, and she’s an illegal.  That’s right.  An illegal.  And guess what, John?   She LOVES working for me.  Loves it!  She couldn’t be happier!”

“Me too.” The famous director’s D-Girl piped up. “My husband and I have an illegal nanny.  Always smiling, that woman.  Very Zen.”

“In fact,” Producer X blazed on, “Recently I had a bit of a funny conundrum.  My maid’s daughter was having her quinceañera, and she told me they didn’t have enough decorations for it.  So guess what I did?  This is great — I let her go around the house and gather up all the old flowers that had been there a few days and take those to the party!  Isn’t that terrific?  She was soooooo happy.”

There was one exec in the room I’d met before, a good guy, coming from the right place.  I watched the same horrified shockwave blitzkrieg across his face that I already wore on mine.  So they weren’t all Replicants, I thought.  Thank Christ.

Oversharing kills.  No doubt, I’m every inch as white boy as the next white motherfucker out there.  But there was one huge problem.

I wasn’t that kind of white.

Both my mother and father had Ph.D.’s from Teachers College at Columbia.  Their specialties?  Education for Gifted Minority Students.  My girlfriend was Hispanic, a social worker born literally — true shit — in a dirt-floored shack in Pacoima. So yeah, this probably wasn’t going to work out too well.

All this time, Scriptshadow Reader, I’d been racking my brain, trying to figure out why they hated my treatment so much, why everyone was acting like I’d totally butt-fucked the pooch on this one.  Now it hit me full-force — my pages were too, well, Robin Hood.  I’d done exactly what we’d agreed upon, gotten it pitch perfect… which was criminally out of tune for these folks.

Class struggle?  Rich vs. Poor?  What was I thinking?  They envisioned our heroic Brazilian as a grubby street urchin, crashing Beverly Hills parties, stuffing his shirt with hors d’oeuvre and stealing thick wads of cash from mink coat pockets.  Which is precisely the take they pitched me.

Everything quickly became a vague blur, Charlie Brown’s teacher shot-gunning syllabic nonsense.  The only part I remember was Producer X’s take on our protagonist — “It’s like Ché Guevara.  He was sexy, he was hot, did a couple of cool killings.  Cinematic stuff, right?”

Talk about mind-fucks.  Their collective brainstorm now was to take the Robin Hood out of Robin Hood.   Regrettably, it was kind of, well, getting in the way.

Meeting over, we shook hands with the nauseous smiles of strangers who’d eaten the same rotten shellfish.  I grabbed my ’66 Bug — the same car I’d driven out to L.A. eight years earlier — and puttered straight up Wilshire to my agent Marty’s office.

When I walked in, I just unloaded.  Play by play, line by line, vomiting up details of the nuclear winter I’d just lived through.  From Marty’s expression, I could see he was having trouble making sense of it all.  He knew my background, knew the guy I was, but still.  After I’d slaked my desperate need to rant, I punctuated things with this cute little gem —

“They can keep the money,” I said.  “I don’t want it.”

In Marty’s entire life, I don’t think a single client had ever told him that.   And why would they?  Idealism and moral outrage are the privilege of a rarified few in this Biz.  At the grunt level, the level I was at, those concepts played worse than kiddie porn.  Besides, who the fuck was I?  Claude Rains in Casablanca?  “I’m shocked, shocked to find that half-baked racism is going on here!”  It’s not like I’d signed up for the Peace Corps or anything.

Still, I had my principles, and I was willing to put all that Monopoly money where my naive pie-hole was.  Marty’s advice was to go home, cool my tool and let him do some reconnaissance.  Once he’d sussed things out, he’d get back to me.

Two things bailed me out.  First, the exec I knew called Marty and totally vouched for my eyewitness testimony (told you he was a good guy).  Second, Producer X himself knew how badly he’d fucked up and called trying to smooth things over.  “Listen, Marty,” he told my agent, “This is a big misunderstanding.  Nobody over here wants to make an… irresponsible movie.”

They scheduled a second meeting trying to salvage things, but in many ways it was worse than the first.  My time was spent daydreaming about putting Producer X in a chokehold and pulling a Sharky’s Machine — pile-driving us through the plate glass and then plummeting 200 feet straight down to the pavement below.

So that’s it.  The deal died.  They paid for the treatment, and I — insisting on principle — left the other $65,000 sitting on the table.   SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS.  Just walked away from it.  And yeah, it kinda stings to write this, even now.

You may have wondered — what about the Famous Director, the one guy who surely would’ve had your back?  Predictably, after that first, glorious filmic dry-humping, I neither saw nor heard from him again.  No phone call.  No nothing.  To this day, I don’t know if he actually hated it, or his D-Girl with the illegal nanny had cut my throat without giving him the real scoop on any of what went down.

And Producer X?   Was there any Bad Karma due a producer like that?   Would the bold heavens take a stand and angrily smite down what the film industry itself would not?

You’re fuckin’ kidding, right?  This is the Film Biz.

A few years later, I was over at some friends’ place watching the Oscars on auto-pilot.  About ten hours in, after two dozen absurd dance numbers, they finally got around to Best Picture.

And who should win but Producer X.

This go ’round I did crap my pants.  Openly and without restraint.   But this wasn’t even rock bottom.  Because up next was his acceptance speech —

“I’m soooooo happy you’ve taken my movie into your hearts, this wonderful little film about compassion, racial harmony, the end of prejudice of all kinds, and, of course, hope.  Always hope, for all those people less fortunate than ourselves.”

Producer X had just won an Oscar.  That’s right.  A fucking Academy Award.  By playing the “Can’t we all just get along?” card.

Before he even left the stage, I was stumbling into the backyard, begging the hostess for a frenzied bong hit.  A writer can only take so much, you see, and my mind was dangerously close to snapping.  My only real hope of retaining any sanity now lay in a bright, protective sheen of cannabis.

As I slipped into oblivion, a single thought ran roughshod through my mind —

“I wonder if Producer X’s illegal maid is back at his house watching this, too.”

Carson again.  Naturally, I’m asking the same question you are.  Who the hell was the producer??  John refuses to name names, but I will find out.  Mark my words!  In the meantime, head over to John’s Tweak Class Page and sign up for his screenwriting class that starts this January.  It truly is a unique opportunity to study with a produced, working writer.  You won’t be disappointed!

Amateur screenplay Scion had a promising first ten pages, enough to get a few dozen e-mails of endorsement. Let’s find out how the rest of the script held up.

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 effect 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: Supernatural/Drama
Premise: (from writer) A naive young man’s dreams of a normal life is hijacked by a charismatic “faith healer” and a powerful media tycoon when both become hell bent on exploiting the young man’s amazing gift…the power to raise the dead.
About: Picked this script as it was one of the few amateur scripts I’ve sent out in my newsletter that I’ve gotten positive responses on. Most of those were based on the first 10 pages. Intrigued to see if the story was sustained afterwards.
Writer: Scotty Davis
Details: 128 pages

Andrew Garfield for Caleb?

