Genre: War/Thriller/Conspiracy
Premise: A grizzled contract driver in Iraq stumbles upon a conspiracy to kill a U.S. soldier who holds information regarding a cover-up that threatens an 8 billion dollar corporation.
About: This script was one of the five winners of last year’s Nicholl Fellowship!
Writer: John MacInnes
Details: 111 pages
Usually, when I see “soldier” and “Iraq” in a logline, I cringe. Iraq war scripts are the equivalent of death by potato peeler to me. There’s an old saying that nobody wants reality when they go to the movies. They want to escape. If we want Iraq, all we have to do is turn on CNN. It’s why Hurt Locker, which won a freaking Oscar, couldn’t muster up 20 million bucks at the box office. So I’m not going to lie. I saw Iraq here and groaned. However, I had to take into consideration that this script beat out 7000 others, and therefore had to have something going for it. As long as it wasn’t another soldier returning back from the war trying to integrate himself back into a society scenario, then maybe, just maybe, Outside The Wire had a chance.
And you know what? John MacInnes capitalized on that chance. The first act of Outside The Wire was stupendous, pulling me in like a warm blanket. A warm blanket of death and destruction! (Whoa, I was trying to add emphasis for effect there and it didn’t turn out the way I planned. Writing fail. Let’s move on.)
“Wire” begins in Iraq with Private Lavena Torres video-chatting with her little boy, Antonio. It’s a tender heartfelt moment, with Antonio showing his mother a picture he drew of her. But more importantly, it instantly gave me confidence in the writing. I thought I was getting that “returning from home” 25 year old male soldier storyline that I always read, but instead I’m introduced to a female soldier. That was different. That told me this writer knew how to avoid the obvious, the cliche, and 9 out 10 times when I read amateur scripts, that’s not the case.
After the chat, Torres goes back to her quarters, only to find military police searching her bed. They snatch her up, and she begins asking what she’s done wrong. But no one tells her. No one tells her a damn thing.
Afterwards we meet Larry Schmidt. I was a little upset regarding Larry’s intro because his age wasn’t given. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. A 33 year old is different from a 43 year old is different from a 53 year old. Whichever one of those ages we start with indicates a completely different person in a completely different stage of their life. You don’t tell us that, and now I have no idea who I’m dealing with. Later on we figure it out, but we shouldn’t have to wait until later on.
Anyway, Schmidt’s not what you’d call the most social dude. He’s got an ex-wife and an ex-daughter who he doesn’t talk to anymore. He used to be a marine, but now contracts himself out for big money driving through the streets of Iraq. It ain’t easy doing errands in a war zone, but if that’s what you want, Schmidt is your homie.
So Schmidt signs himself up for another contracting tour of duty, and on his second route, finds his men picking up a mystery passenger with a bag over his head. They head to some alley, pull the guy out, take off the bag and we see…Lavena Torres. One of the contractors puts a gun to her head, about to pull the trigger, but Schmidt sees that she’s one of theirs and shoots the contractor first. A firefight with the other contractor ensues, and Schmidt is able to grab Torres and get away.
Being the veteran that he is, he’s able to find them shelter for the time being, but it isn’t going to be long before the military finds them, and if Schmidt’s going to get out of this, he’s going to need to know what Torres did. The short of it is that she knows that one of the U.S.’s targeting programs has been malfunctioning and killing U.S. soldiers. The corporation that creates this software, who’s about to go “all in” in Iraq, doesn’t want this little girl ratting out their mistakes, so they’ve ordered her to be killed.
Schmidt’s already too deep in to bail out now. He knows the only way they’re staying alive is to get out of the country. So he sets his sites on Jordan. But in order to cross the border to safety, he’ll need to overcome a priority APB form the U.S. military, bounty hunters, roadblocks, IEDs, and a hell of a lot of local bad guys. He’ll also have to overcome that hard shell he’s placed over himself and get to know this Torres chick on a level that he’s never known another human being before.
Okay, a couple of things right off the bat here. I loved starting with a female character. I also loved that we were dealing with contractors. Immediately, this felt different. It felt unique. It didn’t feel like that super-generic movie, Green Zone, with Matt Damon. In fact, if they would’ve substituted this script for that one, Green Zone would’ve been a thousand times better and actually made some real money. This is a story. That script was a hot mess.
But I digress. Another thing I want to point out was the choice to start on Torres talking with her son, Antonio. This was a BRILLIANT choice. Through it, we saw that this woman loved someone. We saw that she had someone to come home to. It established stakes. It established a relationship that we cared about. This way, when that bag is torn off the soldier’s head early in Act 2 and we see it’s Torres, we care. This is the girl with the child. This is the girl who we want to see get back to that child.
Ask yourself this question. If we hadn’t had that scene with Torres and her son? And we just saw her get taken by the military police? And then we saw her in this same situation, about to get shot by the contractors? Would we have cared? No. Because she’s just some woman. We don’t know who she is in the world. We don’t know if she has kids or a family or anyone who cares about her. She’s just a face. So we would’ve shrugged our shoulders and went, “Yeah, sure, shoot her. I don’t give a shit.” It’s sad but true.
