Genre: Dark Thriller
Premise: Often told through the point of view of the killer himself, Psycho Killer is about a serial killer who believes he must kill as many people as possible in order to receive preferred status in Hell.
About: Andrew Kevin Walker is, of course, spec sale royalty, as his script “Seven” was one of the most popular spec scripts in Hollywood history.  It eventually went on to be directed by David Fincher, starring Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, and Kevin Spacey.  Walker would struggle a bit after that sale, eventually writing and selling another script, 8mm, for 1.25 million dollars.   Unfortunately, the studio deemed that work too dark and encouraged director Joel Schumacher to sanitize it.  The results were so bad that Walker disowned the movie and has refused to watch it since, even to this day.  Psycho Killer is a script he penned four years ago.  Not sure where it stands at this moment.
Writer: Andrew Kevin Walker
Details: 113 pages.  July 4, 2008. This is a SECOND DRAFT.  So take that into consideration.

While Andrew Kevin Walker remains spec sale royalty due to his screenplay masterpiece, Seven, lighting up Hollywood back in the 90s, it still remains unclear how the script sold.  I could’ve sworn  the script was found in a production slush pile.  But people also say Walker gave the script to A-list screenwriter David Koepp, who he reportedly had a friendship with.  Koepp then passed the script on to New Line, who purchased it.  If anyone can clear this up for me, that would be great.  Because hey, the story’s definitely more inspiring to the average writer if the the script was discovered on talent alone, and not through an A-list Hollywood contact.

There’s this sort of unofficial age-old debate that has gone on about which sick dark fucked up movie is better, Seven or Silence Of The Lambs.  Personally, I’ve always been a Lambs guy.  I just thought the character work in that script was a lot better.  Seven wins on atmosphere for sure.  But I just didn’t find the characters as compelling as I did in Lambs.  Of course, that could’ve been due in part to Pitt’s acting. :) Anyway, that’s a nice segue way into today’s script, because what keeps this script from connecting with the reader is a somewhat distant character dynamic.

Psycho Killer has a freaking awesome opening.  Imagine a…um…well Psycho Killer popping out of his car on a highway, walking over to a man who’s changing his tire, bashing his head into smithereens with a sledgehammer, chasing his wife down the highway, seeing a semi baring down on them, hurling the sledgehammer at the truck with all his might.  The sledgehammer goes through the windshield.  The incapacitated driver loses control of his truck, which jackknifes, turning the fleeing woman into road gravy, before finally coming to a stop.  All in a day’s work for our Psycho Killer, who’s in the middle of an 8 state killing spree.

What sets Psycho Killer apart right away is that we take the POV of the killer himself.  So we’re the bad guy for the entire first act.  I thought we were going to be the bad guy for the entire movie, but when Psycho Killer (yes, his name is actually “Psycho Killer”) kills a cop in front of his fellow cop wife (Jane), the POV turns to a traditional third person narrative and we follow Jane as she tries to avenge her hubby’s death.

To me, this was when the script sort of lost its appeal.  Although it was disturbing, what made it unique was watching a killer through a killer’s eyes.  Once it became a straightforward procedural, it didn’t hold up because I didn’t feel anything for the characters.  I guess I should’ve felt something since Jane watched her husband die, but there was just something standard and unexciting about her character.  I don’t know.  She just felt too…normal.

But we do occasionally cut back to Psycho Killer’s life, which seems to be consumed by these nightmares of hell.  Psycho Killer is convinced that he has some higher purpose and will be rewarded in hell, as long as he keeps killing people.  This leads him on a search for a secret group of fellow satan worshippers, who he eventually finds after putting a code message in the New York Times (huh?).

The story finishes with a rather strange choice, sending Psycho Killer on a much larger mission to kill way more people than the inefficient one at a time he kills every day.  I’m not going to spoil it, but I’ll just say the movie turns from a serial killer movie into, basically, a terrorist movie, and that didn’t feel right.

I’ll give Psycho Killer this – it *is* a little bit different.  Just putting us inside the body of a serial killer was creepy enough and made for some great dramatic irony moments.  Remember, dramatic irony is when we know something one of the characters in a scene does not.  So in this case, we knew Psycho Killer was about to kill some poor unsuspecting soul, and that we couldn’t warn that soul.  So that made for some tension-filled scenes, if not some majorly fucked up ones!