There’s a chorus from an old popular sitcom that goes, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them all and then you have…the facts of life.” That’s sort of how you have to approach amateur screenplays. You’re only going to find that home run every 2-3 years. In the interim, you’re going to find a lot of screenplays that do some good things, but also some bad things. So as Scion started to lose focus, I had to remember that I wasn’t judging an Aaron Sorkin script here. This was a writer still learning the craft, and therefore he was going to make some mistakes.

Just the fact that so many people were able to read his first 10 pages and recommend the script to me was a great achievement for Scotty. But, unfortunately, it’s not the true mark of a good writer (or I should say, “a good writer YET.”). For that to be the case, you have to be able to tell a story all the way through. And that mainly means understanding structure. To tell a story, you need to know how to set up, how to build, and how to conclude, and that’s where I felt Scion fell short. Let’s take a look.

We open on Charlie Thompson racing his wife, Charlotte, to the hospital. She’s gone into labor and it’s one of the ugly kinds. Lots of bloooood. It doesn’t help that there’s a massive thunderstorm fighting them on their way there, and when they get to the hospital, it takes out all the electricity. The doctor does his best anyway, however as he’s helping Charlotte, a lightning flash COMES THROUGH the roof and grabs hold of her. Charlotte dies, but the baby, who we’ll come to know as Caleb, survives.

Turns out that lightning strike left some after effects. Caleb has the power to bring the dead back to life with just his touch. He uses this at first with animals, but eventually starts saving people as well. It doesn’t always work for some reason. But either way, his father, a religious man, tells him he has to be careful with his power. It’s not up to him to decide who lives and dies.  That’s God’s decision.

Across the country there’s an up-and-coming 7 year old preacher named Levi Hawkins (yes, 7). Levi heals people too, in front of hundreds every week at church. He’s got a gift for turning people into believers but unlike Caleb, Levi’s healing isn’t real. His father manufacturers backstage deals with fake cripples to be “cured” and it’s made Levi a hot commodity, so much so that he gets his own TV show.

But that show falls apart when it’s clear these Healing specials aren’t getting the ratings they used to. Both Levi and Caleb continue to grow up, and then, when they’re young men, happen to be driving on the same road at the same time and crash into each other. Levi dies a bloody death but Caleb jumps out and pulls one of his life-gripper moves, bringing Levi back to the light. Aha, Levi thinks.  This gives him an idea.

Levi whips up a new type of sermon, enlisting a reluctant Caleb as his helper. Levi isn’t just going to heal people this time around. He’s going to bring them back from the dead! Folks are naturally skeptical, but discreetly using Caleb’s touch, Levi’s able to back up his claims. Soon reality TV comes calling. They want to put his show on the air, and they think it’s going to be so big, they want to put it on post-Super Bowl, the biggest time slot of them all! The question is, will the reluctant Caleb do the show? Or will Levi be standing out there on his own?

First I want to point out the good things about Scion. Like I said, there’s a reason this was chosen off its first 10 pages. The writing is really crisp, really visual. I love how Scotty sets a mood and a sense of place. I was right there in that scene with Charlie rushing his pregnant wife to a hospital with a raging thunderstorm outside. It felt authentic. And it was CLEAR. I can’t stress how important that is. I was talking with a friend the other day about how some writers have clean easy-to-read writing styles and others have clunky styles, the kind where you have to read a paragraph twice every half page or so to understand what was said. Scotty’s writing was smooth and strong.

I liked his dialogue too. The thing with dialogue is you don’t always know why you like it. And some dialogue that people love, others hate. But I guess I liked this dialogue because it felt right. It felt like that’s the kind of thing these characters would say. For example, when the Sheriff comes to Charlie’s house looking for Caleb, this simple exchange follows: “I’m here about the boy, Charlie.” “My boy ain’t none of your business.” “Charlie, ain’t a soul in this county laid eyes on your boy in over three months. Folks around here just worried ‘bout him, that’s all.” This may seem like nothing special, but I read tons of scripts where writers would’ve written something like: “I’m here about your son.” “You don’t have permission to check on my son.” “I’m just doing what the office tells me, Charlie. Now let me in.”  Small differences, but those difference MAKE a difference.  It just goes to show how delicate dialogue can be.

On the downside, there are quite a few things that need to be shored up here. Not to beat a dead horse, but 129 pages on an amateur script raises red flags. It almost always means that the writer doesn’t know how to focus his story and that a lot of unnecessary scenes or subplots will be included. I hate to make that generalization, but it’s almost universally true, and lo and behold, it was the case here in spades.

There’s no real goal in Scion. It’s structured more like an artsy character study, with us following two characters’ lives, Caleb and Levi (as well as a TV producer, who I didn’t get into in the plot breakdown). There’s no rule that says you have to abide by popular dramatic structure, of course, but when you’re building your script around a high concept idea, such as this one, you probably want to play close to the rules. Goals, stakes, urgency. And there really wasn’t any of that here. It wasn’t until late in the story that a true destination was introduced, that being the Super Bowl show, and that had its own series of problems.

As I’ve said on this site before, no matter how good you are with structure, character, and dialogue, the strength of your story usually boils down to interesting and smart choices. You can have a character with a perfectly executed character arc. But if he’s an uninspired boring character, we won’t care. I felt Scotty made a lot of strange choices here that ultimately derailed the story. I thought the whole car crash between the characters was too coincidental. I thought a 7 year old preacher seemed far-fetched. This whole subplot about twins was unnecessarily confusing and never fit in. And then the Super Bowl show felt way too big for a story that had previously existed on an understated plain. At one point in Scion, even the CIA showed up.

If I were Scotty, I’d try to ground this more. Stop trying to infuse it with strange twin twists and the Central Intelligence Agency and Super bowl shows. It smells like you got bored with your own story and tried to throw in a lot of whammies in hopes that it would spice things up. But all it’s done is ruin the story’s focus.

I also think a lot of things could’ve been explained better. Scotty’s actual writing is clear. But there were certain story-related points that were left out or weren’t explained. I was constantly confused about how old the characters were as they aged, for example. I still don’t know if they’re 16 or 25 by the end of the story. Or Caleb’s power. I thought the whole reason he had that power was because the lightning struck his mom as she was giving birth. But then it turns out Charlie has the power too? And I’m still not clear on what the little snake birthmark meant.

Which leaves us in a difficult place. There’s clearly talent on display here, but also a lot of messiness, and more importantly, a lack of focus. Moving forward, I would suggest we come up with a simple goal, or at least individual goals driving each of the characters. Maybe Charlie left Caleb in a lot of debt, and Caleb has to find a way to save his chicken farm before [x] date. Maybe the fallen Levi has a one-shot pitch opportunity with a network for a show in [x] amount of days. He needs something to knock their socks off, and he hears about Caleb’s powers, so he goes and recruits him. With Caleb desperate for money, he has no choice but to join Levi.

