Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A group of survivors search for answers in an ash-fallen Los Angeles after an alien invasion.
About: Ben Magid first gained traction in Hollywood with his dark take on Peter Pan, which reimagined Pan as a serial killer. He sold this script, Invasion, a couple years later to Summit.
Writer: Ben Magid
Details: 8/11/09 Draft – 98 pages

I was able to escape the Cambodian village I was being held captive in last night, hitch a ride from a local one-eyed chicken farmer, and make it to Phnom Penh Airport, all before the screenwriting terrorist organization known as “Eat The Cat” knew I was gone. However, I did manage to secure a producer credit should their reboot of “The Adventures Of Pluto Nash” make it to theaters. I also hold the rights to my story, which will be the focus of a primetime special on 60 Minutes. More on that before Thanksgiving.

It all seems rather serendipitous, seeing as there was that big debate on TV last night, what with the presidential election and all. I expect screenwriting terrorism to be a hot topic moving forward, and I want to make sure my story is known. For those of you wondering which way I’m leaning, I’ll just say that there’s nothing more annoying than political junkies arguing about politics. It’s almost creepy in fact, and sorta makes me not want to vote. By the way, when the heck are they going to make it so you can vote online??? Voter turnout would go up 500%!!! But nooooo. They have to make us go OUT and vote. You wanna know what that is? That’s bias against lazy people. If the lazy people in this nation were allowed to vote, I promise you things would be a LOT different.

Don’t I have to review a script today? I guess so. Except today’s script is so….average. How is one supposed to get excited about an average script? And it shouldn’t be that way. I like invasion scripts. Well, I like the IDEA of invasion scripts. But they need that little Sunkist twist so that they stand out, and I’m not sure Invasion has that. With that said, surprisingly enough, I believe Invasion could be a cool movie. But it’s going to need some characters and it’s going to need a pulse – two things it’s lacking at the moment.

Invasion starts out sharply enough, with a group of commuters travelling through Los Angeles via subway (L.A. has a subway?) when they hear a giant BOOM from above. Their train goes haywire in a way that would scare even Chris Pine and Denzel Washington. It accordions into a wall and the survivors, after checking to make sure all their limbs are intact, make their way up top.

They’re greeted with a Los Angeles awash in what looks like snow, but it quickly becomes apparent that this is ash. LA has been nuked, and not by your friendly neighborhood North Koreans either. But by aliens! The only reason our crew survived is because they were in some lead-lined portion of the subway tunnel.

But that hardly means they’re out of trouble. This ash limits visibility to about 30 feet, which means they’re walking blind in this battleground, with strange alien forms always looming just beyond your field of vision. That and the GOOP. What’s the “goop” you say? Well, the goop would be the big puddles of sticky gooey goo that seem to be everywhere. Our survivors realize that this goo used to be PEOPLE! And if you touch it, the goo contaminates you, turning you into fellow goo.

Like most group survivor movies, the goal is to get to the survivor rendezvous point, which our guys make a guess is at the Federal Building in Westwood. But when they get there, there’s no one around. They do find a radio transmission, however, that states the Navy is sending ships over to Santa Monica to save all the survivors. So away they go again, this time encountering some heavy casualties. For those who manage to survive, they’re met with quite the shocker, a big surprise that’ll have them wishing they were K.O.’d back at that subway crash along with the rest of the commuters.

Before I get into my problems with the script, I have to admit Invasion’s kind of a clever idea for a movie. When you take on these giant cataclysmic events, it’s a smart idea to localize things. But that usually means putting your characters in an ordinary location, such as a house (i.e. the way “Signs” did it). In this case, we’re actually in the middle of the chaos, however it plays like a contained thriller, since we can never really see beyond 30 feet. We’re watching things play out, but only within this tiny fog-limited bubble. I thought that was cool. Remember, our imaginations are always worse than reality, and wondering what was just outside that bubble made for some nice suspense.

However here’s the problem. I didn’t care. You’ll notice that I didn’t mention any characters in my review and that’s because I don’t remember any. Oh sure, there was the tough former army type and the annoyed businessman type. But there wasn’t a single character who had anything unique or interesting going on. Even Magid seemed unsure about his characters, as he didn’t really decide who to focus on until the third act, where I guess this dad and his daughter became the de facto protagonists with a broken relationship that all of a sudden needed mending.

I seem to say this until I’m blue in the face but you gotta spend more time on your characters people! You gotta give everyone AT LEAST ONE unique trait, something (or a combination of somethings) that make them unlike anybody else we’ve ever seen before. Because if a character doesn’t feel real, then we’re bored by them, and if you have a script like this with 7-8 generic stereotypes running around, it doesn’t matter how cool your plot is, you’ve written a script without a pulse.

But some of you are probably saying, “But wait a minute, Carson. This sold!” True true, it did sell. But it sold on the concept and Magid’s heat due to his hot script, Pan. That’s the thing – when you sell a script or you write a hot script, companies are much more comfortable buying from you, and won’t hold you to the same standards unknowns are held to. I know it’s backwards thinking – but it’s the way the business works. If you’re not known to Hollywood, you need to be amazing. Because if someone buys something from an unknown and that script has a lot of problems, people won’t want to push it through the system and whoever was responsible for buying it could get fired. But if you bought a script from a celebrated writer with a hot script that everyone loves, that’s something people want to get behind, even if the script isn’t that great.  So it’s a much safer bet, even if it’s not as good!

But I’m getting off track. The point I was trying to make was this: NAIL YOUR CHARACTERS. Put everything into your characters. Make them flawed and mysterious and conflicted and relatable. But most of all, make them unique. We’re more likely to see someone as a real person if we haven’t seen that person before in a movie.