And ya gotta love how Walker decided to name his character PSYCHO KILLER.  Lol.  I mean how great is that?

But the rest of the script – and obviously this has something to do with this still being a second draft – feels exploratory.  We have these random dream sequences where Psycho Killer imagines himself in Hell surrounded by demons.  They feel like kick ass scenes for a director to play with but, storywise, they’re glorified film school writing, where every tenth page is yet another “trippy” dream sequence.

I suppose it comes together later when Psycho Killer joins up with some satanists and they talk about Hell taking over earth and all that jazz.  But that was a concert I wasn’t interested in going to, and to be honest, it all felt a might confused, again probably due to the exploratory nature of the second draft.

What bothers me is that I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t care for Jane at all.  Just the other day, with Desperate Hours, I was talking about how effectively loss creates sympathy for a character.  The reason we’re on board with Frank Sullivan right away is because we feel his pain in losing his family to the Spanish flu.  So then why don’t I feel a thing when Jane loses her husband to Psycho Killer?

I can’t figure it out but I suppose part of it is that she just seemed so mechanical.  Her personality was non-specific, basic, and just boring.  It almost felt like she wanted to find Psycho Killer not because she was deeply affected by losing her husband, but because the script needed her to want to find him.  And that’s when a story falls off the rails, when things are happening because the writer needs them to and not because the characters need them to.  I don’t know.  Am I the only one who thought this?

Since I’m obviously not going to root for a Psycho Killer, that meant I had no one to cheer on.  If you don’t have any characters to attach yourself to in a movie, then the movie’s dead to you.  Doesn’t matter how clever the plot or the twists are, I’m not emotionally invested and therefore not interested in the story.

That’s a shame.  I still think Walker is a great screenwriter but I would’ve loved to have had someone to root for here.  I hope Walker’s since fixed this problem.

What i learned – This scene ALWAYS WORKS.  Put your character in a car with something he’s hiding, then have a cop stop him.  It is virtually impossible to screw this scene up.  We see it here when Psycho Killer gets stopped.  We see it in Fargo when the cop stops Carl and Gaear.  Just make sure you milk the suspense.  The audience loves wondering what’s going to happen, so feel free to draw it out as long as you’d like.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A school guidance counselor who dated pop sensation Lake James back in high school, follows her into rehab in hopes of rekindling their romance.
About: Writer Sam Laybourne is a producer on the cult comedy hit, Cougar Town (which I admit is actually kind of funny, even if all the characters are written in the exact same voice).  He’s also written an episode of another cult fave, Arrested Development.  On top of that, he has an in-development future TV project set up with Michael J. Fox.  Rehab sold early last year I believe.
Writer: Sam Laybourne
Details: May 11, 2009 draft (Writer’s Draft)

It seems like every time I read a comedy these days, I go in thinking it will suck. And that sucks. Because I don’t want it to suck.  Honestly.  But the kind of writers who write comedies are sort of flippant by nature.  They’re willing to do the easy stuff, the setting up and paying off of jokes, but refuse to do the “hard time” work.  The structure.  The story.  The characters.  That’s where you separate the “writers” from the writers – As long as you’re willing to get your hands dirty, you can write a great comedy.

Laybourne’s someone who’s willing to do the dirty work.  How do I know?  Well, because he actually gave a secondary character a goal/dream (the main character’s friend, Touchdown, wants to play in the Arena Football League).  I know if a writer’s focusing on the desires of his secondary characters, that he’s a real writer.  So once we established that, I knew that at the very least, this writer was giving it his all.  How did it work out in the end?  Was Rehab successful?  Or did it fall off the wagon? Read on….

23 year old Abe Yarbow is the cool guidance counselor at his high school, a high school he used to attend himself with none other than Lake James.  Who is Lake James, you ask?  Well, she’s basically the reincarnation of Courtney Love.  She gets drunk.  She gets high.  She parties.  She vomits.  This woman is like a one-person partying crew.  To the point where it *almost* overshadows her amazing career, which consists of one hit single after another.

Anyway, Abe actually went out with Lake James in high school.  For three years!  And he’s kinda maybe partially still infatuated with her.  You see, Lake was discovered right out of a high school play, whisked off to Hollywood, became a megastar, and in the process never officially broke up with Abe.  So in Abe’s mind, they’re still together, and all he needs to do is get in touch with her to restart their romance.