These are off the top of my head, and admittedly generic, but they’re a good place to start. We need some sort of form to the story, because right now there isn’t any. And all of this stuff needs to be set up sooner. We can’t dwell too much on their growing up. I would get us further into their lives much faster so we can introduce these goals early on and set the story on track as soon as possible.

Scotty could be a force to reckon with in a couple of years. But he’s gotta work on the structure side of things before he can get there. I wish him luck! :)

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

What I learned: Beware the big late arriving plot point. I’ve seen these in a few scripts recently and I saw it here too. When you try to introduce a big idea as a plot point late in the movie, it never feels natural. That’s because you don’t have time to nurture and grow the plot point, and therefore it feels crammed into the final act. That was the case with the Super Bowl development (in my opinion). It just seemed to come out of nowhere late in the script. The bigness of a plot point like this requires a lot of set up to justify its existence, and you don’t have the time to do all that set-up so late in the story. That’s probably why it felt so out of place.

Keeping in mind that adapting The Hobbit is probably one of the tougher screenplay jobs this side of the slugline, how did Jackson and his co-writers fare?

Genre: Adventure
Premise: Bilbo Baggins reluctantly joins a band of dwarves who go on a quest to reclaim their kingdom, which has since been taken over by a dragon.
About: After lots of legal battles and one giant director fallout, the first of three Hobbit films finally comes to the big screen. The talk about these films seems to be Peter Jackson’s pioneering use of 48 frames per second as opposed to the traditional 24. This new frame-rate is supposed to make the movie a lot more enjoyable in 3-D. We’ll see about that.
Writers: Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson & Guillermo del Toro (based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien)

I’ve been to the Shire. I saw Ryan Gosling there and he said he didn’t want me to review his script today. So I decided to review the Hobbitses instead.

Before I get into the writing side of this movie, I first have to address the 48 frames per second phenomenon. Now maybe I’m wrong and in 10 years every movie will be in 48 fps and we’ll look back at this 24 frames stuff as ancient history, the way my generation looked at Black and White films. And the way that generation looked back at films without sound. But I don’t know. I understand we’ve been conditioned on this frame rate for over a hundred years, and we’ve been led to believe that anything 30 frames per second or higher looks like home video, but that’s what this looked like to me. It looked like home video.

No, you know what it looked like? It looked like those History Channel reenactments, but with like 100 times the production value. I mean for the first half of the movie, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. All I kept saying was, “This looks so cheap.” Not only because it looked like video but because it was so smooth and crisp you could see the make-up on the actors. You could see all the imperfections. Now I did start to get used to it as the movie went on, but I’d be surprised if James Cameron decided to shoot Avatar this way after seeing the footage (as he’d been hinting at).

But what about the actual movie!!? Well, I always had a problem with going back and doing a Hobbit trilogy as it seemed like a pared down version of the Lord Of The Rings. If the world were made of truthful marketing campaigns, this one would read, “Everything you got before, but smaller.” And that’s what this felt like. There wasn’t that grand scale that dominated the earlier (later) films. This felt more intimate. At times that was good but since this is a spectacle movie, it was mostly bad. Wanna know what the film was about?

Okay, I’ll tell you, but not in Middle Earth-speak. That would take me an extra two hours of name-checking in the Hobbit encyclopedia. I’m going to tell you in layman’s terms. Basically, these dwarves lose their kingdom to this really evil dragon who wants it because there’s a lot of gold stored there. I’ll admit, I was confused right off the bat on this one. Why would a dragon need gold? What can a dragon possibly use gold for? He can’t make gold dragon clothes. He doesn’t need it to buy anything. His currency is breathing fire on people. But whatever. Point is, all the dwarves got kicked out of their home.

Many years later we meet Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, who’s minding his business when Gandalf and a bunch of dwarves show up telling him he has to go on a mission with them, a mission to get their castle back. This confused me as well because I couldn’t understand why they needed a hobbit to help them. From what I understood, Bilbo was scared, inexperienced, didn’t want to go, and didn’t bring anything advantageous to the table other than it’s harder for dragons to smell hobbits. Maybe this is explained in the books or the sequels somewhere, but at least in this story, I couldn’t understand why Bilbo was even part of this adventure. Even Obi-Wan says to Luke, “I’m getting too old for this.” So it made sense why Luke needed to come on that journey.

Anyway, off they go to take on that bad dragon with an irrational gold fetish. However, mid-way through, we begin to realize that them taking on the dragon ain’t going to happen in this movie. Nope. We’re going to have to wait til the third film for that one. Which leaves us feeling empty. Luckily, Jackson helps us forget this with a wagon-full of orc attacks! Orcs and trolls. Every 20 minutes or so, some orcs would find them and we’d get a big set-piece. These set-pieces ranged from cool to really cool, but never quite awesome (however running across bridges in the underground orc lair got close).

Our good buddy Golum does make an appearance in the film with his and Bilbo’s “Battle of Riddles (?)” and it’s the one thing I remembered from the book as a kid so I was excited to see it play out on the big screen. I was disappointed. The rules of this riddle game seemed vague, and it appeared that you could ask the most nonsensical question ever and it would be considered “fair.” “Trust and trout and beetles and stout. Seven tigers drink six cups of milk. What’s the answer?” Errr, what? More concerning was the way Bilbo won. “What’s in my pocket?” That’s the question he won with? You can just ask a question that there’s no way for someone to know the answer to? “How many centipedes live underneath the big rock in my garden back home?” I don’t know! I wanted to feel like Bilbo cleverly outwitted Golum. Instead, I’m left wondering what the hell the rules were to that funky game.

Eventually, Bilbo escapes Golum and the dwarves escape more Orcs and they all get away. But then they have to fight one last battle against the King Orc, who our Prince Dwarf supposedly killed many years ago, but who has come back for revenge. Oh, and then there’s a guy who rides around on a sled pulled by rabbits.

To “The Hobbit’s” credit, we do have a clear story here. We have our goal (Get to and reclaim the Dwarf Kingdom), we have our stakes (the dwarves will be without a home until they get their kingdom back), and we have our urgency (they’re constantly being chased by orcs). Despite all that, The Hobbit takes its time in too many places. Jackson knows he’s got you stuck there in the theater and boy does he take advantage of it, giving you a twenty minute opening scene in Bilbo’s house, and a 15 minute exposition-laden scene at the Elf kingdom. There are a lot of talking scenes in this script and that almost dooms it.

Luckily, Jackson (and Tolkien obviously) throw tons of obstacles at our heroes to keep the entertainment level high. Just when the story’s about to run out of gas, orcs show up, or trolls show up, or giant raving mad rock monsters show up, or Bilbo falls into the dark crevices of a cave with no way out. Remember, as long as you give your characters a goal, you can place tons of obstacles in front of that goal. And as long as we care about them achieving their goal, we’ll be entertained by them trying to overcome those obstacles. Jackson adds several nice touches where we see how important getting their home back is for the dwarves. So we’re entertained by the obstacles that get in their way.