It’s your job as a writer to establish reasons why we should care about your characters. If we don’t have those reasons, then they’re just names on a page. A great way to do this is through relationships. Establish that there’s someone to come home to at the end of the day, that there’s someone who cares about your character. We see this at the beginning of film Training Day. Ethan Hawk’s character has a quick scene with his pregnant wife before his first day at work. That scene is why we want to see Hawk’s character come home. Because he has somebody.
We even see it here with Schmidt, if on a lesser level. Schmidt’s doing this job because the life insurance will set his daughter up for life. Even though he hasn’t spoken to her in years, he carries a picture of her wherever he goes, and we see how much she means to him. He may have been a bad parent, but he wants to make sure his little girl is going to be secure. If we don’t have those reasons to see your characters succeed or survive, then it’s harder for us to root for them.
On the downside here, I thought Torres became less interesting as the script went on. She had that great opening that really connected us to her character, but then you gotta keep building on that. You have to peel back layers so we can learn more and more about the character. Torres just stayed the same after that point, and as a result, I kinda became bored with her.
Contrast that with Schmidt, who we’re learning new things about all the time. We’re learning he took a bullet for a very important man once. We’re learning that he’s befriended a lot of people in Iraq because of how much time he’s spent out here. His character keeps evolving, where I felt that Torres’ character stopped.
And also, I wasn’t thrilled with the climax. It all seemed rather clumsy to me. (spoiler) Basically, Schmidt has to jump on the windshield of the car of an ambassador to get his attention so he’ll save Schmidt and Torres from the bad guys. The lead-up to that moment was a little confusing, the idea itself felt unimaginative, and it really didn’t allow our hero to be the hero that he was. Schmidt was a badass this whole time, always knowing what to do. Having to leap onto a windshield felt like something the local idiot might think up. So I wish that ending would’ve been as good as the beginning.
Still, all in all, this was a solid screenplay. I loved that opening so much and I loved a lot of the second act. For that reason, it’s worth a read.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
What I learned: If your hero is going to be going through a life or death situation in your story, use relationships to establish something for them to come back to. If you do this well, our need to see our hero get back to that person/people will drive our need to see them survive. This happens here with Torres and it happens in classics such as Die Hard, with McClane needing to get back to and save his wife.
Genre: Sci-fi/Comedy
Premise: A hapless and broken hearted barista is visited by two bad-ass soldiers from the future who tell him mankind is doomed, and he alone can save them.
About: This script from British writer Howard Overman sold in March of last year and made it onto the middle of the Black List, right next to Desperate Hours! Overman has been a longtime British TV writer, writing such shows as “Merlin,” creating the show “Vexed,” and winning a 2010 BAFTA Television Award for Best Drama Series for “Misfits.”
Writer: Howard Overman
Details: 116 pages – February 2011 draft
Wait a minute.
Hold up here.
Are you telling me that I just read a comedy script…that was funny? And that I liked? Has Scriptshadow slipped into Bizarro World??
Not only that, but a good comedy that was low-brow (the longest running joke in the screenplay is literally a shit joke)?? I always complain about low-brow comedies. Scripts that have nothing to offer other than jokes.
Aha! But Slackfi DID have more to offer. It had a story (with unexpected twists and turns ‘n stuff!) and even some character development. By the way, what does that mean exactly? “Character development?” I see that phrase thrown around a lot and I’m not always convinced that the people who throw it would know how to catch it if it was thrown back.
Character “development” is any instance of your character developing into a different person. This can be through overcoming a flaw, overcoming the past, or in the case of The Slackfi Project, overcoming a relationship.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Which is fine, I suppose, since there’s time-travel in Slackfi. However, I don’t get the nicest responses when I dislike time-travelling scripts these days. So thank God I enjoyed this one.
20-something Josh sleepwalks his way through his coffee shop job. The guy can whip up a mean vienttia grand-aye half-whip double-sauce cinnamon-style frappe mocha-chino (apologies to all if I’m getting the terms wrong. I’m not a coffee person) but is bored out of his gourd while doing it. Josh is the kind of person where smiles go to die.
But at least he has a reason for it. His girlfriend, Zoe, dumped his stupid ass a few months ago and now toys with him. She wants to hang out, but then she doesn’t. She wants to go on dates, but then she cancels. She wants to have sex, but then the next morning thinks it was a bad idea. God was not a nice dude for creating people like this but they’ll be around for as long as people don’t have the balls to walk away from them, and unfortunately, Josh’s testicles haven’t grown to “walk away” proportion yet.
So how does one deal with devil-chicks like this in the meantime? By playing video games with one’s apartment-mate of course! Josh and his buddy, Apollo, are quite a team, getting high while ridding the alien planet Tressor of the dangerous race: Plekisaurians. But when Apollo says he’s grown up and wants to do more adult things with his life, poor Josh finds himself with only one friend left, his overweight guinea pig, Mr. Tibbs!
