It’s time to put the controversy to rest. Which draft of the Prometheus screenplay was better? Spaiths or Lindelof’s?

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A group of scientists head to a distant star system in search of intelligent life.  But what they find instead is an ancient race hellbent on destroying Earth.
About: This is the last draft of Prometheus that Jon Spaiths worked on before being replaced by Damon Lindelof.
Writer: Jon Spaiths
Details: 117 pages (undated)

The emergence of this script is strange.  There’s been a lot of chatter since the release of Prometheus that Damon Lindelof ruined Prometheus’ screenplay, with the assumption being that the writer before him, Jon Spaiths, had written a much better draft.  So one has to wonder, did Team Lindelof release this draft to prove that he didn’t “ruin” anything?  Or did Team Spaiths release this draft to prove, “Hey, the rumors are true.  My version was better!”  It’s a particularly strange situation here on Scriptshadow because I’m one of the only people who actually LIKED Prometheus.  So I can’t even voice the same concerns as the masses.  I thought the script for the film I saw was pretty  solid (though, admittedly, the subject matter was right up my alley).  Another thing you have to factor in is that Ridley Scott was guiding the creation of the story.  So many of the ideas in the script were, I’m assuming, his, and therefore may have nothing to do with Spaiths or Lindelof.  Anyway, I’m just curious as a script-lover to see what changes were made and what we can learn from those changes.  Let’s check it out.

Reading through the opening of “Alien: Engineers” triggered some major deja-vu.  In fact, after the first half of the script, I wondered how the hell Lindelof even got credit on the screenplay.  Everything was exactly the same.  We follow the same two main characters, Doctor Jocelyn Watts and Professor Martin Holloway, as they discover evidence pointing to the whereabouts of alien intelligence (this time deep underwater instead of in a cave – I assume they changed this for budgetary reasons).

The rest of the characters are exactly the same as well.  You have the seriously grouchy Lydia Vickers (Charlize Theron) as well as our favorite OCD android, David (Michael Fassbender).  You have the goofy guys who go into the tunnel and the deadly serious Captain Janek.

They get to Moon LV-426 and, just like before, find the engineers beheaded in the hallway.  They start doing research and gradually realize that the engineers were here to terraform this world but something stopped them before they could do it.

Where things change significantly is that the ALIENS (and I mean the ORIGINAL aliens)  play a bigger role in Spaiths version of the screenplay.  A two foot long caterpillar attacks one of the goofy dudes and I guess that caterpillar lays the first alien egg.  This leads to one of the facehuggers emerging, which later impregnates someone else, which results in a slightly bigger alien, and so on and so forth until we have full grown aliens running around.

The thing is, this still doesn’t happen until way late in the screenplay.  After the mid-point.  So for those hoping for more of a classic “Aliens Contained Thriller” like we got in the first two movies, you don’t get that here.  By the time the aliens actually get dangerous, the script is almost over, so I can see why they decided to nix it.  You either gotta go all in with these things or not.  You can’t go half-way, which seemed to be the case here.

I’m also imagining that at some point someone said, “We got two competing ideas here.  We gotta choose one or the other.”  Which is true.  You had aliens running all over the place, and then you had these completely separate big engineer dudes waking up.  It’s kind of confusing, so when Lindelof came in, I’m guessing Ridley just went, “You know what?  Let’s scratch the aliens and commit to the engineers.”  Was that a good decision?  Hmm, probably.  Like I said, if you’re going to go aliens, you gotta go all the way.  And I think they realized they weren’t making an alien movie anymore.

Another change was the late twist.  Instead of the Old Weyland being released from hyper-sleep, four secret soldiers were woken up, who were apparently there to enact “Phase 2.”  While the soldier thing had potential, it wasn’t effectively utilized here and I’m not even sure what happened to the soldiers ten pages after their arrival.  They disappeared off the face of the moon.  Lindelof likely noticed this and decided to change the twist to the old man – and this is what lead to a lot of people complaining that this plot point didn’t make sense.  It was a neat idea, but Lindelof didn’t have the time to implement it in a logical way.  That’s the thing you have to remember.  With us amateurs, we have as much time as we want to get our plot points in order.  These guys are on a deadline, and sometimes that means not being able to perfect your additions.