However, this has proven to be harder than you’d think.  He’s gone down every single communication avenue, even going so far as to contact the Lake James Fan Club hotline.  Yes, he is as pathetic as that sounds.  Luckily, there’s one person in his life, the self-nicknamed “Touchdown” (a gym teacher who’s convinced he’ll play professional football someday) who constantly reminds him how pathetic he is for obsessing over this worthless bitch, and is desperate to get him to move on.

But Abe can’t move on.  He’s too in love.  And that’s when a situation arises that will finally allow him to rekindle his romance with Lake.  It turns out the Taco Bell sponsored James drunk-drove right into rival Del Taco in a desperate attempt to fill her belly with some late night Del Taco snacks.  This adventure has dictated that she finally go to rehab, where the straight-laced Abe plans to sneak into and jumpstart their relationship again.

Once inside, Abe tries everything in his power to get Lake to notice him, but she’s not biting on any front.  In the meantime, Abe finds comfort from one of the assistants at the center, someone he’d probably fall in love with if he wasn’t so infatuated with Lake.  So will Abe finally wake up from his whipped life?  Or will he continue down this pathetic path of trying to rekindle something that was never kindling in the first place?

First off, I liked the humor in Rehab.  I was laughing a lot.  Abe’s over the top infatuation with Lake was pitch perfect (I loved how he’d answer every phone call with a hopeful, “Lake?”) and Abe and Touchdown had a nice little back-and-forth banter going on.

Speaking of Touchdown, Laybourne had an interesting naming scheme going on in Rehab.  He’d basically give every other character a nickname.  When I see this in comedy scripts, I almost always recognize a former reader.  Only readers understand how difficult it is to remember all the characters in the script so when they write their own scripts, they’re very conscious of making sure every character is memorable  You can’t really pull off the nickname thing in dramas or thrillers.  But they’re perfect for comedies.

The script was also really well structured.  I liked how Laybourne divided his story into sequences (what’s known as the “Sequence Approach”) and how that approach kept the script moving.  For example, Abe got into rehab, and for about 12 pages, tried to be really nice to Lake to get her back.  That didn’t work.  So he shifts for the next 12 pages into the “bad boy,” and tries to pretend like he doesn’t care.  That approach eventually works and the next 12 pages are about Lake warming up to him.  And then the 12 pages after that are about Lake falling for Abe and pulling him into her twisted dangerous world.

Because each sequence changes up the story just a little bit, it continued to be fresh.  Amateur scripts tend to drop the ball in this area.  There’s never any real change of direction in the screenplay.  It’s just one long string of the same.

I don’t think this script is going to win any awards.  I don’t think it’s going to light the world on fire.  But it’s a nice little twist on a romantic comedy and isn’t that what we’re looking for?  Something the same but different?  In my opinion, this is just different enough to be worthy of hitting the big screen. It’s certainly better than most of the comedies out there now.

Genre: Comedy

How does one follow up the best reviewed script on Scriptshadow in over two years?  It’s kind of like getting your first stand up gig and being told you’re following Jerry Seinfeld.  It doesn’t help that Desperate Hours was a big deep-thinking character-driven drama and that Second Chance just wants to make you giggle.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make people giggle, but coming on the tail of a script that hits every emotional beat known to man, there’s a tendency to get frustrated with a story whose only goal is to make you laugh.

The good news is that Rucker, the writer, *is* funny.  He proves that in the first ten pages.  Actually, scratch that.  He proves that on the title page, which displays his e-mail as Kolby at superhellaawesome.com.  So I was ready to throw away any and all screenwriting checklists as long as I had a few good laughs.  But there’s a caveat to that.  Comedy’s only funny when you’re enjoying the story.  If you don’t care about what’s going on, nothing carries any importance.  And once that happens, the jokes stop working.  So it was time to see whether Second Chance contained a compelling story or not. I hope so.  Because nobody gets a SECOND CHANCE at Amateur Friday.  Well, unless you’re Orbitals of course.