Invasion: Cool concept. Could be a neat movie. But needs unique and way more interesting characters.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] Wasn’t for me.
[ ] Worth the read
[ ] Impressive
[ ] Genius

What I learned: Even when you’re focusing on a group of people, it’s a good idea to have a lead protagonist.  Not that “a group as protagonist” can’t be done, but if you’re not focusing on a lead person or a lead couple, it’s hard for us to make that connection with the characters so that we actually give a shit about them.  And that’s exactly what happened here.  I didn’t know who the main character was so it’s not a surprise that I didn’t feel a connection to anybody.

Genre: Erotic Thriller
Premise: After a sexually adventuresome couple moves into an upscale neighborhood, the woman accidentally murders her new neighbor while defending herself against rape. When the couple chooses to dump the body instead of confessing to the police, things take a turn for the worse.
About: According to Variety (June 2011), the script sold to Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. David
Writer: David Schickler
Details: 90 pages, Mar. 10, 2011 draft

In full disclosure, I knew nothing about this script before I’d read it, other than that it was “Hitchcock-ian.” But for me, the word has always been something of an invitation, so with a touch more curiosity than “nothing” should warrant, I dove right into this baby, this script called “Borrowing Girls.” Gee, I wonder what I’m supposed to be thinking about this title…

It all starts with a young couple moving into an idyllic neighborhood called the Pinnacle Estates. Gretchen and Daryl Gift are that perfect unit that maybe we’d all like to be. She’s 27 and gorgeous, a former actress now selling makeup at an upscale department store. He’s 30-something and confident, having recently scored a major contract as an architect. Daryl and Gretchen’s new home isn’t the biggest on the block, but still, in Daryl’s words, “they made it.”

Oh, and they share a very healthy sex life, too. (More on this later.)

They soon befriend their neighbors Samantha and Todd. Samantha, as one local puts it, is the queen bee of “the Pin,” while Todd, it turns out, is persona non grata for having lost a ton of money for people in the town with business deals that all went south – paying for it in the bedroom, even, being routinely rejected for sex.

One night, Gretchen and Daryl have them over for dinner and afterwards, the guys split off from the girls into the basement (where a lot of the fun of this movie takes place). Drunk and bonding, Todd presses Daryl for his “secret,” how he gets Gretchen to be so hot for him all the time — code for, “I noticed your wife is quite hot and I would very much like to boink her.” But whether Daryl gets the subtext or not, his answer to Todd’s question will prove to be most consequential. Be warned, the next little bit is going to get complicated, so just bear with me. For a movie like this, it kinda goes with the territory…

The thing about Gretchen and Daryl’s sex life is that it’s wrapped around a pretty unique fetish (or maybe it isn’t unique? And I’m just too tame?). They do this thing where Gretchen dresses up like various women in their lives, people like the realtor, the nanny, the Denny’s waitress, etc., and then has sex with Daryl – in character.

Schickler, a novelist and screenwriter, previously adapted his own novel “Sweet and Vicious.”

They videotape these sessions and keep a whole library of DVD’s, one for every woman, or character, I should say, played by Gretchen.

To answer Todd’s question, Daryl decides to SHOW him these DVD’s (which they keep in the basement) of Gretchen getting screwed while disguised as various women from around the Pin. But because Gretchen is such a good actor, Todd is in total awe of Daryl – thinking that Daryl is actually having sex with all these women! At first, Daryl tries to correct him, but Todd is so impressed that Daryl can’t help but let it ride. Daryl adds to it, however, with a lie – that Gretchen allows him to sleep with other women, and that the two of them regularly watch these DVD’s together.

Todd becomes so jealous and curious that he steals one of these discs on his way out. He becomes instantly addicted, so much so that he sneaks into the Gifts’ house the next day to steal another one. When he returns home to watch the second DVD, however, he’s stunned to find Daryl having sex with his wife Samantha! Todd rushes over to the Gifts’ to confront Daryl about it, but Daryl’s out. Gretchen’s home alone. Tearing at the seams from pent up rage and sexual frustration, Todd ends up trying to RAPE Gretchen, who, after struggling to fight him off, manages to bury a fire poker into his skull. Yup. Todd drops dead, and later, when Daryl comes home to discover the bloody scene, he immediately tries to call the cops…

But Gretchen won’t let him.

And while thus far, the movie had me thinking Adrian Lyne or David Cronenberg, this is where the term “Hitchcockian” finally comes into play…

From here on out, the movie’s about whether or not the two will get away with it, of course, tracking Gretchen’s evolution (or devolution?) from a seemingly nice girl with a sexual kick to a full-on femme fatale as she convinces her husband to dump the body into the river. Enter Detective Corry Donner, a cop who’s not even in the right department for the case but is handpicked by Samantha for the fact that they share a personal history. Corry does manage to make things difficult for Gretchen and Daryl, who do their best to survive his meddling, but in the end, it’s Gretchen’s unrelenting commitment to getting away that causes the greatest strife for all.

But let’s just stop here for a second. While the rest of the script does play out as a taut little suspense piece, more or less, there was one question that I just couldn’t get out of my head during the entire read: Why didn’t Daryl just tell Todd the truth?! I just didn’t get it. And I’ll get this out of the way really quick – I personally can’t stand it when a major plot point is forced into being by way of inebriated characters. Like, anything that doesn’t make sense can happen just so long as the character’s had a few beers or a couple of tokes. Wrong. Drugs and alcohol help characters do what they secretly want to do but can’t under the inhibitions that society forces on us. Drugs and alcohol do NOT make nonsensical plot points suddenly make sense.