The other big change Lindelof made was fleshing out David.  In Spaiths’ draft, David always seemed to be on the brink of going mad, but for the most part stayed on the sidelines.  In the shooting draft, obviously, he goes full blown nuts and you can even argue that the second half of the film is his.  My take on this choice?  I think it was a good one.  David was clearly the most interesting character on the ship, so exploring him more and expanding his storyline made sense.  Again, it looks like they ran out of time to ensure that all those changes made sense.  In the movie, it wasn’t entirely clear why David decided to be the bad guy or do what he did, but it was almost there.  They just needed a couple of more drafts.

A big problem with both drafts was the unfocused second act.  So many characters had been introduced and the writers were trying to keep track of them all and they just couldn’t.  There’s a period of about 20 pages where everybody’s running around, both in the ship and in the pyramid, and I have no idea why or what any of them are doing.  That’s the danger you run into when you have tons of characters.  You have to keep track of them all.  If two people are getting killed off in this room, you have to have a good reason why nobody else is around to help.  Where are they?  What are they doing?  These are the kinds of things screenwriters never get credit for  yet it’s one of the hardest things about the craft – keeping track of everything.  And if you don’t have enough time or you don’t give it enough attention, these large-character pieces can get confusing quickly, which is unfortunately what happened here.

It’s also interesting to see how little things get lost from draft to draft and how that can lead to unintended “WTF” moments.  For example, I remember seeing Vickers sprawling over-the-top sleeping quarters on Prometheus and thinking, “There is no way in hell they would spend all that money on that room.  This isn’t a stay at the Waldorf Astoria.  It’s a spaceship where every cubic foot needs to be utilized.”  Well in this draft, we learn via a quick line of dialogue that Vickers refused to go on this expedition unless she traveled in luxury.  Somebody probably decided to cut that line since it wasn’t essential, but just that little cut made the writers look sloppy.

After reading “Alien: Engineers,” my assessment is that Lindelof’s draft(s) did make the script better.  Nothing major was really done.  Lindelof  fleshed stuff out a little more and got rid of an alien subplot that felt half-baked.   But the drafts really weren’t that different.  When you get this many drafts into the script, you’re never going to see that much of a story transformation.  The quality of the story is likely going to be the same, with just some slight differences in the specifics. I thought this script was decent, but still enjoyed the final draft better.

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

What I learned: Many writers spend 40-50 times as much time on the first half of their screenplay as the second.  This happens because whenever someone opens their script to start working, they start from the top.  So scenes in the first 30 pages have likely been gone over 50 times as much as scenes in the last 30 pages.  Seeing how much sloppier this script was in the second half as opposed to the first, it just reminded me that you gotta give both halves equal attention.

 

I haven’t yet officially moved over to the new site.  I’m still trying to work out the kinks.  So if anything’s not working or acting funny, I’m trying to get it fixed!  Hopefully, we’ll be open for business by Wednesday, November 14.  In the meantime, go buy and play Angry Birds, Star Wars. That’s what I’m doing while I wait.

EDIT: So last night, just as we were gearing up to launch, the website disappeared. After a mad dash of phone calls and e-mails, it was determined that my host service (something I never had to deal with on Blogger) had decided to take down the database containing everything, because something on my site (something they haven’t been able to determine) is causing their servers to slow down. Long story short, I’m working on getting this up. It might be tomorrow, it might be the next day. We’ll get there though. Hang tight! :)

Awhile back I read a script called Sanctuary under strict confidentiality from writer Todd Warner.  I thought the potential was so freaking high (it felt like that “Next Matrix” everyone had been looking for since 1999) that I tried to get on the project myself, but Todd was already working with people so it was impossible. Continue reading →

Welcome to Amateur Week!  All week we’re reviewing scripts from amateur writers that got the best response from this post.  We’ve already had one script perform REALLY WELL in “Fascination 127.”  And today we review the highest concept of all the entries, “USS Nikola Tesla.”  Is it only a cool concept?  Or is the execution just as good?  Let’s find out… 