Until one night when he’s visited by the duo of Wolf and Tiger, a badass male-female team who claim to be from the future! They tell Josh the world is a week away from a pandemic that will kill 6 billion people. Josh is the only one who can save them because he delivers sandwiches to the lab where they test guinea pigs, who are responsible for the virus. “Deliver sandwiches?” Josh responds. But he’s a barista. Wolf and Tiger look at each other, then double-check the address. Oops, they’re in the wrong apartment. They meant to go to Apollo’s apartment!
“Sorry,” they say, and leave. Bummed beyond all reasonable definitions of the word, Josh happens to run into Wolf, Tiger and Apollo the next day, when they’re attacked by micro-chipped bad guys from the future called Replicants. Apollo is killed, leaving Wolf and Tiger with no choice but to go with Plan B, Josh!
Unfortunately, while gearing up for the big attack on the lab, the police get a hold of Josh and explain to him that Wolf and Tiger are a couple of whack-jobs who escaped from the nuthouse. They made up this whole thing about the future based on their obsession with the Terminator and Matrix franchises, and right now, they’re being escorted back to Crazy City.
At this point, Josh doesn’t know what to believe. Are these two really crazy, in which case he should move on with his life? Or in doing so, is he killing six billion people? It isn’t until Josh confirms that his own guinea pig – MR. TIBBS – is a secret spy for the replicants, that he shifts into high gear! He must find a way to break Wolf and Tiger out of the nuthouse, come up with a plan to get into the lab, and then….well and then massacre hundreds of guinea pigs so they can’t spread the disease. All while his annoying ex-girlfriend keeps trying to ruin his life!
Okay, so let’s get back to that character development thing I was talking about. When you write a script, you want to ask yourself, “How is my main character going to develop? How are they going to change?” If they’re not developing into anything new or different, that means they’re staying stagnant. And for the most part, stagnant is boring.
Overman uses a relationship to develop his hero, Josh, coupled with a flaw. The relationship is obviously his one with Zoe. He allows her to treat him like shit and is afraid to move on. Overman cleverly creates a scenario at the end of the script, then, where Josh is at the lab with Zoe outside the contamination door. He has a choice of either letting her in, which saves her but kills 6 billion people, or leaving her out there to die and moving on with his life.
Remember, this is one of the best ways of conveying development in your character. You give them a choice near the end of the story that basically asks: “Have you overcome your flaw or what?” (Spoiler) In this case, Josh leaves Zoe out there (thank God!) and he’s officially developed into a better person.
BUT, I have a suspicion some of you don’t care. Why? Because I know how a large reading contingent HATES loser wimpy main characters. That’s an issue that’s long escaped me – how to straddle that line. In order to develop your character into a strong person, he must first be a weak person. So how do you make someone weak but still likable? I have to admit Josh was a little too much of a loser for my liking, but the rest of the story was so clever and funny that I still rooted for him.
That’s the other thing I liked here – the story. Most comedies I read have a VERY thin premise that’s stretched to the gills. A joke that should’ve ended on page 7 has been beaten to death for 110 never-ending pages. Slackfi actually had a story that was carefully plotted.
Which reminds me – one of the telltale signs of a good writer is what they do with their midpoint. The midpoint should shift things around a bit, turn what was essentially one story into a slightly different story. I always use the example of Star Wars. It starts out being about some people delivering a message, but then turns into those same people trying to destroy a huge base. In the midpoint of Slackfi, we find out everything Josh has been told is a lie, and that Wolf and Tiger are in the nuthouse. It changes from Josh following along to Josh having to come up with a plan to break out Wolf and Tiger and then save the world.
Anyway, this was a funny little script, and evidence of what I was saying Friday about storytelling being more important than writing. The writing in Slackfi is nothing to write home about. Many of the sentences are stilted and simplistic. Overman also has a bad habit of doubling up on beats, making many moments redundant (i.e. we’ll see Josh get rejected by Zoe and Overman will follow the action by writing something like, “Josh is stung by getting rejected by Zoe” – an unnecessary sentence). But the STORY ITSELF for Slackfi is fun and keeps you reading.
So I recommend this script. It’s a cool little sci-fi project that’s marketable enough to be brought to the big screen. And I couldn’t help but think it would be a perfect double-feature with amateur favorite Keeping Time!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
What I learned: The midpoint is a great place for passive characters to become active. — Preferably, your hero will be active from the outset (like Indiana Jones). That’s because movies like active characters. But some stories necessitate that the hero start off passive. Starting off passive is fine. What you don’t want is for your hero to be passive for the entire script. At some point, you want them to start driving the story. Through Slackfi and Star Wars, I realized that the midpoint is a great place to do this. Luke doesn’t start taking charge until the midpoint (when he comes up with an idea for how to save Princess Leia) and Josh doesn’t start taking charge until the midpoint (when he has to rescue Wolf and Tiger and come up with a plan to save the world). So consider this option the next time you write a story that begins with a passive hero.