I say this because I reread this scene several times in search of a better motivation. The only other contender was that maybe being new to the neighborhood, and wanting to prove to Gretchen that they do, in fact, belong in the Pin, Daryl was overly eager to ingratiate himself with his new neighbor. But still, it’s overkill because all this occurs after Todd offers to sponsor Daryl’s application to the country club. I didn’t feel Daryl needed to go that far.

The other problematic aspect to this issue is one of logic, I suppose, that the story Daryl gave Todd was less impressive than the actual story, which is that Gretchen’s figured out a way for him to have sex with other women – without having sex with other women! I know, at a glance, the notion of having sex with lots of different women is far more impressive to most men, but for a movie such as this, it’s more interesting and appropriate for a character to be psychologically and emotionally capable and desirous of sexual experimentation. While Todd can barely get Samantha to have vanilla sex with him, here Daryl has a wife who does this sh*t voluntarily. Awesome! That, to me, seems like a better answer to, “How do you two keep things hot?”

But logic aside, the basic issue still remains – I didn’t buy that Daryl had to let Todd think he had sex with all those women. I mean, yeah, there was no way for Daryl to know that such a lie would ever lead to such a crazy chain of events, but still, there were so many other reasons to stick to the truth. If Daryl was, in fact, having sex with all the women in town, is that something he should advertise to someone he hardly even knows? I think not. The problem is, everything that Gretchen and Daryl endure after that point seems so… unnecessary. And this unfortunate thought popped into my head every ten or so pages, sometimes prompted by something on the page, sometimes just because.

But this might just be me. Another reader might be fine with it. But even so, there’s another issue that they’re likely to run into, which is that the main characters disappear for too much of the remaining plot and their reactions to major events are all but buried, barely even thought of! One clear cut example of this is when, after they dump the body, Gretchen and Daryl attempt to sneak into Samantha’s house to retrieve the stolen DVD in order to clear the path of evidence. This is totally in line with their overall goal, which is to get away with the murder. But then, this DVD retrieval objective takes a backseat for an entire sequence of the film (too long, in my opinion), such that by the time the plan resurfaces, it feels like the movie should have moved on to something else.

The added problem to this is that the lack of a more consistent effort toward the goal also undermines the urgency. It’s rare that characters are less motivated to pursue their goals than the audience is in seeing them do it. For a movie like this, where the stakes are clear enough – and high – it’s not only a momentum killer but a failure to deliver on the genre. Don’t deflate the tension by allowing, or worse, making your main characters lay off the primary objective!

Another form of this “presence” issue came up in the lack of reactions to certain key events, one obvious example being the discovery of Todd’s dead body. Shouldn’t this be the event that comes about, say, at around the midpoint to raise the stakes and danger for our protagonists? Why do we not even get a moment where they react to being invited to the funeral? Why do we never see the two freaking out but then regrouping and adapting to a new course of action? Yes, you do need scenes with Samantha getting the investigation going, and fine, I’ll even deal with the expository business with Samantha’s history with Corry (more on this in a moment), but if your main characters are, for a while, going to be in the backseat as far as pushing the narrative is concerned, then you have to at least track their reactions to and attitudes about all that’s going on in the meantime.

But regarding Corry and Samantha’s backstory, although I appreciated that the cop role in this film had a more personal involvement in all the goings-on, it felt at times like it was either too much or too little. Either keep him as just the cop, or go all the way and resolve whatever issue it is that’s still bugging Samantha. And make it RELEVANT somehow. And not coy or deliberately vague. Yes, they have a brief moment in the end that’ supposed to imply resolution, but I’m not exactly thinking about their subplot at that point because it occurs right after the most violent scene in the movie. And ultimately, even in hindsight, it was too little, too late.

Finally, I wondered about the movie’s theme. What was it? I’m not sure. I hate to come off all post-feminist or whatever, because I’m anything but (as my girlfriend is happy to point out when I demonstrate this fact myself), but what does it mean to have a woman who accidentally murders someone out of self-defense against rape go on to become the monster of the movie? Is it saying that anyone with a gamier sexual appetite is inherently immoral? Is the movie simply saying not to lie? To keep your perversions to yourself? Without any clear answers, I was left with a touch of “meh” and a dash of “So what?”

To be fair, the script does several things well, one of which is that it earns the prefix to its thriller genre. Boy, is this film erotic when it has to be. Whether it’s something as small as flirtatious banter or as extreme as having sex simply to deceive, the sexual content of the film is quite effective. It arouses. It smolders on the page. And it leaves you wanting more – even though you get plenty enough. And the whole thing of getting dressed up other women, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in a movie before. I personally thought it was an interesting enough to be the novelty of the movie. That, along with the fact that Gretchen is a compelling character with so many sides, ultimately makes for an easy if not enjoyable read. It’s a script that I hope undergoes the necessary improvements because with them, the movie will do what it promises.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?

What I learned: Sometimes, there is such a thing as being too short. While Borrowing Girls’ 90 pages were a breeze to get through, in the end, the story you’re left with is missing a good amount of material that needs to be there in order for the story to be fully satisfying.

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: Drama
Premise: (from writer) A man embarks on a relationship with a 9/11 widow after claiming to have lost his brother in the attacks.
Writer: Edward Ruggiero
Details: 107 pages.

I actually read Nine-Twelve awhile ago and always wanted to review it for Amateur Friday.  So when the writer, Ed Ruggiero, sent me a new draft, I thought, “Perfect.”  Don’t worry.  That doesn’t mean I’m not checking all the submissions you guys are sending me, just that I don’t like them!  No, I’m kidding.  But I do want you to remember there are a lot of submissions.  If your concept is just “okay” or “decent,” it’s probably not going to be picked.  I mean sure, it might be amazing, but I could use that same logic for each of the  hundreds of other “okay” or “decent” concepts.  So why should I pick yours over theirs?  You know?  I’d rather pick a concept that gets my juices flowing – that has a little more POP.