Genre: Sci-Fi/Supernatural
Premise: (from writer) The American Navy’s latest destroyer, the USS Nikola Tesla, disappears without  a trace. Two years later she reappears with no sign of her crew. But no one realises this ship holds a dark secret that dates back to World War Two and a horrifying experiment.
About: The big worry when you open up a high concept script from an amateur writer is that that’s all it’s going to be.  The writer will set up the high concept in the first 20 pages, we’ll be riveted, and then once they don’t have that crutch to lean on and actually have to tell a story, the whole thing falls apart.  I PRAY whenever I read one of these scripts that that’s not the case.  Because if a reader finds a high concept script that’s also a great story?  It’s like finding gold.  You can start printing the money.
Writer: Anonymous (more on this in a second)
Details: 99 pages
Status: AVAILABLE

When I recieved the e-mail query for this script, it was accompanied by a very cryptic note from the writer, who explained that he couldn’t include his name on the screenplay.  It was something about…I don’t know…how he had top secret clearance at Area 51 or something and if his name was associated with the script, men in black would visit his home and terminate him, along with all other members of the Resistance, except for the ones who were sent back in time to save humanity.  I’m not sure what any of that means but it has me curious as to what happens if this script sells.  Who do they write a check to?  The writer obviously can’t accept the money.  Maybe I’ll take it.  Seems like a logical compromise.

Of course, I’ve gone down the anonymous writer path before.  You’d be surprised at the lengths writers will go to get their scripts read, and the “anonymous” route is a popular one.  Oftentimes the writer will imply a bunch of vague allusions to “big name actors” circling their script and how they’ll get in trouble if they send it.  But they’re going to risk it all and send it anyway!  They just can’t reveal their name.

There was even one guy who told me he had come across an old screenplay during a yard sale.  He bought it for kicks and it turned out to be the most amazing thing he’d ever read.  If I was interested, he noted, he could send it to me.  I said, “Sure” just to see how far he’d take the story, and he magically sent me a PDF document of the script that was converted from a word processing program.  If this was an old script he found at a yard sale, wouldn’t it have had to be scanned?  Anyway, I opened the script up out of pure curiosity, and the first scene was a 10 pager focusing on urinal humor.  Look, I respect playing the game a little.  Just know that when a reader feels like they’re being taken for a ride, they’re going to be hard on your script.   So, will that approach doom USS NIKOLA TELSA?  Let’s find out.

“Tesla” begins with an ode to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.  A bunch of American soldiers in Afghanistan walk up a hill in the desert to see, below them, a giant half of a submarine.  No, not a submarine sandwich (I should be so lucky).  But an actual submarine.

Meanwhile, in Glasgow, two teenagers are making out on a foggy dock when a huge naval destroyer comes bearing down on them.  They run for their lives, barely able to make it to safety, but soon afterwards, there’s a loud groaning noise from inside the ship and then a shockwave of energy shoots out, vaporizing the couple.  And before the dude could even make it to second base!

Cut to army officials in rooms making hushed phone calls.  “It’s back,” they tell one another.  The USS Nikola Tesla.  Apparently it had gone off on some training mission two years ago and disappeared!  Naturally, they need to figure out what caused its return, so they e-mail the experts.

Two of those experts are Lieutenant Robert Montrose and Lieutenant Claire Allen.  Montrose is a notorious Navy playboy who’s constantly looking to get his turret waxed.  And Claire is a no-nonsense engineer who’s next sexual encounter will probably be her first.  Obviously, when these two get paired together, conflict is going to fly!

And they do get paired together, along with a group of other officials who have been brought in to check out the mysterious return of this boat.  It isn’t long before they realize something’s up.  The boat likes to groan a lot, and it seems like everywhere you look, something is dashing behind a corner.  Add a little magnetism to the mix – a pen will be yanked out of your hand and stick to the wall – and boarding this boat becomes its own little house of horrors.

But the biggest question of them all comes in the form of Charlie, a young man dressed in a World War 2 naval uniform who tells Montrose and Claire he’ll give them a tour of the boat if they’re interested.  Once he touches them, a flash of light occurs, taking our characters to Nowheresville, and the story along with them!