Character-wise, Bilbo, our main character, is a tough call.  He’s very passive for most of the screenplay, and for that reason he’s one of the least interesting characters in the bunch. There’s an old saying that your main character should be the most interesting person in the movie. I don’t know if that’s always possible because a lot of times the hero has to play the straight man, but it would’ve been nice if Bilbo was a LITTLE more interesting.

With that said, he did have a flaw, and therefore an arc. And it’s one of the better flaws you can give a character, since it’s so identifiable. Bilbo lives a safe life. He doesn’t take any chances. He’d rather stay holed up in a tiny hobbit shack than deal with the dangers of the outside world. This journey is about him learning to step out of his safety bubble and do something different and new and scary. Haven’t we all felt that way at one point or another in our lives? Always add a flaw to your hero if you can, guys. It’ll provide your story with a more dynamic, and therefore more interesting, character.

One thing that KILLS this movie for me, though, is the trilogy format. This tale is lighter than Lord Of The Rings as it is. And now you’re telling me that the goal your characters are after isn’t even going to be pulled off in this film? Not only is that a big tease, but it throws the entire rhythm of the script off. In a story, the whole point is to build to the climax, the thing you’ve been telling us is our heroes’ objective. If there’s no objective, there’s no climax, and that’s exactly how the Hobbit felt. I didn’t know where we were going after awhile or what the ultimate point of THIS MOVIE (not the entire trilogy) was. I don’t think any script should end with the reader saying, “Oh, that’s it?” And that’s how this one ended. I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if The Hobbit had gone on for another 30 minutes, and that’s sloppy storytelling as far as I’m concerned. The audience wants the payoff. We got it a bit with the King Orc showdown, but that felt like the appetizer to the big meal, a meal we won’t be eating for another two years.

I don’t know where I come down on this one. It held my attention, but sometimes for the wrong reasons. I just couldn’t comprehend why they’d put something onscreen that looked like it had been shot on a Best Buy video camera. However, I suppose the script had just enough thrust to keep my attention til the end. For that, I guess it’s worth a matinee ticket.

[ ] Run for your life
[ ] Wait for video
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: How much time is too much time to build up your characters in a screenplay? Peter Jackson takes his sweet time in this area, giving us 30-some minutes with our hobbits and dwarves before they get on the road. This can work if a lot’s happening (we don’t get on the road til the 30 minute mark in Star Wars, for example, but a TON of stuff happens before that – evil villains chasing, forgotten hermits reemerging, droids running away, aunt and uncle killed), but if you just have people sitting around at tables talking, the script is going to drag. I see this sometimes with established writer-directors. They know they don’t have to keep a reader’s interest. They already have you in the theater. So they take forever to get going. I think established or not, all writers should try and keep the story moving. Don’t waste a line of screenplay space if you don’t have to, especially in the opening, when it’s imperative you hook your audience. The Hobbit could’ve moved a lot faster.

Today we go racing back to Black List’s past to see if a forgotten screenplay can sneak its way back onto the Hollywood Highway.

Genre: Action/Romance/Drama
Premise: A high-speed chase on the streets of LA told through multiple points of view.
About: Iranian-born Massy Tadjedin penned today’s script, which landed on the 2007 Black List and was picked up by Dreamworks. Massy is a really good writer and has written such scripts as The Jacket and Last Night. Curious to see why this one was forgotten.
Writer: Massy Tadjedin
Details: 126 pages – March 23, 2007 draft

Scriptshadow suggestion: Will Smith for Jay?

I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up “Wednesday.” I knew I liked the writer but that’s all I had to go on. That and the script revolved around a car chase. That’s what interested me most. How do you make a car chase interesting for 120 minutes? And it was quite a departure from Massy’s last script – a slow-moving character piece about the temptations in our everyday relationships. To put it bluntly, the script’s existence didn’t make sense. Which is exactly why I wanted to read it!

And read it I did. To the tune of 45 pages of, “Are you f’ing kidding me? This is what this script’s about? A guy who robs a bank for $800 and the police chase him?” Even within the most lenient of critic’s circles, this seemed like a giant miscalculation. But this is why reading scripts is so fun. Because, sometimes, right when you think you’ve got it all figured out, something happens that changes it up again. Read on to find out more…

“Wednesday” introduces us to a bunch of characters right off the bat going through their morning routines, the most important of whom are Jay and Carrie. Jay looks down and out, a guy who’s at the end of his rope. He’s even got an infection in his right eye that’s bleeding. Never a good thing.

The perky 26 year-old Carrie, on the other hand, has her whole life ahead of her. She’s young and upbeat and happy. She’s got a big meeting today, something we get the feeling is going to change her life.

Oh, her life’s going to be changed all right, but not by that meeting.

Jay, whose disastrous existence we’re getting bits and pieces of along the way, appears to be the victim of a bad divorce. And now his ex-wife’s dating some slimy asshole who he doesn’t trust around his daughter. But there’s nothing he can do about it. He’s gotta suck it up and hope everything turns out all right.

But that doesn’t explain why Jay, all of a sudden, walks into a bank and steals $800. He runs outside, hops in his car, and makes an escape. As he pulls up to a light, Decker, an off-duty cop, spots him and thinks he’s up to something. But there’s only so much he can do as he doesn’t have the authority to follow Jay (for some unstated reason).

Still, he goes after him and Jay’s forced to ditch the car at a gas station where he finds none other than Carrie, innocently pumping gas. He throws her in her car and starts round 2 of this high speed pursuit. Carrie’s freaking out, naturally, and keeps trying to get away, but at a certain point, realizes they’re in this together until the end.

All of this was fine. Not good, not bad. Just fine – one of those scripts you try to tolerate and muscle through. That is until the twist comes. All of sudden, almost midway through the script, we cut to the day before, where we meet all of our characters again, this time, however, before they’ve gotten into this mess. Hmmm, wasn’t expecting that. All of a sudden, Wednesday got interesting.

It’s funny because everything just slooooowed down. We go from 60 to 0 within a few seconds. It’s here where we learn more about why Jay robbed the bank (he’s behind on child support), what Carrie’s big interview is tomorrow (she’s a writer who’s written her first novel) and why Decker’s been suspended.

With this new information, we see tomorrow’s chase through much different eyes. We now have WAY MORE sympathy for what Jay is doing, which throws the third act into another gear. Before we wanted Carrie to escape Jay. Now we want them to be together! But can a carjacker and his kidnapped victim really fall in love during a 12 hour car chase? That’s the question “Wednesday” asks.

Overall, Wednesday was a wild ride (yes, I went there). It’s interesting because I don’t think a movie’s been done about a city car chase yet, where that’s the entire movie. It happens so much out here you’d think they would’ve made a film about it. Maybe they did and it went straight to video, I don’t’ know.