Artie Grossman is in his late 30s and doesn’t have much to show for it.  He has some inheritance money, which he’s learned to squeeze every penny out of, and when he’s not taking money out of his dead parents’ bank account, he’s pulling charity scams on local businesses.  Oh yeah, Artie’s not a good person.  He’s pretty much a piece of shit.  He’s negative.  He’s dishonest.  And as we’ve already established, he’s a thief.  Yup, a total winner.

But not everything about Artie is pathetic.  He actually takes care of his dysfunctional brother, Dicky, who’s so terrified of the real world that he rarey goes outside.  Artie’s working with Dicky a day at a time to get him back into society.  So we got a pathetic asshole thief and a guy who’s afraid to leave his apartment.  Talk about a gene pool.  I’m not sure even Axe Body Spray could make these two attractive.

That is unless they LIE.  And Artie is one hell of a liar.  After spotting a homely but beautiful woman on the subway, he follows her across the city into a random support group, a support group he soon realizes is for peole who lost family members in the 9/11 attacks.  Spurred on by this woman’s unique energy, he joins in, and quickly finds himself recounting a story about how his brother died in the attacks.  It’s moving and powerful and total horse shit.  But the woman, Kerry, buys into it, and afterwards the two recount their 9/11 memories with one another.

Turns out Kerry lost her husband in the attacks, and hasn’t been on a date since!  She just can’t let go.  Particularly because she had a chance to answer her husband’s final phone call, but carelessly sent it to voicemail, figuring she’d talk to him later.  She was a different person back then.  Not a very good one.  And she’s paid the price for it ever since.

However now, with Artie in the picture, she gets out there and starts to feel good again, which you’d think would make her frustrated mother happy.  But it turns out her mother doesn’t trust this new guy.  She feels there’s something suspicious about him.  A mother’s intuition is always right!  But Kerry’s too wrapped up in remembering what it’s like to feel happy again so she ignores all the warning signs (number 1 of which is – don’t date guys without jobs).

What starts out as just a meaningless little jaunt becomes serious, and before you know it, Artie is all in, which is strange.  He’s never been all-in before.  And when you’re all in, all your secrets have to come out.  You can try to hide them, but your significant other’s going to find out sooner or later.  So what’s Artie’s solution to this?  To run away with Kerry.  Go somewhere as far away as possible. In other words, avoid the problem.  But this appears to be one of those problems that’s never going to go away.

Dramatic Irony.

We know something about our hero that the romantic lead does not.  That he’s lying to her about the worst thing imaginable.  It’s dispicable.  It’s unthinkable.  And it’s great writing.  Because this entire relationship is built on a lie that we’re aware of, a lie that we know, if told, will destroy the relationship, we want to stick around and see what happens when Kerry finds out.  Dramatic irony creates suspense.  It creates anticipation.  It keeps our ass in the seats.

The question is, can one instance of dramatic irony carry an entire film?  Reading this a second time, I found myself impatient, particularly during the second act.  It felt like not enough was going on, and I realized just how much the script was leaning on that dramatic irony.  It was the ONLY thing driving the story forward, and the longer I read, the more I realized it wasn’t enough.

In contrast, let’s look at Good Will Hunting.  We have the same thing going on in that story.  Will is lying to Skylar.  To impress her, he tells her he’s well-off and has a huge family, when he’s actually poor and an orphan.  There’s not as much at stake with the lie as in Nine-Twelve, but you’ll notice that that’s only one part of the story.  We also have Will’s relationship with Sean (the therapist) that needs to get resolved, his inner conflict, his future as a math genius, his issues with Ben Affleck’s character.  There are more developments in that screenplay, more subplots, and therefore the entire movie doesn’t feel like it’s resting on a single wooden beam.

Another thing I want to talk about here is rewriting.  Now, to be honest, I don’t remember the notes I gave Ed on this script, so I’m not saying he’s guilty of this.  But when he said he had a new draft, I know I was expecting…I don’t know, just more changes.  It feels here like just a few scenes were changed and another couple added.

It’s something I’ve noticed a lot of lately as I’m reading more and more rewrites.  Not much has been rewritten!  Changing a few scenes here and there isn’t a rewrite.  A rewrite may entail redeveloping the theme, eliminating or combining characters, adding new subplots, eliminating entire subplots. coming into the story 30 pages later, changing the setting so it better matches your concept, changing your character’s fatal flaw.  If all you’re doing in a rewrite is adding or taking away scenes, you’re probably not doing enough (unless it’s one of your final drafts).

Having said that, there’s something about this script that got to me.  I like the way Ruggiero writes.  He has a unique point of view.  I love how he’s not afraid to make his hero dark.  I understand that that’s going to turn some people off, but while I didn’t like what Artie was doing, he did keep me interested.  I wanted to see if he was going to change or not.  If he was gong to move on from this disgusting person.

I also liked the touch of humor.  There was something funny about Artie.  I can imagine a young Bill Murray absolutely killing this role (who *is* the next Bill Murray by the way).  So I guess my final suggestion would be to inject this script with MORE STUFF.  In the meantime, the voice is unique enough and the writing good enough that it warrants a read.  But I still feel like something’s been left on the table in this rewrite.

Script link: Nine-Twelve

What I learned:  What I’m looking for in a concept breaks down to three things.  The first is a high concept (i.e. Time travel, aliens, monsters – any big idea combined with a unique situation).  The second is something with some clear conflict.  Two warring families is more interesting to me, for example, than a generic guy trying to find love.  The third and final one is irony.  If there’s an ironic component to the concept, I get excited. Look at the irony in this logline.  A man pretending to have lost someone in 9/11 starts a realtionship with a 9/11 widow.  That same concept isn’t nearly as compelling if, say, a man who just lost his arm starts a relationship with a 9/11 widow.  There’s no irony there!