Montrose and Claire end up in a 1950s military hospital and Charlie informs them that he was part of the original Philadelphia Experiment and when his boat was destroyed, he decided to use this new boat to show the world just how stupid they were for messing with science.  How he plans to get his point across?  By blowing some cities up mothafuckuh!  And he has the powers to do it!  While poor little Montrose and Claire only have the power of persuasion to stop him.  Dammit these paranormal Navy ghost World War 2 Philadelphia Experiment castoffs.  They always seem to screw up a perfectly good day.

Okay.

To put it bluntly?  My biggest fear was realized.  Strong setup.  But with every page afterwards, the story fell more and more apart.  And it’s not Anonymous’ fault.  Well, not entirely.  This is why there’s such a steep learning curve with screenwriting.  You have to learn how to tell a story, not just set up a story.  It’s a mistake I see made all the time.  Writers think that all they need is a cool idea and they’re finished.  No, you need a cool idea AND the knowledge of how to write a second act.  The second act is where the concept takes a back seat to the characters.  If the characters aren’t interesting in some way, if they aren’t tackling something substantial within themeselves and between each other, then the second act will rest too heavily on a series of forced plot points that we won’t care about because we don’t care about the people inhabiting them.

And that’s what happened here.  Once Charlie shows up, the script just becomes one goofy nonsensical sequence after another.  Look at Aliens.  That was a hardcore action sci-fi thriller, right?  But in that second act, you have Ripley battling her trust issues (she doesn’t trust Burke or Bishop or the entire operation) and trying to protect this surrogate daughter, Newt.  In “Tesla,” we have Montrose and Claire bickering with each other via cheesy dialogue and Charlie being super-dramatic and often confusing with his scientific explanations.  I’m still not sure how Charlie became a part of this ship in the first place.

I suspect that this stems from another common amateur mistake – the refusal to outline.  You can almost always tell an un-outlined script because the further the script goes on, the less it makes sense.  It feels like the writer is making stuff up as he goes along because that’s exactly what he’s doing.  When you write this way, you feel this pressure to “keep things interesting,” and so you try and top whatever outrageous scene or sequence you just wrote with an even MORE outrageous scene or sequence.  It’s kind of like that desperate boy pining for a girl’s attention.  Sucking up jellow through a straw into your nose didn’t work, so why not rip your shirt off and start dancing on the table?

That’s not how screenplays work.  You need to carefully plot out what’s going to happen 20 pages down the line so you can build up to that moment, whether it be through suspense, set-ups, or character development.  “Tesla” certainly had a lot of stuff going on, but none of it felt cohesive.  It felt more like a distraction to make sure you didn’t realize that there wasn’t a story.

If I were Anonymous, I’d focus on three things moving forward.  First, learn the value of outlining. Once you know where your script is going, you can create a more logical and plausible plot.  Second, learn how to tackle your second act.  A second act isn’t just a bunch of crazy shit happening.  It’s a slow build, where you tackle most of your characters’ issues.  Which leads me to the third focus – character development.  Give your lead characters something inside of themselves that they’re trying to overcome.  With Ripley it was trust.  But it might be the recent death of a family member, an inability to love, or the desire to prove that you belong.  The possibilities are endless. But if a main character isn’t tackling SOMETHING inside themselves, chances are they’re boring.

What I learned: A screenplay isn’t just a high concept you parlay into a cool first 15 pages.  The other 95 pages are going to be read as well, and those are the ones that are going to be more tightly scrutinized. Cause every reader worth his salt knows that that’s where you find out if you’re dealing with a writer or just an idea guy.  Consider your high concept to be your “good looks.”  It’s what gets you in the door.  But you still have to be charming, you still have to be intelligent, you still have to be interesting.  Your second and third acts are what’s going to prove your value as a writer, so make sure they kick ass.

 

Welcome to Amateur Week!  All week we’re reviewing scripts from amateur writers that got the best response from this post.  We’ve already had one script perform REALLY WELL in “Fascination 127.”  Will “Chase The Night” be the next big amateur script to celebrate?  Let’s find out!  