Genre: Period
The Flight of the Nez Perce is a spec script that, by Hollywood standards, should not work. It’s more than 130 pages. It’s an extremely violent period piece, where half the dialogue is subtitled. It also asks for a cast of hundreds, and probably couldn’t be produced for less than $120 million. Normally, these are all choices I would suggest screenwriters avoid. And yet, I still hope that a miracle happens, and this movie gets made.
I confess the main reason I picked up this script was because one of the author’s other works, Desperate Hours, currently holds the No. 1 spot on Carson’s top 25 list. But, after I finished it, I read it a second time because I loved it. Despite its flaws, The Flight of the Nez Perce is an excellent piece of writing. Let’s find out how this script breaks through the chains of industry expectations.
The year is 1877, and it’s a time of cultural unrest in America. The Civil War may be over now, but there are still people in this country fighting and shedding blood, to protect their way of life. After living in balance with the natural world for hundreds of years, everything is changing for the Indian people. The white men have come to these shores to stay, and their presence spreads across the land like a sickness. The symbol of the white man’s reach is the steam locomotive, which the Indians call “the iron monster.” The Indians have come to learn that, when they see thick plumes of train smoke rising above the trees, it means the white man has arrived, to take them from their homes. Sometimes never to be seen again. Through their actions, the white men stir a combustible mixture of fear and anger inside the Indians’ hearts. Until one day, beside the waters of the Little Bighorn River in Montana, the match is lit.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn arguably becomes the worst Indian-related massacre in American history. Chief Sitting Bull and his Sioux tribe kill Captain George Custer and all his men, winning a major victory against the U.S. army. The outcome of the battle does a couple noteworthy things. First, the army takes a more aggressive stance on handling Indian affairs. As General William Sherman says at one point, they cannot afford another Little Bighorn. The other thing that happens is, warriors from other Indian tribes hear of Sitting Bull’s victory, and become even more determined to defeat the white man. Basically, relations between the two cultures just got a whole lot worse.
This all adds up to bad news for Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce tribe, which has lived in relative peace, in the Wollowa Valley of the Pacific Northwest. Joseph sees war as a failure of mankind, and will do anything he can to stay clear of it. This seems impossible, though, when Red Grizzly, a Nez Perce warrior, brings news of the Little Bighorn massacre. Red Grizzly wants to follow Sitting Bull’s example, and take the fight directly to the white men. Joseph turns down the suggestion, not wanting to put the tribe in harm’s way. But Joseph soon understands he can’t stop the inevitable.
Soon after Little Bighorn, General Sherman receives orders from the U.S. president to remove the Nez Perce from the Wollowa Valley, and send them to a reservation in Idaho. And, if the Nez Perce refuse to leave, then the army has permission to use any means necessary. Why is the government suddenly interested in the Nez Perce? Aside from wanting to keep the Indians under control, it turns out there could be significant gold deposits right under the tribe’s feet. And the white men want to get their hands on that gold at any cost. So, Sherman sends Civil War veteran General Howard and his regiment to run this campaign against the Nez Perce.
Meanwhile, tensions are heating up near the Nez Perce settlement. The white people have built a town nearby, and it’s been difficult for everyone to be neighbors. For example, one of the tribesmen, Eagle Rock, comes across a riderless horse during a walk in the forest. Eagle Rock tries to befriend the horse, thinking it doesn’t have an owner. But it turns out that it belongs to an unfriendly white man named Larry Ott. Larry sees Eagle Rock touching his horse, and he doesn’t like it one bit. Because they don’t understand each other’s language, a fight breaks out between Eagle Rock, Larry, and Larry’s friends. Eagle Rock is shot to death.
Eagle Rock’s murder sparks rage among some of the Nez Perce warriors. The warriors, led by Red Grizzly, go out one night to kill Larry Ott for revenge. The only problem is, once they get to Larry’s cabin, no one’s there. Larry probably knew he was in trouble and left his home for good. Not happy with this situation, the warriors find another white home close by. At this point, it doesn’t matter who they kill, as long as their victims have pale faces. The warriors kill several men at this house, and Red Grizzly rapes a young mother. The mother escapes and notifies the authorities of the horror that just happened. She also asks General Howard to kill all the Indians.