SS:  Can you tell us a little about your screenwriting background? Before The Flight of Nez Perce got on the Black List, how many scripts had you written? How long had you been writing?

ENM: I started to really focus on screenwriting shortly after graduating from film school. Like many other people, I came to LA with dreams of being the next Steven Spielberg, but quickly discovered they weren’t just giving those jobs away. Writing was the one thing I could do in the midnight hours that didn’t require a crew or significant amounts of money. So, every night after work, I’d come home, sit down at my computer, and force myself to write until one or two in the morning.

My first real effort was a screenplay called THE LAST LONE INVENTOR, which chronicled Philo T. Farnsworth’s epic “David vs. Goliath” battle with David Sarnoff over the invention of television. It was based on a book that a friend of mine had optioned. We were about 110 pages into the script when it was suddenly announced that Steven Spielberg and Aaron Sorkin were doing a Broadway play based on the same story. As you can imagine, that promptly killed our project. So I put that script into a desk drawer – where it remains to this day – and decided to focus on another story I had always been passionate about: THE FLIGHT OF THE NEZ PERCE.

SS: Did you get your agent before that happened? How did you get your agent? Actually, how did you get your manager AND your agent?

ENM: After I finished THE FLIGHT OF THE NEZ PERCE, I gave it to a few industry friends to read. We were all working as assistants at the time and my assumption was they’d skim through it, have a good laugh, and then ridicule me for wasting six months of my life. As your guest reviewer rightly points out, it’s not exactly a “four quadrant summer tentpole” movie. But, much to my surprise, they liked it and started passing it around. One of my friends, Adam Yoelin – who is now an executive at Flynn Picture Co. – sent it to Britton Rizzio at Circle of Confusion. She read the script, asked me to lunch, and signed me before the check came. I was honestly thrilled. A few months later, an executive at Dreamworks sent the script to Charlie Ferraro and Jenny Maryasis at UTA. I ended up signing with them, as well. And the rest, I guess, is history.

SS: Desperate Hours sold to Johnny Depp’s company. How did that happen? Can you explain how the sale went down?

ENM: The process was actually pretty simple and straightforward. After I finished the script, my agents sent it out to a few places. Johnny Depp’s company really responded to the material and brought it to GK Films, where they have a producing deal. Graham King read the script and offered to buy it. The entire thing went down around Thanksgiving and made for a very nice holiday weekend.

SS: I tell a lot of writers to avoid period pieces because they’re such hard sells. You obviously haven’t been listening! For those other writers out there who love this genre, what’s your advice to them? How do you write a great period piece and how do you sell a period piece?

ENM: I’d offer three pieces of advice, for whatever it’s worth.

First, make sure that the story you’re telling has a modicum of cultural relevancy so that it resonates with audiences today. The best “period pieces” have always had more to say about the times in which they’re made than the times in which they depict. Take any John Ford western from the 1950s and compare it to the westerns of the 1970s, for example. Or consider for a moment why Arthur Miller wrote THE CRUCIBLE during the McCarthy hearings. The power of history has always been rooted in its ability to inform the present through events of the past.

Second, if your goal is to sell a piece of material (as opposed to finding representation or creating a calling card for yourself), then I would highly encourage writers to tell stories that are contained, modestly budgeted, and offer great roles for leading actors. There’s a reason why DESPERATE HOURS sold while THE FLIGHT OF THE NEZ PERCE remains on the market. Writers should bear this in mind before putting pen to paper.

And finally, at the end of the day, period pieces may be tough sells, but it’s also important that writers tell stories they’re passionate about. That’s the only way you can hope to distinguish yourself on the page. Personally, I can tell you that every good thing that’s happened in my life – both professionally and personally – has come as direct consequence of doing something I really believe in. The deck is already stacked against you as a writer. There’s no reason not to swing for the fences.

SS: One of the biggest problems I see with amateur period pieces is that the writer doesn’t seem to know that much more than I do about the subject matter. With you, it’s the opposite. Desperate Hours is so rich with backstory and history. How do you achieve that? What’s your secret?

There’s no secret, it’s just a matter of doing your homework. I read more than 10,000 pages of research material before starting THE FLIGHT OF THE NEZ PERCE. For DESPERATE HOURS, I read books on everything from the Rough Riders and the Spanish-American War to World War I and the Influenza pandemic. I also tracked down survivor testimony and even spoke to a few people who had lived through the crisis. I’m currently writing a movie for Alcon Entertainment that takes place in Romania during World War II. I knew very little about that country’s history when I started, so I got my hands on every book I could find and also read biographies on all the real life people who are depicted in the movie.

The research ends up being a lot of work, but I think it’s essential for the script to feel authentic. And, if I’m being completely honest, I have to say it’s also my favorite part of the process. I feel very fortunate to have a job where I get paid to educate myself. Very few people are that lucky.

SS: One of the things I loved about this script was the inherent conflict within all the relationships. They all dated back to many years ago and needed to be hashed out here and now, within the timeframe of this story. What’s your approach to your characters and your relationships? Do you hash all that out ahead of time or do you figure it out on the way?

ENM: I’m sure every writer’s process is different, but I’ve found that I really need three things to get started: the world, the theme, and “the way into” the story. Once I have those elements, the narrative starts to unfold and I’m usually able to figure out the rest as I go along. For example, it wasn’t until the second draft of DESPERATE HOURS that I had the idea of combining the town’s sheriff and the mayor into one character in order to underscore the town’s utter devastation. Similarly, Edward’s limp was just a character trait until I suddenly realized that I could use it to catalyze Tom’s turning point in a critical moment of the story. This type of approach probably results in a longer writing process, but it’s honestly how I get my best ideas.