Genre: Drama
Premise: (from writer) On his 25th birthday, a troubled orphan receives information about his estranged mother, sending him into a world of corruption as he investigates the circumstances behind her life and death.
About: I knew this one depended on how unique and compelling the choices were behind the main character’s investigation.  That’s what sorta worried me about this logline – that a specific compelling circumstance wasn’t mentioned, but rather a general blanket set of circumstances which were implied.  The logline felt a little cold in that respect.  But I liked the emotional component of the story, so I was interested to see if it connected on that level.
Writer: Thomas A. Schwenn
Details: 115 pages
Status: AVAILABLE

Star Wars Tuesday.  Blood List Wednesday.  Disciple Program finishing #1.  Halloween yesterday. How is “Chase The Night” supposed to follow all this?  Good question.  And I’ll tell you my biggest concern reading the logline.  I thought it sounded a little boring.  That’s not to say it *would* be boring.  Just that the logline made it sound that way.  Remember, your logline is like the billboard or trailer for a movie.  It’s the only thing you have to promote your screenplay.  So like a great billboard or trailer makes us want to see the movie, a logline has to make us want to read the script!  It has to sound exciting!

Just to remind everyone, faulty loglines can be broken down into two categories.  The first is that you haven’t adequately conveyed the excitement of your script.  There is no excuse for this.  If your script is exciting, you better workshop the HELL out of your logline to make sure it’s perfect and conveys the coolness of your script.  The second issue is much more concerning.  The concept itself stinks.  This goes well beyond workshopping a logline.  It means scrapping the entire script.  Because no matter how you dress up your logline, how many times you reword it, it’s still going to convey an idea that isn’t very good in the first place.  Which is why I always say, get your logline figured out first.  Because eventually you’re going to be using that to market your script, and if it doens’t work now, it’s not going to work then.

Actually, I’ve seen this lead to a long-standing trend of trying to dress loglines up into something the script isn’t in order to get reads. You realize, “Ooh, if I stress the ghost aspect more in the logline, even though it’s barely in the script, it’ll sound better!”  This is how I would classify Monday’s script, “Pocket Dial,” which promised a lot of modern technology relationship humor in its logline, but didn’t give us any of that in the actual screenplay.  Not only is that going to piss readers off, but my question to these writers is, “If that makes your logline better, why didn’t you write that script in the first place?”

Okay, enough bitching and moaning.  It’s supposed to be a happy day, a day in which we gorge on all the candy we accumulated last night.  Oh, not that I went trick-or-treating last night.  No, not at all.  Why would someone my age go trick-or-treating?  That’s ridiculous for you to even suggest that.  I’m just saying that if I *was* a kid  and I *did* trick-or-treat yesterday, that I would have a lot of candy that I’m eating right now – or that *that kid* would be eating right now.  Not me.  Cause I didn’t go trick-or-treating……Man, is it hot in here?

25 year old Tommy Young is not a happy compadre.  He carries an old picture around with him showing a young woman, who we’ll come to know as Mariah, hanging out with two friends, Jack and Sam.  Although we’re not sure why yet, Tommy has some business with these guys and that business needs to be addressed pronto.

He eventually finds one of the men, Jack (now in his 50s), washed up, drunk, and demands to know about Mariah.  It’s here where we get a little more info on the woman.  It appears that many years ago, Mariah was charged with killing her parents – Tommy’s grandparents.  Yes, Tommy is Mariah’s son.  He wants to know the truth about what happened that day, cause he’s convinced his mom would never do such a thing.

Well he’s not going to get that information from Jack because Jack’s Daniel (that’s my clever way of saying he’s wasted).   So off Tommy goes to find the other dude, Sam, who’s since become a cop.  Jack ends up kidnapping Sam no problem, then ties him up and starts asking questions.  Sam denies knowing anything about Mariah, but starts to crack a little as Tommy puts the heat on.