Chief Joseph and the rest of the tribe learn of the atrocities that Red Grizzly and the other warriors committed. Joseph takes these men into custody and plans to deliver them to the white people, so they may determine the punishment. The next morning, Joseph meets with white army, to turn over the warriors and talk about moving his tribe to Idaho. Unfortunately, during this meeting, a snake startles one of the Indian’s horses. When the horse rears up, one of the U.S. soldiers thinks it’s an attack, and fires at the Indian sitting on the horse. This causes a bloody battle to break out. In the end, the white men are soundly defeated, and the Nez Perce didn’t suffer a single casualty. It’s a victory, but the damage is done. The Indians think there’s no chance for peace now, so they begin a 1,300-mile run for Canada, in hopes of finding sanctuary with Sitting Bull’s tribe. General Howard and his army have no intentions of letting the Nez Perce escape, so they chase them every step of the way. The Nez Perce win several battles on their flight North, using tactics that are studied to this day. But because their hardships become too much to take – the loss of life, the starvation – they finally surrender to the white men, just forty miles away from the Canadian border.
There are a lot of reasons why this script is so good. One of the biggest reasons is that the author knows how to create empathetic characters. Without empathy, the character probably won’t connect with the audience. This doesn’t mean the character has to be likable at all times. But, it does mean that we, as readers and viewers, should be able to see the world through that character’s eyes. I think the writer accomplishes this goal. For example, it would’ve been easy to make the U.S. Army the indisputable villains. But the author is too generous to leave it at that. He paid special attention to the army’s high-ranking officers. I came to respect General Howard, in particular, because he eventually grieved for Joseph and the Nez Perce, and wished he could atone for his behavior. That kind of nuance is missing in a lot of antagonists I’ve seen. So when I find one that’s still in touch with his humanity, it stands out. Having said all that, my favorite character turned out to be the most likable of all. Chief Joseph brought tears to my eyes. He meets my definition of a good man. He wanted to live the rest of his life with his friends and family in peace. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt another human being, but he was willing to, if that’s what it took to save his people. Even in his defeat, he was dignified, courageous, and true to himself. Joseph has a place in my heart, and he’s welcome to stay there as long as he wants. I’d love to see more scripts use characters like this.
Another element that made this demanding script more enjoyable was the massive scope of the story. We get epic battles, forbidden love, fellowship, betrayal, and, just when we need it most, mercy. And it all takes place on the vast, untamed landscapes of the American West. So, if there are some elements in your script that are obscure or complex, you can balance those things with a few mainstream qualities. Especially if you’re writing a period piece, it can’t come across as a dusty history lesson. The audience, above all, needs to be moved and entertained.
Perhaps the most important reason why this script works so well is the way it’s structured. A lot of scripts these days hit the ground running, and they never stop. The writer, E. Nicholas Mariani, structures his scripts in a way I don’t see many other people use. He implements a slow buildup that eventually explodes into a breathtaking third act. In “Flight,” he uses the first act to introduce us to the many people of the Nez Perce tribe. He also introduces us to the U.S. Army, and explains why they plan to move the tribe off their land. A lot of story points are setup in the first act, so the first 20 or 30 pages are a bit slow. But Mariani is willing to take that risk because he knows the ending will mean more, if we feel something for these people. The next two acts are constructed around the battles between the Nez Perce and the U.S. Army. The beauty of this approach is that each battle sequence requires greater and greater sacrifices from both sides of the war. The losses of the Nez Perce become more meaningful, as the order of deaths starts at the less important people, and moves up to the most beloved. The environmental obstacles also become more dangerous with every step. In one scene, the Nez Perce have to climb a mountain during a mudslide. And then in a later scene, they have to fight the army in a blinding snowstorm. The conflict is elegantly designed like a rollercoaster; it’s always moving up the hill. And with the third act, we come careening down the other side.
Act three is what really made the script for me. If you’ve ever taken an American History class, you probably know what happened to the Indians. The story of these people is almost unbearably sad, and that’s how I felt when I watched Joseph surrender his tribe to the army. By this point, the Nez Perce are completely exhausted and miserable. After the final catastrophic battle, the “flight” is over and they lost. When Joseph gives his immortal speech of surrender, I felt his pain deep in my bones, because Mariani structured his script to build up to that final climax. It was glorious to behold. Because of this script, I find myself supporting the slow build. If it’s done right, it helps setup the ending more effectively than a shallow first act would.
Of course, no script is perfect, even this one. I’d argue that the dialogue could use some more sepia tones. Like his other script, Desperate Hours, the characters sometimes sound too modern for the times they live in. My humble suggestion is to focus a rewrite on giving more period flavor and texture to the voices of these amazing people.
And, of course, there’s the issue of the large cast. I’m honestly torn on this one. I kept a head count, and there were at least thirteen characters introduced by name in the first five pages. In most cases, I’d highly recommend keeping the cast list down to five or six major characters. Not only is it hard for the reader to keep track of so many people, it’s hard for the writer to develop all of them with such a limited page count. But this script has the one exception for a big cast that I can think of. The third act would not be as good without it. It just wouldn’t. The power and devastation of the third act is largely achieved from realizing how many people died since the first page. If the cast had been smaller, the effect would have shrunk, as well.