SS: That leads to an obvious question – How long did it take you to write Desperate Hours, from conception of the idea to the final draft? How many drafts did it take you?

ENM: The process took about a year from start to finish and I ended up doing three separate drafts before turning it into my manager. That probably seems like a long time, but in my defense, I booked a couple jobs in between and, as I mentioned earlier, there was a considerable amount of research involved.

But if I’m being completely candid, I also have to admit that I was unaware when I began just how difficult it is to construct a truly effective “slow burn” thriller. Writing DESPERATE HOURS gave me a whole new level of appreciation for HIGH NOON. That film is so elegant and deceptively simple. Figuring out how to ratchet up the suspense scene by scene, while developing theme and characters in concert with a real time plot is, by far, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as a writer.

SS: Since rewriting is the area where scripts get perfected, I’d love to know what your rewriting process is like.

ENM: For me, rewriting isn’t just where scripts get “perfected” (if that’s even possible), it’s where the real writing begins. Once I’ve finished the first draft, I print out a hard copy and go to a neighborhood restaurant with a red pen and just start to tear the thing apart. I write whole new scenes by hand, move things around, combine characters, etc. By the time I’m done, there’s usually more red ink on the paper than there is black.

I really love this part of the process because it’s invigorating. You begin to imagine the story and the characters in a whole new way. It’s almost as if you can put yourself in the audience’s position for the very first time. It’s here that you begin to come up with all those great little moments of connective tissue and “scenes between scenes” that really flesh out the arc of the story and propel the characters forward.

SS: Another thing I really loved about your script was that each act was distinct and unique. You had the first act, which had our hero coming back into society, the second, which centered around the mystery of the girl, and the third, which was the town invasion. Do you deliberately try to make each act unique or was that just a byproduct of this story? How do you approach structure in general?

ENM: That specific example was a byproduct of the story, but I do give quite a bit of thought to structure before I begin writing. I just ask myself the basic questions: What am I ultimately building towards? What’s the thematic arc of the story? And what’s the most effective way to take an audience on that journey?

For example, what I always found so gut wrenching about the Nez Perce story was the fact that 800 people, mostly women and children, began a journey and less than half of them survived. So the logical question then became, “How do you make an audience feel that kind of loss?” And what I ultimately concluded, for better or worse, is that the movie needed to be an ensemble – centered around Joseph – and that it needed to be populated by a large community of characters – each with their own personal stories – who would then be killed off in a very brutal fashion. I knew what I was building towards the entire time: the penultimate scene on the train where Joseph and Oyema glance at each other and the audience realizes they’re the only ones left.

SS: You caught some flak (from others, not me) about your script starting too slow. Why did you start it slow and how did you plan to keep the reader interested when you really weren’t getting into any story until the second act?

ENM: Well, I’d start by asking all those people who threw up flak to stop and consider how their favorite “period pieces” are structured. The Godfather begins with a twenty-minute wedding sequence whose sole purpose is to establish the world of the movie and introduce you to all the characters. Braveheart spends its first forty-five minutes building a love story only to have it end tragically and trigger the main plot. Road to Perdition spends its first thirty minutes setting up the world of Michael Sullivan and then uses the ACT I climax to incite the rest of the movie.

When it comes to period pieces, I think it’s critically important to establish the world and characters first before triggering the main plot. In my experience, when you try to do all three things at once, you end up creating something that’s muddled and contrived. Honestly, it’s one of the main reasons I think movies are really suffering today. Everyone feels like they need to hit the ground running. The problem is, when you hit the ground running, you don’t have enough time to really hit your stride.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, starting a movie like DESPERATE HOURS or THE FLIGHT OF THE NEZ PERCE with a “slow build” allows you to pull the audience in and make them really care about the characters. In my opinion, this is the most important thing you can do in the first act and it will always pay dividends later on when you start turning the screws and putting your characters through hell.

SS: You told me that your biggest weakness is your dialogue. Why do you think it’s a weakness and what do you do to combat that weakness?

ENM: Yeah, I do feel like dialogue is my biggest weakness and it looks like many of your readers agree with me! LOL.

What I’m really trying to work on right now, especially with my historical scripts, is cadence in the language and making each character voice sound unique, as opposed to different versions of myself. David Webb Peoples really sets the gold standard here, as far as I’m concerned. Whenever I want to feel bad about myself, I watch UNFORGIVEN. I am so envious of the dialogue in that movie and how it sounds so crisp and authentic. There isn’t any doubt in my mind that’s how people spoke in 1870s Wyoming.

As far as “combating my weakness” goes, I’m honestly not sure. Part of me hopes it’s a function of age and that I’ll improve as I get older. I suspect it’s like developing any other muscle. You just have to work hard and see if it gets stronger.

SS: I’ve been running into a lot of writers lately in their 5th or 6th year of writing who are frustrated that they haven’t made it yet. It looks like it took awhile for you to break through. What would you tell those writers? How did you yourself find the motivation to keep going?

ENM: I would just say keep trying and be yourself. I struggled for years, in part, because I was trying to imitate others instead of developing my own voice. Find the stories you’re passionate about and don’t try to be something you’re not. And, most importantly, if you love writing, then keep doing it – regardless of whether you “break through” or not. Paper is free. Ideas are free. There’s no excuse to quit. So keep typing and remember that Norman Maclean was in his 70s when A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT was finally published. I’m sure he would’ve loved for it to happen sooner, but he got the last laugh just the same.