In the meantime, Sam’s precinct gets word that he’s missing and starts looking for him, forcing Tommy to take Sam on the run.  It’s here where we’re introduced to the main detective on Sam’s case, Frank Marshall.  While Tommy and Sam skitter all over the city avoiding capture, Frank interviews friends of Tommy to get a beat on where he may be holding Sam.

At some point, Sam decides to help Tommy figure out what happened to his mom, although this was a seriously confusing part of the script.  Sam is constantly asking to be let go, while also providing details and clues for Tommy to find out if his mom really killed his grandparents.  Is he trying to get away or is he trying to help?  To be honest, I was never sure.

And that’s pretty much how the rest of the script goes. It’s Tommy and Sam finding clues to help their case while Frank Marshall finds clues to save Sam.  I wish I could provide more plot points but there really weren’t any.  This was pretty straightforward.  Which was the first problem of many I had with “Chase The Night.”

This was a strange script.  Because from a distance, it had a lot of components that make up a good story.  You have a guy looking into his mother’s murder case.  So there’s a goal and a mystery there.  And you have the chase aspect going on as well, in that at any moment, Frank could catch them.  You also had high stakes, in that Tommy’s trying to free his mother from jail.  But despite all this, the script struggles mightily to keep the reader’s attention.

We’ll start with the logline, which states that an orphan receives information from his estranged mother. I never saw that anywhere in the script.  So I didn’t even know Tommy was an orphan.  And because of that, I coudln’t figure out why he all of a sudden needed to do this.  Why didn’t he do it earlier?  And to be honest, I couldn’t even tell you what Tommy was trying to do!  He just had this picture with these people in it.  It wasn’t until halfway through the story that I understood what Tommy’s goal was.  I still don’t know if that was done by design or by accident.  But plot murkiness is a script killer, and this plot was murky.

But what really bothered me was how detached the writing was.  Everything was so…clinical, so cold.  The main character wasn’t very interesting.  The story wasn’t very interesting.  And a big part of that had to do with how little “voice” there was to the writing.  All the words were where they needed to be.  And it actually read quite well.  But it was just so…I don’t know how to put it…”distant.”  And that left me bored.

Also, I’m not sure the information in this story is dispensed in a way as to garner the most drama.  For example, I didn’t know why Tommy was looking for Jack at first (other than that he was in the picture) so I didn’t care.  I guess you can argue that you’re playing up the mystery behind the picture, but if you misjudge how interested the audience is going to be in regards to that mystery, you end up with a really bored reader.

Finally, I could never figure out what the rules of this Tommy/Sam pairing were.  Did Sam want to get away?  Did he want to help?  It seemed like sometimes he wanted to bail (“Just let me leave.  They’ll never find you.”) and other times he was Watson to Tommy’s Sherlock.  There was this vague implication that Tommy’d convinced him to “do the right thing” and help him find out what happened to his mom, but even that was never clearly laid out.  So it just felt comical that these two were running around town together.  Are they friends?  Are they enemies?  I didn’t know!

If I were to give Thomas advice for his next script, I would say to add more character and color to his writing.  Let’s have it pop off the page more.  Try to be more clear with your plot and motivations as well.  We need to know, definitively, why Sam is hanging around Tommy this whole script.  We need to know, definitively, what this picture is about, how it got in Tommy’s possession, and why it’s motivated him to become Liam Neeson in Taken.  And try to have a few more unexpected things happen during the story.  This story unraveled way too predictably.  I wish Thomas good luck on his next screenplay.  Sorry I couldn’t get into this one.

What I learned: Your 3rd Act twist has to have a properly weighted setup, or else you end up with a “WTF” moment. (Spoiler) So the big twist here is that Stan Bell, the chief of police, covered up his son’s murdering of Tommy’s grandparents, blaming it on Mariah.  Except here’s the thing, I hadn’t seen Stan Bell since page 15, where he was introduced for .5 seconds, then disappeared until the final sequence.   How is that a satisfying twist?  Shouldn’t we know the person who the twist is centered around so that we care?  Shouldn’t he have 4-5 scenes of him dispersed evenly throughout the script so his reveal isn’t a total “wtf” moment?  Make sure to properly weight your setups people, particularly if they’re setups to a big final payoff.