In the end, The Flight of the Nez Perce was more than just another script to read. It was a full-blown experience. I was so tied up in the story that, when I finished the last page, I felt emotions I couldn’t quite explain. I was bruised, heartbroken, and appreciative all at once. Is there a name for such a thing? Yes, there are problems in this draft worth fixing. But, to paraphrase Maya Angelou, the problems aren’t what I’ll remember. What I’ll remember is the way this script made me feel. Unless something better comes along in the next couple months, this is my script of the year.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If your concept is expensive and noncommercial, be very sure that it’s an idea you’re passionate about. The Flight of the Nez Perce was on the Black List two years ago and, to my knowledge, hasn’t sold yet. Sadly, it’s not too surprising because the logline is a hard sell. In his 2010 Black List commentary, Carson himself said that this script “takes the cake for being the most boring sounding script on the list.” And yet this script is amazing. The author obviously had a strong feeling about the idea and put everything he had into it. So, at the very least, this is an incredible calling card script. But if your goal is to write a spec that’s an easy sell, it makes sense to use a concept with a mainstream hook and a modest budget.
Genre: Period/Mystery/Thriller
Is anyone still here? I got a lot of comments yesterday from people saying they were never going to read Scriptshadow again. Because I gave Looper a bad review. I can’t help if I thought the writing was bad. Though I admit my morbid fascination with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s face maaaaaay have prevented me from picking up on some key plot points early on, mainly about this Rainman character, who I’m still confused about. But we can’t go backwards. We must go forwards. And in going forwards, we must go backwards, back to 1867.
I soooooo wanted to love this script! It was not only my favorite first 10 pages of the Twit-Pitch contest, but the writer, Nikolai, is a hardcore Scriptshadow Twitter follower. The man retweets my tweets like cray-cray, and is a huge supporter of the site.
The problem Nikolai runs into with The Tradition is one I’ve become more and more familiar with over the last few months. Nikolai is an amazing writer. But he isn’t yet an amazing storyteller. What I mean by that is that the descriptiveness of The Tradition is TOP NOTCH. I can’t think of any other screenwriter who could make me feel like I was in 1867 London more than Nikolai. Take this simple description of a character as an example: “A fusty old SOLICITOR with great big grey pork chop sideburns and pince-nez glasses is shuffling through papers like a catfish.” I jumped to a random page and found that. That’s how everything is written in The Tradition. We are pulled into this world due in whole to the amazing writing. No question about it.
But pulling us into a world has nothing to do with telling us a story in that world. That’s a completely different skill. And unfortunately, there’s isn’t much of that skill shown in The Tradition. It feels like a story that could’ve taken place in 30 pages, stretched out to 116. That’s what was so frustrating. One of the reasons The Tradition got me in its first 10 pages was because something HAPPENED. A man is running from a mysterious tribe of Polynesian boys. He’s captured. Killed. It was an exciting first scene. But after that scene, shockingly enough, little to nothing happens for another 100 pages. It didn’t feel like a story was being told so much as a series of mundane events was being meticulously chronicled.
The Tradition starts off with that early great scene, then flashes forward 50 years to England circa 1867. A young and beautiful woman, IDA, has just buried her father, only to realize that he’s left her in a boatload of debt. Her once illustrious lifestyle is torn from her in order to pay this debt, and she soon finds herself slumming it up as a seamstress to make ends meet.
That job falls to the wayside soonafter, and Ida is less than a month’s rent away from seriously considering prostitution. So lucky her when she’s spotted by the son of a royal Lord, John, who asks her and her roommate to come work for him in the countryside. Away they go, along with many other women and children, and all of a sudden Ida has a job, a future…Things aren’t looking so bad!
In the meantime, we meet Arthur, John’s younger brother. Arthur’s the family outcast, mainly because he doesn’t agree with a secret tradition the family goes through every year. We’re only given vague hints as to what this tradition is, but it’s evident that wherever Ida and all these other women are being taken, it isn’t going to end well.
Which is strange because the mansion Ida and the others arrive in appears to be a dream come true. They get new clothes to wear, yummy food to eat, lovely beds to sleep in. The only downside seems to be that the Lord is a little sleezy and John is a bit of an asshole.
It’s at this point, unfortunately, where the script really starts to lose itself. The stuff that goes on at the house – which is essentially nothing – goes on forever. The story is relegated to people wandering through halls, occasionally bumping into each other, followed by some talking. Nothing is actually happening. Nobody’s trying to do anything. My guess is that Nikolai was trying to rest his story on this impending sense of doom in this house, and I admit to being a little curious as to where it was all going. But there was so little drama and conflict leading up to the final act that I became bored.
You need SCENARIOS in your screenplay. You need intriguing mini-stories with their own goals and complications and mysteries and conflicts and characters pushing up against other characters. For example, maybe Ida is given the job to prep each woman before taking them down to a mystery room. She has to make sure their dress is perfect, their make-up is right, that they look as good as they can possibly look. She does this. However, once she brings these women downstairs, a mysterious assistant takes them and she never sees them again. She begins to get suspicious and starts looking into it, putting herself in danger. Now, at least, we have a woman doing something as opposed to obvliviously stumbling around the castle hallways occasionally running into someone and talking to them.