By the way, do you know what I love most about A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT? The slow build. :)

SS: Last question: When are we going to see Desperate Hours made??

ENM: That’s a question for the studio, my friend. :)

Genre: Tarantino
Premise: (from IMDB) With the help of his mentor, a slave-turned-bounty hunter sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.
About: This is the next Quentin Tarantino film, coming out Dec. 25.  Django Unchained stars Jaime Foxx as Django, Christoph Waltz as Dr. Schultz, Leonardo DiCaprio as Calvin Candie, and Samuel Jackson in the fearsome role of Candie’s 2nd hand man, Stephen.  QT has wanted to do something with slavery for awhile, but not some big dramatic “issues” movie.  He wanted to do more of a genre film.  Hence, we got Django Unchained!
Writer: Quentin Tarantino
Details: 167 pages, April 26th, 2011 draft

These days, much of the time, I read scripts with a workman-like focus.  That’s not to say I don’t enjoy reading.  I love breaking down screenplays.  But there’s always another script to read, another friend or consult or review to get to.  Which means I have to stay focused, I have to get everything done.

Rarely do I read a script where I turn off the script analysis side of my brain and just enjoy the story.  It happens two or three times a year.  With Django, it actually went beyond that.  Halfway through the script, I was so pulled in, I canceled everything and made a night of the second half of Django.  I cooked dinner.  I opened a nice bottle of wine.  I pushed back deep into the crevice of my couch. I ate, drank and read.

Okay okay, so I didn’t actually cook anything.  It was a lean cuisine meal.  And I popped open a bottle of coke, not wine.  I hate wine.  But the point is, Django Unchained was that rare reading experience where the rest of the world disappeared and I just found myself transported into another universe.

And you know what?  I’m not sure why the hell this thing worked so well. It was 168 pages.  There was usually more description than was needed.  Many scenes went on for ten pages or longer.  BUT, Tarantino found a way to make it work.  What that way is, I can only guess.  Maybe it’s his voice?  The way he tells stories makes all these no-nos become hell-yeahs.  And that’s not to say he bucks all convention.  There’s plenty of traditional storytelling going on here.  It’s just presented in a way we’ve never quite seen before.

Django’s a slave who’s recently been purchased by a plantation owner.  Part of a bigger group, the slaves are being transported to the new owner’s farm.  There are a lot of nasty motherfuckers in this screenplay, guys way worse than the brothers pulling Django along this evening, but these men are still the kind that need a good bullet in the head to remind them of just how shitty they are.

Enter an upper-class German gentleman who appears out of the woods like a ghost.  Dr. King Schultz is as smart as they come and as polite as you’ll ever see, and he’d like to ask these brothers which slave here goes by the name of “Django.”  Predictably irritated, the brothers tell him to take a hike or take some lead.  While respectful, Dr. Schultz doesn’t like to be told what he can and cannot do.  So he smokes one of the brothers, disables the other, and makes Django a free man.

You see, Dr. Schultz is a bounty hunter.  He gets paid lots of dough for the carcasses of wanted men.  And it appears he’s looking for Django’s former owners, three rusty no-good brothers (there are lots of siblings in Django Unchained) who’ve changed their names and are hiding out on some plantation.  Dr. Schultz will pay Django a nice sum if he can identify these men so he can kill them.

Now these men also happen to be the men who raped and branded his wife, Broomhilda.  So yeah, Django knows who they are all right.  He’ll help the strange German.  Plus, with the money he earns, he can go off and search for his wife, who’s since been sold off to another owner.  Django doesn’t know who or where, but Schultz tells him he’ll help him find her.

Away the two go, infiltrating the plantation where the brothers are hiding out, and Django gets some sweet revenge on his former slavers.  The two are such a great team that Schultz recommends they extend their contract and start making some real money upgrading to the big names, the kind of names that need two people to take them down.  Besides, he persuades Django, if they’re going to save Broomhilda, Django has to be in tip top shape.

So the two go off, hunting wanted men, and in their downtime, Schultz teaches Django how to read and shoot.  Eventually, Django becomes the most educated badass cowboy around.  And it’s a sight to see.  And a sight people aren’t used to seeing.  When townsfolk observe an educated free black man riding into their town on a horse, they think it must be some kind of joke.  And at first, Django feels like a joke.  But after awhile, he starts seeing himself the way Schultz does, as a man who deserves to be respected.

Once they’re ready, the two come up with a plan to save Broomhilda.  Unfortunately, Broomhilda is being held by one of the nastiest plantation owners in all the state, a detestable villanous soul named Calvin Candie, and Calvin Candie won’t just see anybody.  If you want his attention, you have to pony up.  Which means Schultz and Django must pretend to be looking for a fighter in one of Calvin’s favorite hobbies – Mandingo fighting.  Basically, these are slaves forced to fight other slaves for white men’s entertainment.

In their scam, Schultz will play the rich interested party, and Django will play the “Mandingo expert” he’s hired in order to find the best fighter.  Calvin could give two shits about the two until Scultz says the magical words, “Twelve thousand dollars.”  Now Calvin’s ready to talk, and he decides to take them back to his plantation where the talking acoustics are a little nicer, the amusement park-esque estate known as “Candyland.”

While at Candyland, the two covertly scope out Broomhilda’s whereabouts, except that Calvin’s number 2 guy, groundskeeper Stephen (who’s, surprisingly enough, Calvin’s slave), suspects something is amiss with these men, and starts to do some digging.  It doesn’t take him long to figure out their intentions, intentions that have nothing to do with buying a Mandingo.  He lets his boss know, and for the first time since we’ve met Django and Shultz, the tables have turned.  They’re not in control of the situation anymore. Once that happens, our dynamic duo is in major trouble.  And it’s looking unlikely that they’ll find a way out of it.