But if someone were to make a movie about it, I think they’d do well by following Massy’s lead. You can’t fill up an entire 120 minutes with a car chase. You just can’t. We’ll get bored. So splitting things up so that we meet the characters before the chase started was a smart move.

It’s also another example of dramatic irony, which was a Scriptshadow Secrets obsession of mine – one of the easiest ways to pull an audience in. Once we jump back in time and are meeting our characters, all we’re thinking about it, “You guys don’t know it, but tomorrow you’re going to be involved in a 5-alarm car chase,” and that pulls us in in a way that introducing the characters’ lives first couldn’t have done. For example, one of the main characters dies in the chase. To see him alive again, not knowing that he’s going to be a goner in 24 hours, is captivating in the strangest way.

There were some problems with Wednesday though, some almost catastrophic. The script starts with a MASS INTRODUCE (this is when you introduce a bunch of characters all at once) and as we all know, if you don’t pull off the mass introduce perfectly, the reader can lose track of the characters quickly. You only get one shot to introduce your characters and if you don’t do it well, we might spend the rest of the script mistaking two key characters for each other, and if that happens, it’s practically impossible to enjoy the script.

Complicating things was the script killer move of giving key characters names that started with the same letter. We have three important characters here (all women) named Cynthia, Camille and Carry. What are the chances we’re going to keep all of these straight? Not good. But even worse when you’re coupling the names with a mass introduce. There are still people in this script who I’m not 100% sure they are who I think they are. And that stemmed from the sloppy opening.

And even with the snazzy twist in the story, it still doesn’t address the issue that for the first 45-50 pages we’re watching a chase happen between characters we don’t know or care about. Remember – it’s NEVER about the chase. It’s never about how creative or cool or unique or grand you can make the chase. It’s about the PEOPLE GETTING CHASED. If we don’t care about them, the chase is worthless – A rule that shined brightly in this script. I didn’t care about the chase for the first half, but cared deeply when we cut back to it in the final act.

What I’m happy about, however, is that Wednesday is different. It’s got something to it that’s a little bit unexpected, which is why it caught peoples’ eye. Never forget that. You always want to approach something slightly differently so your script has a fresh feel to it. Otherwise, your screenplay’s going to experience a head-on collision on the 405.

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Beware the “Same Age Phenomenon” in your script. We all tend to write characters that are around our age. Not just for our leads, but for everyone. The real world is peppered with people from every age bracket, so this is not realistic. Outside of Carrie, every damn character here was “in their 40s.” Is there a single person in LA not in their 40s? I think so. Branch out. It’s okay to try other ages.

What I learned 2: With Wednesday, I realized how powerful the “reevaluation device” was when done right. Take us back to the characters before things got out of control and you can completely change/manipulate how we perceive those characters. This basically makes the final act (or whatever follows) a completely different movie. Not every story is going to be designed this way, of course, but it’s definitely an idea to play with if you want to shake your script up. Not everything has to be told in linear fashion.

What I learned 3: Is your script a tweener? – I think I know why this script was forgotten.  It’s one of those tweeners.  It doesn’t fit easily into any marketable genre. It’s not really an action film.  It’s not a “romantic comedy on the run.”  It’s not Crash.  It’s sort of stuck in that netherworld, somewhere between all those genres.  That’s the hard thing with scripts.  They have to be different enough to catch people’s attention, but the same enough to justify a 50-70 million dollar marketing campaign.

100 screenplays ripe for Hollywood’s attention. Black List 2012 is here today!

edit: Black List posted – Thoughts on list have been added below…

Okay, so today’s review has been postponed until tomorrow because the Black List is coming out today.  Franklin’s doing things a little differently this year, tweeting out the Black List scripts one at a time.  Then retweeting them in order.  Or in reverse order.  And then he’s going to post the whole thing.  I think.  Honestly, I’m a little confused about how it’s going to go, so I’ll just wait until the whole thing is posted and then offer my immediate (highly questionable, of course) analysis.  There will be a lot of scripts I’ve heard of, but a lot of mystery scripts as well.  Always scripts that come out of nowhere with this thing.  Now some people have questioned the legitimacy of the Black List in recent years, since agents have been known to work the system to get undeserving clients on the list (which is why you get some clear stinkers), but there are still around 20 really good scripts that would not get any Hollywood play if not for the list, so I still believe in it.  And I love trying to find those scripts.  I think the whole thing is going to be up by 1pm Pacific time?  So that’s around when I’ll post.  In the meantime, to get a preview of some of the scripts that will be on the list, check out The Hit List, which covers the best spec scripts of the year.

UPDATE – THOUGHTS ON LIST
Okay, I’ve read through the list and, as is always the case, I have a range of thoughts.  What’s interesting is that every year, I’m more aware of the scripts that have made it. And I know more and more of the writers who wrote those scripts.  For example, I’ve done consults on five of the scripts that made the list (sorry I can’t tell you which ones – I don’t know if the writers would want me to give up that info).  There are scripts that I’m shocked have landed so high, some that I’m dumbfounded have landed so low (The Equalizer??  Seriously??) and the occasional script that I had no idea even existed.  I think it’s important to remember that people can’t vote on scripts they haven’t read, which is why there are some really good scripts near the bottom.  It may be the case that the script just didn’t make it in front of enough eyes.  Anyway, let’s start with some general thoughts on the Top 10…

I had not heard of this Draft Day script until it finished #1 on The Hit List.  What’s really fascinating to me is that sports scripts generally don’t do well in the market, much less become beloved by those who read them.  The fact that this script is the clear #1 winner makes me think it’s really good.  And that’s exciting.  It was cool seeing A Country Of Strangers on the list because it’s a fascinating story.  I thought it was ‘worth the read,’ Australia’s “Zodiac” if you will.  But it was a little messy so I’m surprised it finished so high.  Seuss is the kind of script tailor-made for the Black List.  Congrats to Eyal and Jonathan.  I’ve heard a lot of good things about Rodham, but I’m still struggling to read a script about Hilary Rodham-Clinton.  I just can’t seem to do it, though I’m sure it’s good. Story Of Your Life popped onto my radar when the Blood List was released and is right up my alley.  I love that kind of stuff, so I’m excited to see it finish so high.

I reviewed Wunderkind back in the day but I’m thinking this must be a different draft because I just didn’t connect with it on any level.  It’s a cool idea though, so I hope they’ve figured it out.  Extremely Wicked is a Nicholl winner, I believe?  Nice to see one of those finish so high.  I also really like the premise.  I love the idea of someone’s life spiraling out of control from a seemingly mundane issue.  Count me in.  Glimmer was cool, the one “pure entertainment” script in the Top 10.  Goes to show found footage isn’t dead yet!  I still feel it’s a little light, but they have time to shore that up in rewrites.  Get it?  “Time?”  Heh heh heh.  I’m on.  Me & Earl & The Dying Girl – Hmmmm….  Nicholas Sparks didn’t write this?  Are they sure?  KIDDING!  Sheesh, don’t get your panties in a bunch.  These kind of morbid “we’re going to die but let’s have fun now” scripts aren’t really my thing but a couple of people have written to tell me it’s quite good.  I know nothing about “Devil’s Play,” but the premise leads me to believe that there’s plenty of opportunity for drama.