That’s the difference between writing and telling a story. When you’re writing, you’re trying to think of the best way to describe what’s happening in the moment and figure out what each character is going to say to each other right now. When you’re storytelling, you’re looking to construct scenarios full of mystery and tension and drama and conflict and danger that extend beyond the immediate scene.
I started getting worried after those first ten pages. After we set up that Ida was on her own, it just took forever to get her to the castle. I don’t remember the exact page number but I’m pretty sure it happened after page 45. We should’ve been on our way to that castle by the end of Act 1, page 25. Remember guys, your story is almost always playing slower than you think it is. So while you think you need this long scene showing how difficult it is for your character to be out of a job, we’re waiting for the next interesting thing to happen. With The Tradition, I felt like I was always waiting too long for that next interesting thing to happen.
Character-wise, there wasn’t much going on with anyone other than Arthur, the black sheep brother who refused to partake in the tradition along with the rest of the family. I liked that Nikolai tried to create a flaw within him, that he was basically a coward. But the coward flaw is always difficult to execute because you risk the possibility of the audience thinking the character’s a p*ssy and being annoyed with him. I have to admit, that’s how I perceived Arthur. Instead of rooting for him to stand up for himself, I kept thinking, “Grow some balls, buddy. Jesus.”
The character we should’ve been exploring was Ida. She started out strong, with this crippling scenario of losing her father and her home, but there wasn’t enough going on inside of her to keep my interest after that point. We need some sort of conflict inside someone that needs to be resolved, whether it be a flaw or something from their past or whatever, and that wasn’t here. Jodie Foster had both a past and a flaw to overcome in Silence Of The Lambs, for example. She had the lambs. She also had an obsession to show that a little girl could do the job just as well as the big boys. Ida’s just sort of naively going wherever the story takes her.
For these reasons, I couldn’t get into The Tradition. But I have high hopes for Nikolai. He’s obviously an excellent writer who now needs to become a storyteller.
Script link: The Tradition
What I learned: Repeat after me – “Screenwriters are not writers. They’re storytellers.” “Screenwriters are not writers. They’re storytellers.” “Screenwriters are not writers. They’re storytellers.”
Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama?/Horror?/Supernatural?
Premise: (from IMDB) In 2072, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent 30 years into the past, where a hired gun awaits. Someone like Joe, who one day learns the mob wants to ‘close the loop’ by transporting back Joe’s future self.
About: Rian Johnson, who broke onto the scene as a writer/director of the Joseph Gordon-Levitt starring “Brick,” rejoins the actor for his latest film and first foray into the sci-fi genre, “Looper.”
Writer: Rian Johnson
What.
The F*ck.
Did I just watch?
I have seen some weird-ass movies in my time, but Looper’s made it to to the top of my current WTF list. What’s so baffling about this uneven, strange, mutation of a movie is that it’s shot in such a way as to almost force you to take it seriously. The actors are big. The cinemtography is top-notch. The production value is impressive. The problem is that this is one of the wonkiest screenplays I’ve ever seen made into a film. We are talking bizarre choice after bizarre choice. But before I even get to the screenplay, I cannot NOT talk about Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s face!
So when I decided I wasn’t going to review this script, I skipped all marketing for the movie. I don’t get to see that many movies where I haven’t already read the script and I wanted to go in fresh. So while many of you had probably been properly prepped for the Mr. Potato Head technology used in this film, I knew nothing about it, and therefore thought the concessions guys had dropped an ounce of acid into my coke.
The first time I saw Gordon-Levitt onscreen I thought, “Man, he’s getting old.” Then, as time went by, I thought, “Or wait, he’s had work done.” And that occupied my thoughts for like 15 minutes – as I kept asking the question, “Why would Joseph Gorden-Levitt have work done on his face?? Is he really that vain?” I was so confused. Until I realized that his lips looked eerily similar to the lips of someone famous. I eventually realized that someone was Bruce Willis, and the purpose of the face-morph-a-thon became clear to me. But then I couldn’t stop thinking about that skit on Conan O’Brien where he’d show you what the baby would look like if two celebrities had a kid. That’s honestly what Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Bruce Willis kept reminding me of!
I’m also dying to know if Gordon-Levitt approved of this ahead of time. Actors are all about their eyes. It looks like Willis’ eyes were glued onto Gordon-Levitt’s face. When you couple that with his glued-on mouth, did Gordon-Levitt do any actual acting?? While I continued to be baffled by that, I eventually realized it was a harbinger of the circus that was to come. But I’ll get to that later.