Let me begin by saying that a big reason this script is so awesome is because of the GOALS and the STAKES.  There’s always a goal pushing the story forward, which is extremely important in any screenplay but especially a 168 page screenplay.  If your characters don’t have something important they’re going after, a solid GOAL, then your story’s going to wander around aimlessly until it stumbles onto a highway and gets plastered by a semi.  A gas tanker semi.  A gas tanker semi that explodes and starts a forest fire.

The first goal is Schultz’s goal of needing to find these brothers.  Once that goal’s taken care of, the true goal that’s driving the story takes center stage – Django needs to find and save his wife.  But, you’ll notice that even when we’re not focused directly on that, we have little goals we’re focusing on.  It may be to kill one of the many wanted men they’re hunting.  It may be to learn to read or fight or handle a gun, so that Django can be equipped for his final showdown.  QT makes sure that we’re always driving towards something here, and he does it with goals.  Goals that have stakes attached to them.  How can the stakes be any higher than your wife’s safety and freedom?

But that’s not the only reason.  Outside of Mike Judge, I don’t know any writer who can make his characters come alive on the page better than Tarantino.  He just has this knack for developing unique memorable people.  I can go through 5-6 scripts in a row and not read one memorable character.  This script has like two dozen of them.  It’s amazing.  Sometimes it’s because he subverts expectations – Dr. Schultz is a German in an unfamiliar land who’s as dangerous as fuck yet always the most polite man in the room.  Sometimes it’s through irony – A slave bounty hunter hunting the very white people who enslaved him.  And sometimes it’s just a name – Calvin Candie.  I mean how perfect a name is that?  How are you going to forget that character?

I tell writers NEVER to overpopulate their screenplays with large character counts because we’ll forget half the characters and never know what’s going on.  But when you can make each character this memorable?  This unique?  You can write however many damn characters you please.

And the dialogue here.  I can’t even tell you why it’s so awesome because I don’t know.  There are certain elements of dialogue you can’t teach and QT is one of the lucky bastards who possesses that unteachable quality.  But I will tell you this, and it’s something I’ve become more and more aware of in subsequent Tarantino movie viewings.  He depends on a particular tool to make his scenes awesome, and it’s the main reason why he can write such long scenes and get away with it.

Basically, Tarantino hints that something bad/crazy/unpredictable is going to happen at the end of the scene, and then he takes his time building up to that moment.  Because we know that explosion is coming at the end, we’re willing to sit around for six, eight, ten pages until we get there.  The anticipation eats at us, so we’re biting our nails, eager to see what’s going to happen.  In these cases, the slowness of the scene actually works for the story because it deprives us of what we want most, that climax.

For example, there’s a scene in the second act where the young man who’s bought Broomhilda and since fallen in love with her, takes her out for a night on the town.  He unfortunately walks into one of Calvin Candie’s establishments and before you know it, Candie himself has invited him over to his table to play poker with the big boys.  Broomhilda knows something’s not right, but the poor soul is too flattered to listen to her.  This scene goes on and on and we see that Candie is becoming more and more sinister, and we just know this isn’t going to end well.  We know something terrible is going to happen.  So of course, we’re on the edge of our seats dying to see in what terrible way it will end.

Tarantino also did this, most famously, in the opening “Milk Scene” of Inglorious Basterds.  A German Commander shows up at a farm house looking for fugitive jews, and we just know this isn’t going to end well.  That’s why the German commander can ask for something as unexciting as a glass of milk.  That’s why he can talk about mundane things for minutes on end.  Because we know this isn’t going to end well, yet we’re dying to see how it does end.  Go through Django Unchained again and you’ll see that there are LOTS of these scenes, and one of the biggest tricks Tarantino has in his toolbox.  He keeps going back to it, and it works every time.

But what I think really separates Tarantino from everyone else is that you never quite know where he’s going to go.  You can predict most movies out there down to the minute.  But with QT, you can’t.  And it’s because he already knows where you think he’s going to go, so he purposely goes somewhere else.  Take the opening scene, where we see a polite white man being kind and cordial to a slave.  Not prepared for that.  Or when we see that Calvin Candie takes his orders from a black man, his slave, Stephen.  Or how when Broomhilda is first purchased, she’s actually purchased by a shy young white man who quickly falls in love with her and treats her kindly.  I was always trying to predict where Tarantino would go next, and I was usually wrong.  And even better, the choice he ended up going with always ended up in a better scene.

My complaints are minimal.  There was only one area of the script that felt lazy.  (spoiler) Late in the third act,  Django’s life is spared because, apparently, he’ll experience a much worse death “in the mines.”  This allows him to be transferred off the plantation, which of course allows him to trick his transporters and go back to save Broomhilda.  Come on.  No way the Candie family doesn’t torture and kill him right there.  No way they let him go off to the mines.  So I was disappointed by that because it felt like a cheap way to give Django his big climax.  With that said, the big climax was phenomenal.  Average Joe Writer would have had Django go in there Die Hard style.  QT took a slower more practical approach, and created a much better finale because of it.

So you know what?  I can’t believe I’m doing this since I haven’t done it in two years before a month ago, but I’m giving another GENIUS rating.  This script is freaking amazing.  It really is.  I don’t know if the Academy knows what to do with a movie like this, but if we’re talking writing alone, this script should win the Oscar.  And, heck, it should win for best film too.

What I learned: Always look for ironic moments in your screenplay.  Audiences LOVE irony.  Django, a slave, must play the role of a slave driver near the end of the film.  He must treat other slaves like they’re dirt.  He must talk to them like they’re dirt.  It’s tough to watch but also fascinating, since he himself was, of course, a slave a short time ago.