As for the rest of the scripts, If They Move…Kill’em sounds fun.  A famed director fallen from his peak being forced to make a film with Columbian drug money?? Have never read anything like that before.  I’m in.  Americatown sounds good too.  I think we’re in for a lot more movies where China is dominating our future and it’ll be interesting to see how writers tackle the subject matter since, you know, we’re going to be at war with them within ten years – :).  I know I shouldn’t be intrigued by “Shut In” because the premise is so damn vague, and yet I REALLY WANNA KNOW what the secret is!

Someone told me The Judge is just beyond awesome.  And it would probably be even higher if it was out there more but from my understanding, they were keeping it under tight wraps.  So just the fact that it got that high with so few people reading it tells me it’s a script to watch out for.  i reviewed Comacheria on the site and really liked it, so not surprised that made the list.  Cool to see 500 Days of Summer writers Scott Neustradter and Michael Weber on the list.  I think they made the list for two years then were gone last year.  So it’s good to see them back.  Man of Tomorrow sounds absolutely insane and I usually hate alternate history stories but this one seems too delicious to pass up.

Awesome to see Chris Hutton and Eddie O’Keefe on the list with The Final Broadcast.  Loved that script!  Probably the single most exposed spec of the  year (if not the top 3), Guggenheim’s Black Box made the list.  I’ve heard all sorts of stuff on this one but I haven’t read it myself yet.  Some say it’s a fun little action film.  Others say it’s one of the worst scripts they’ve read.  Then again, it seems like every script that makes noise, there’s always someone who says it’s the “worst script I’ve ever read” so maybe that reaction is a good thing.  I don’t know if I’ll read it.  I thought Safe House was so middle-of-the-road, yet somehow it translated onscreen really well.  Regardless, Guggenheim is a hot writer who has the magic touch, and since that’s what we’re all trying to achieve, good for him!

A big congrats to Tyler for making the list!  I was hoping Disciple Program would finish higher, but it’s still really cool to see it on the list.  I’ve said so much about this script that I don’t know if there’s anything left to say.  It’s just really cool.  — Jo Jo Rabbit (oddest title/subject matter combination on the list?) sounds like it could be a cool little script in the same vein as Rose In the Darkness.  I wanna read that one.  Cool to see McCarthy, Franklin’s first find through the Black List Program, make the list.  I freaking dug through my old Amateur Friday submissions and saw that Justin (the writer) had sent me the script a long time ago.  If only I had more time to go through those submissions, maybe I could’ve found McCarthy.  Dammit!

Conversion sounds like the most depressing script on the list.  Even though I like them when they’re done well, it’s funny how these “unlikely friendship” scripts always seem to involve the mentally retarded or homeless people or both.  These scripts have to be written extra well to work, avoiding the constant potential for melodrama.  I hope it does.  In contrast, I love love LOVE the premise for “Ground Control To Major Tom.”  Just seems like one of those WTF ideas that you need to read to see how it turns out.  How can an astronaut have survived nine years up in space?

As for the others, Transcendence, the Christopher Nolan’s DP project, sounds like it could be cool if done well.  Fuck, Marry, Kill – lol.  I don’t even know what to say about that one.  Cool to see The Lighthouse do well.  I haven’t read it but I know one of my consultants loved it.  You know I love time travel scripts so I want to read Almanac. I’m curious about Ex Boyfriend Of The Bride if only because it has the most basic logline I’ve ever seen on the Black List – “After he finds out his ex-girlfriend is getting married, a man decides to go to the wedding in order to stop her from going through with it,” – a plot point that is included in basically every romantic comedy ever made yet here it’s the central story. But the fact that people still liked it makes me think it’s somehow overcome this simplicity.

And that’s about it. Oh, and Who Framed Tommy Calahan sounds hilarious!  Definitely want to read that one.  What about you guys? Your thoughts on the list? Have you read any of these?  What did you think?  Leave your comments below!

65
DRAFT DAY by Rajiv Joseph, Scott Rothman
On the day of the NFL Draft, Bills General Manager Sonny Weaver has the opportunity to save football in Buffalo when he trades for the number one pick. He must quickly decide what he’s willing to sacrifice in pursuit of perfection as the lines between his personal and professional life become blurred.

43
A COUNTRY OF STRANGERS by Sean Armstrong
Based on true events. Inspector Geoff Harper conducts a forty year search for the Beaumont Children, three siblings taken from an Australian beach in January of 1966.

43
SEUSS by Eyal Podell, Jonathan Stewart
As a young man, Ted Geisel meets his future wife Helen, who encourages his fanciful drawings, and in the 1950s when Ted is struggling professionally, Helen helps inspire the children’s book that will become his first big hit, “The Cat in the Hat.”

39
RODHAM by Young Il Kim
During the height of the Watergate scandal, rising star Hillary Rodham is the youngest lawyer chosen for the House Judiciary Committee to Impeach Nixon, but she soon finds herself forced to choose between a destined path to the White House and her unresolved feelings for Bill Clinton, her former boyfriend who now teaches law in Arkansas.

35
STORY OF YOUR LIFE  by Eric Heisserer
Based on the short story by Ted Chiang. When alien crafts land around the world, a linguistics expert is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat. As she learns to communicate with the aliens, she begins experiencing vivid flashbacks that become the key to unlocking the greater mystery about the true purpose of their visit.

33
WUNDERKIND by Patrick Aison
A Mossad employed father and his CIA agent son team up to hunt an escaped Nazi.

31
EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL, AND VILE by Michael Werwie
Based on a true (and ultimately surprising) story, a promising young law student fights an oppressive legal system and growing public scrutiny when his routine traffic stop snowballs into shocking criminal charges, imprisonment, daring escapes, and ultimately acting as his own attorney in a nationally televised murder trial.

29
GLIMMER by Carter Blanchard
When three friends go missing on a camping trip in a forest rumored to be haunted, the two left behind discover clues that lead them to a safe deposit box containing video tapes… showing exactly what happened to their friends.

29
ME & EARL & THE DYING GIRL by Jesse Andrews
Based on Andrews’s eponymous novel, a quirky high school student who enjoys making films sparks a friendship with a classmate dying of leukemia.

28
DEVILS AT PLAY by James Dilapo
In the Soviet Union in 1937, a worker of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs finds a list of traitors, which he thinks is going to be his way out.

26
SWEET VIRGINIA by Paul China, Benjamin China
A former rodeo star unknowingly starts a rapport with a young man who is responsible for all of the violence that has suddenly gripped his small town.

25
FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS by Brad Desch
A woman recalls her close relationship with her famous novelist father while struggling to overcome her fear of emotional involvement with her first real boyfriend.