So what’s Looper about? It’s basically about this guy who lives in 2042(?) named Joe. Joe is a looper. In the future, time travel is illegal but the mob doesn’t care and uses it to dispose of bodies. You see, in the future, it’s impossible to dispose of bodies (even though we – spoiler – see Old Joe’s girlfriend killed in the future. So apparently it can’t be that difficult), so they send these people back to the past, to 2042, where “Loopers” are waiting for them and shoot them as soon as they arrive. That’s Joe’s job, to kill these people and dispose of their bodies. Why they can’t just kill the bodies in the future and THEN send them back so as to keep the job simpler is never explained, but my guess is that it would’ve ruined the plot point needed to create the rest of the story. Not, of course, because it actually makes sense.
Now here’s the thing. This future crime organization doesn’t like the idea of Loopers running around willy-nilly because they very well might tell someone that they (the mob) like to play hide and seek with the past. So 30 years after your Looper contract ends, they capture you and send you back and have your young self kill YOU (your old self). You don’t know you’re killing yourself yet because they send the future people back with bags over their heads. You only realize it afterwards. This is called “closing your loop” and it means you’re retired.
So let me get this straight. This organization isn’t concerned that you might say something in the 30 years leading up to that moment, only once you hit the 30 year mark? Yeah, that makes perfect sense. 30 years later is almost always the moment when people start giving away secrets.
But whatever, I’ll go with it. The movie’s still cool, even if Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s face is freaking me the hell out. I’m no longer scared of clowns. I’m scared of Gordon-Levitt-Willis’s. If they want to make a horror film, cast this man! Cast him now!
Anyway, we’re told about someone from the future called the “Rainmaker.” Apparently he’s closing all the loops because…I don’t know. Because that’s what the script wants. Not because it makes sense. So Old Joe is sent back to be killed by Joe, but Joe botches the execution and Old Joe escapes. There’s this really tough future mob boss who looks like Jeff Daniels who can’t have future people on the run in the past! So he orders his men to kill both Joe and Old Joe.
Up until this point, we still had a movie. I didn’t like all the wonkiness (why do they need these special guns again other than that they look cool??) but it’s a solid setup. It’s a cool idea for a thriller on the run. The old guy can’t just run away. He has to make sure his young self survives too. Because if young self dies, old self dies. That’s cool!
EXCEPT!
EXCEPT somebody decided to introduce TELE-FUCKING-KENISIS into the story. WTF???
Apparently, in the future, there’s telekinesis! Why? I’ll tell you why. Because Johnson needed some reason for the cool shots later on where everything floats. But I’m getting ahead of myself – time jumping if you will, so I need to stay in the present. 10% of the people on the planet can float quarters over their hands. I swear – TEN FULL MINUTES of this movie is dedicated to explaining that people can float quarters over their hands. It’s such a strange weird nonsensical variable that’s thrown into the film that there’s no other way to respond to it than: WTF???
Anyway, that was the weird choice that destroyed the movie. But here’s the story decision that destoryed the movie. Joe holes up in a farm and decides to sit there and wait for his older self to show up so he can kill him and get his life back. The owner of the farm is some woman and her Omen child, who I’ll get to in a sec.
What baffled me is that Johnson completely KILLED the momentum of his story! As I always tell you guys, NEVER put your character in a location for a long time WAITING FOR SOMETHING. Waiting is NEVER INTERESTING. Your character becomes inactive. He’s no longer doing anything. The story slows to a halt. And everything becomes BORING!
Just ask yourself, how exciting is it to watch someone wait for anything. It isn’t! EVER! Now if you have some element of conflict constantly coming at your characters (something attacking them for instance) then you can make it work (even though I still hate the waiting element), but just having someone wait? And wait? And wait?? It’s script suicide! You will bore an audience to pieces.
But what really rolled me, what really had me throwing my hands up in the air, was when The Omen child showed up. All of a sudden, this little kid (who we’re assuming is the “Rainmaker” – which might be cool if I understood who the heck the Rainmaker was and why he was so important) turns out to be this little Omen boy, who gets really angry and when he gets angry….his TELEKINESIS GOES OUT OF CONTROL! And everything in the air floats. And he can rip your body to shreds on a molecular level.
Ummm, WHAT????
When did this become a Steven King novel?! I thought this was about a guy who has to kill his future self! What the hell is going on right now???
Every scene with the kid was comically bad. And nothing about him made sense. He would trip down the stairs and that would trigger one of his super-telekinesis freak outs, which would result in people exploding! By falling down the stairs!! It was just so bizarre. And what did any of this telekensis stuff have to do with the Looper stuff! The Rainmaker of the future was “closing loops.” Why? And why did he have to have special telekinesis powers to ask Loopers to close loops? Didn’t he just need the power of asking?
I could go on about how bad this was but what would be the point? What this script needed was someone to tell Johnson to ditch the whole Rainmaker, Omen, Farm plot and focus on the intricate world of looping and the unique setup of two people on the run, one of whom can’t survive unless the other survives. Someone please close my loop. Then blow me up on a molecular level.
What I learned: Never hole your characters up in a location and have them wait for something for too long UNLESS they’re constantly battling lots of outside conflict. Main characters waiting for shit to happen is the worst thing you can do to a story.