23
SHUT IN by Christina Hodson
A woman who tries to raise her catatonic son on her own suddenly discovers a shocking secret about him.

22
THE KEEPING ROOM by Julia Hart
Three southern women defend their home from the Union army while their husbands are off fighting in the Civil War.

21
IF THEY MOVE… KILL ‘EM! by Kel Symons
After losing his luster and respect in Hollywood, famed director Sam Peckinpah hopes to direct his next great film with financial backing from Colombian drug lords and brings along a novice screenwriter to write the film in Colombia.

20
AMERICATOWN by Ben Poole
In a China-dominated near future, a former LAPD officer attempts to save his family from destitution in Los Angeles by working for a crime lord in the American ghetto within a thriving Hong Kong.

20
SAND CASTLE by Chris Roessner
Based on a true story, a group of United States soldiers in Iraq risk their lives to save a local village.

20
THE JUDGE by Bill Dubuque
A successful attorney returns to his hometown for his mother’s funeral only to discover that his Alzheimer’s-stricken father is suspected of murder and must represent him in court. The ordeal becomes an emotional journey that makes him a better man.

19
CLIVE by Natasha Pincus
After an accident causes a successful CEO to lose both legs, he is forced to re-evaluate his life and identity.

19
COMANCHERIA by Taylor Sheridan
Two brothers, one an ex-con and the other a divorced father of two kids, face the foreclosure of their family’s West Texas farm. They team for a skillfully-calculated bank robbing spree that puts them on a collision course with two Texas Rangers determined to take them down.

19
FLOWER by Alex McAulay
A coming of age story about the unlikely bond that forms between a sexually adventurous teenage girl and her obese, mentally unstable step-brother.

19
WHALEMEN by Tucker Parsons
The leader of a fourteenth century Scottish whaling village must seek out and do battle with a whale many times larger than any he has ever seen in order to ransom back his son from the occupying English.

19
WHIPLASH by Damien Chazelle
Based on the eponymous short film written and directed by Chazelle. Under the director of a prestigious but borderline abusive instructor, a young college student begins to lose his humanity in his quest to become the core drummer of the top jazz orchestra in the country.

18
GEORGE by Jeff Shakoor
When an acerbic alcoholic finds himself penniless and alone he has no choice but to crash his family’s holiday. Years of alienating them makes for a stiff challenge, but eventually he subtly helps them heal.

17
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS by Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber
Based on the eponymous novel by John Green, a teenage girl stricken with cancer falls for a boy in her support group and the two form a bond as they deal with their illnesses.

17
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY by April Prosser
A twenty eight year old woman is about to get engaged to her great boyfriend, when the ex she hasn’t gotten over moves back into town. All of a sudden she isn’t sure if her boyfriend is really the one, and so she spends time decorating her ex’s new condo,trying to figure it all out.

16
THE BALLAD OF PABLO ESCOBAR by Matt Aldrich
After his family is almost killed in a car bombing, Pablo Escobar wages a war with a rival cartel and his own government in an effort to protect his family.

16
THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA by Mark Hogan
During WWII, a a fifteen year old German boy is sent to America to spy for the Fatherland by joining a politically-connected family as an English war orphan. Tension mounts when the boy gets the chance to assassinate President Roosevelt..

16
MAN OF TOMORROW by Jeremy Slater
In an alternate 1940s reality, the US Government makes a deal with an indestructible gangster to kill Hilter in exchange for the city of Chicago, which he will build into his own utopia. Unfortunately his model city never comes to fruition and both he and his Bureau liaison get much of the slack for destroying one of America’s greatest cities and now the government wants him dead.

15
EL TIGRE by Aaron Buchsbaum, Teddy Riley
A family vacation goes horribly awry when the father is mistaken for the most ruthless drug lord in Mexico, El Tigre.

15
MURDER CITY
Will Simmons
An ensemble crime story set in Detroit about an ex-con who goes back for one last heist in order to settle his family’s debt.

14
THE FINAL BROADCAST – Chris Hutton, Eddie O’Keefe
A man takes a job as a radio broadcaster in a small town, only to discover that it is embedded with a radical group planning mass destruction in conjunction with an upcoming lunar eclipse.

14
THE SURVIVALIST by Stephen Fingleton
Years after lack of resources result in much of the world’s population dying off, a survivalist is living on a farm alone until a woman and her seventeen year old daughter show up looking for cover.

13
BLACK BOX by David Guggenheim
When Air Force One crashes, a journalist discovers a cover up after gaining access to the plane’s black box data and must unravel the mystery.

13
CHERRIES by Brian Kehoe, Jim Kehoe
Three fathers learn of their teenage daughters’ pact to lose their virginity on prom night and band together to stop them.

13
FROM NEW YORK TO FLORIDA by Austin Reynolds
An undisciplined boy is sent to Florida for the summer with his grandparents, and the drive south changes him forever.13

HEY, STELLA! by Tom Shephard
The story of how Marlon Brando won the role of Stanley Kowalski in Elia Kazan’s broadway play A Streetcar Named Desire.

12
THE BROKEN by John Glosser
In 1967 Oklahoma, a war vet/farmer investigates the suspicious death of his estranged son in the next county. When he discovers his son’s brutal murder was a covered-up gay bashing, he goes on a one-man mission to take down the corrupt sheriff responsible.

12
THE DISCIPLE PROGRAM by Tyler Marceca
A man begins an investigation into his wife’s mysterious death, only to find that it goes much deeper than he imagined.

12
JOJO RABBIT by Taika Waititi
After being severely hurt by a grenade at Hitler youth camp, a prideful and nationalistic ten-year old boy discovers that his mother is hiding a fifteen year old Jewish girl in their house.

11
ALL-NIGHTER by Brad Ingelsby
An aging hitman goes up against his boss over a single night in order to protect his family.

11
MCCARTHY by Justin Kremer
It is 1951. Junior Senator Joe McCarthy feels lost. He’s anonymous, just another suit on Capitol Hill. He craves attention and celebrity. He’s desperate to be noticed, to be adored. Inspired by the response of the American public to the House of Un-American Activities Committee, McCarthy decides that communism will be his defining issue. What follows is nearly unthinkable — national fame, a shocking conspiracy, a sitting President afraid to oppose him, and a torrid journey of self destruction and paranoia.

11
THE WINTER KILLS by Ben Carney
A disgraced cop pursues the serial killer who murdered his partner ten years ago, has resurfaced, and is killing again.

11
WHO FRAMED TOMMY CALLAHAN? by Harry Kellerman
An elementary school student searches for the truth behind the candy bar ring conspiracy that got his brother expelled.

10
OUR NAME IS ADAM by T.S. Nowlin
An astronaut travels back in time to enlist the help of his younger self.

10
THE PORTLAND CONDITION by Dan Cohn, Jeremy Miller
Set against the backdrop of rainy Portland, Oregon, a young man finds himself falling in love for the first time – only to receive a letter from his future self, warning him of impending heartbreak.

10
SOMACELL by Ashleigh Powell
A female prison guard in the future, where prisoners are rehabilitated with virtual reality, discovers a conspiracy that puts her loyalty into question.

10
UNTITLED COPS SCRIPT by Blake McCormick
Following a costume party where they dressed as cops, two best friends are mistaken for actual police officers and find themselves on the run, after being forced to bring a dangerous criminal back to the station.

9
CONVERSION by Marissa Jo Cerar
A preacher’s wife, grieving from the loss of her teenage son and struggling to hold her family together, forms an unlikely friendship with a young street hustler who helps her understand her lost son and survive alcoholic depression.

9
GOODBYE, FELIX CHESTER by Max Taxe
After finding out he has a month left to live, high school junior Felix Chester focuses all of his time and energy on one goal: losing his virginity to his dream girl.

9
PENNY DREADFUL by Shane Atkinson
Desperate to hang on to his pregnant girlfriend, bumbling Dennis gets caught up in a kidnapping scheme gone awry, leaving him saddled with a sociopathic little girl who seemingly calls the shots.

8
BORDER COUNTRY by Jonathan Stokes
A veteran goes to war against a crew of corrupt cops intent on controlling the US/Mexico border.

8
DOPPELGANGERS by Evan Mirzai, Shea Mirzai
Buttoned-down 20-something Eric isn’t ready to marry his longtime girlfriend Abby. His only way out is through slacker Sam, his identical twin brother, who offers to pose as Eric to do the dumping. But the plan becomes a disaster when Sam realizes Abby is actually really cool–and falls head over heels for her…

8
THE EQUALIZER by Richard Wenk
A veteran covert operative seeking redemption for his dark deeds quits a CIA-like agency and devotes himself to helping others where injustice has been done.

8
GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM by Jason Micallef
After nine years, a NASA communications expert reconnects with the astronaut she believed to be dead and helps rescue him from space.

8
OUT OF STATE by Eric Pearson
While driving his regular interstate bus route, an emotionally fractured ex-convict finds himself acting as a father figure to a forsaken young boy from the Philadelphia ghetto, even though he knows that the boy is smuggling drugs.

8
TIMES SQUARE by Taylor Materne, Jake Rubin
Set amidst the transformation of Times Square from New York’s seediest neighborhood to the commercialized Disneyland it is today, when a secret from his past is unearthed, a young man’s loyalties are divided between his neighborhood boss who raised him and the grizzled ex-cop who swore to protect him.

7
BLEEDING KANSAS by Russell Sommer, Dan Frey
A runaway slave and a sheriff must journey to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Gubernatorial candidate against the backdrop of Kansas’ induction into statehood and whether or not it would be a slave or free state.

7
EX BOYFRIEND OF THE BRIDE by Matt Hausfater
After he finds out his ex-girlfriend is getting married, a man decides to go to the wedding in order to stop her from going through with it.

7
HIBERNATION by Will Frank, Geneva Robertson-Dworet
A wrongly convicted inmate volunteers for a hibernation experiment in exchange for one day of parole every five years, which he uses to prove his innocence and search for his missing daughter across an increasingly futuristic landscape.

7
THE HOOVERVILLE DEAD by Brantley Aufill
Set in St. Louis in the 1920s, washed up baseball player Will Cosgrove is a private eye with his older brother Ross. When Ross goes missing, Will stumbles upon a deep secret that the disease taking over the town is not quite what it seems and a mob boss turned Governor will do anything to keep the town’s secret from being revealed.

7
THE KILLING SPREE by Derek Elliott, Jack Donaldson
Heartbroken after being dumped by his longtime girlfriend, a guy’s best friends devise the perfect plan for his recovery and teach him how to sleep with as many women as humanly possible.

7
MIDNIGHT AT NOON by Nathaniel Halpern
On the run after robbing a bank during the great depression, two brothers find themselves trapped in the harsh region known as the Dust Bowl where a ruthless killer hunts them down.

7
THE OUTSKIRTS by Dominique Ferrari, Suzanne Wrubel
After falling victim to a humiliating prank by the high school Queen Bee, best friends and world-class geeks, Mindy and Jodi, decide to get their revenge by uniting the outcasts of the school against her and her circle of friends.

7
STOCKHOLM, PENNSYLVANIA by Nikole Beckwith
A young woman, kidnapped when she was a kid, returns home to the family she barely remembers and struggles to feel ‘at home.’

7
TRANSCENDENCE by Jack Paglen
An epic love story set in a time where a dying scientist is able to upload his consciousness into the internet and, facing its global implications, must fight against the forces who are actively working against the existence of a singularity.

6
ALMANAC by Jason Pagan, Andrew Stark
A group of high school kids discover how to time travel, but fail to recognize the potential consequences.

6
COME AND FIND ME by Zack Whedon
When his girlfriend goes missing, David must track down her whereabouts after he realizes she’s not who she was pretending to be.

6
DON’T MAKE ME GO by Vera Herbert
When a single father to a teenage daughter learns that he has a fatal brain tumor, he takes her on a road trip to find the mother who abandoned her years before and to try to teach her everything she might need over the rest of her life.

6
THE EEL by Roberto Bentivegna
An escaped convict is ensnared in a plot by a corrupt Sheriff to kidnap the young heiress to an oil fortune, complicating his quest for freedom.

6
FUCK MARRY KILL by Neel Shah, Alex Blagg
Three best friends return for their high school reunion intent on righting all the wrongs done to them in high school … by either fucking, marrying, or killing their tormentors.

6
HOLD ON TO ME by Brad Ingelsby
Based on an article written by Hillel Levin and Jim Keene, a ruthless and moneyhungry woman uses a hapless man as a pawn in her criminal schemes.

6
KING OF HEISTS by Will Staples
Based on the book King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America, written by J. North Conway. An unassuming man in the elite New York society assembles a crew that pulls off the largest bank heist in American history in 1878.

6
THE LIGHTHOUSE by Eric Kirsten
William Van Alen’s building of the Chrysler building and the competition to be the first to complete the world’s tallest building.

6
MONSOON by Matt Ackley
A dangerous love affair between a photojournalist and a black market smuggler set against the June 2001 massacre of the Royal Family in Nepal.

6
THE PAPER MAN by Sean O’Keefe
The true story of Matthias Sindelar, the Austrian footballer voted as the Sportsman of the Century and killed by Hitler’s Nazi party.

6
PESTE by Barbara Marshall
Following the outbreak of a virus that wipes out the majority of the human population, a teen documents her family’s new life in quarantine and tries to protect her infected sister.

6
TITANS OF PARK ROW by Mitch Akselrad
Young William Randolph Hearst goes to war against an aging Joseph Pulitzer as each tries to monopolize coverage of a mysterious homicide capturing New York’s imagination, birthing the modern concept of sensationalist media coverage.