32 year old Gary Trumball works at a market of some sort where he burns time away by reading books, ignoring customers, and waiting for the clock to strike 5.  It’s during one of these clock striking moments that Gary races out and misses a national announcement that will change his life forever.  He’s been randomly picked for the most popular show in the world, “Second Chance,” which allows its winners to go back in time and give 15 minutes of advice to their younger self.

It only takes a few phone calls from enthusiastic long lost friends and family members before Gary realizes what’s going on.  He’s mildly excited about it, I guess you can say, but more preoccupied with the fact that his ex-girlfriend all of a sudden has decided to like him again.  Hmmm, sounds like fishy timing to me.  But Gary liked her so darn much that he’s willing to overlook the fact that she cheated on him and treated him like shit.

Gary’s wimpy friend, Big Mike, is very much against any contact with Sarah.  He wants Gary to focus on what’s important, which is figuring out what he’s going to tell his past self.  But that’s getting more complicated by the minute. The creator of the show, a former child star named Rick Roney, who reinvented his train wreck of a career by giving his past self 15 minutes of advice, doesn’t like how casually Gary’s treating this once in a lifetime opportunity.  Just getting Gary on the phone has become a chore, and it’s pissing Rick off.

As if the craziness isn’t bad enough, Gary is soon kidnapped by a hot little number named Erin, who repeatedly drugs him and ties him up for…umm…well, I’m not sure why.  To talk to him for a few minutes before untying him?

On their fourth meeting, Erin kidnaps Gary, leading to a Matrix-style chase sequence where we find out Rick has inserted a tracer inside Gary so he can keep track of him.  Not sure why in the world he would do that but the sequence eventually leads Gary to some underground futuristic city (??????) where he learns there’s an entire community of people who have been burned by their loved ones screwing them over once they went back in time and wished for a life that made theirs expendable.

It’s at this point when we realize Erin (who’s one of these unfortunate folks) wants Gary to tell his younger self to destroy this whole Second Chance show so that none of this will ever happen – so all these people will have their families and friends back again (I think).  Gary’s torn about the whole thing and isn’t sure what he’s gonna do, which might not even matter, since Rick has decided to covertly move away from Gary and give someone else a SECOND CHANCE.

Kolby is a fun writer with some fun ideas, but like a lot of young writers, he hasn’t put enough effort into learning the craft yet.  Second Chance suffers from a giant case of Random-itis, with multiple cases of “What the hell??”  We have the occasional fun scene every once in awhile, but while reading Second Chance, you’re usually scratching your head going, “Why did he decide to do that??”

We were just talking about this with Desperate Hours.  A story is only as good as its choices, and a lot of Second Chance’s choices are weird or not-very-well-thought-out.  For example, as soon as I learned that the time travel element of Second Chance was dictated by a mysterious robot who Rick just happened to find one day, I knew we were in trouble.  And then there was the whole futuristic underground city thing.  Ummm, what???

When you come up with an idea, one of the first things you have to take into consideration is audience expectation. What kind of movie is the audience expecting to see?  For example, if you write a movie called Liar Liar about a liar who must be forced to tell the truth for a day, you probably shouldn’t send the lead character to the moon where he hopes to establish a base for future moon missions.  It’s not the kind of movie we’re expecting and therefore it’s not the kind of movie we want to see.

With Second Chance, I was expecting to see a guy having to make the most important decision of his life. I imagined people from every avenue of his life coming to him and pressuring him to do what they wanted him to do.  Instead I got robots and futuristic cities.  It didn’t jibe with my expectations and therefore I tuned out.

The script problems kind of snowballed from there.  I had so many questions that ran through my brain while reading this.  Why did Erin drug and tie Gary up twice without actually getting anything from him?  It was like she tied him up…just to untie him five minutes later.

Then, I’m not sure if it’s ever actually stated what Gary gets by winning this contest.  It’s stated in the logline.  But I’m not sure anyone in the actual script says it.  That’s a HUGE oversight since the whole story is built on the idea that he has this upcoming talk with his younger self.  Very strange it was never mentioned.

Then there’s a lot of wishy-washiness.  Nothing is clear.  For example, at first Gary seems to be infatuated with Sarah.  But then, when she shows up at his place, he seems disinterested in her.  Then later he’s excited about her again, then later still decides he’s not.  I never knew where he stood with Sarah so it was difficult to care about their relationship.

Likewise, with the going back in time thing – Gary and Big Mike get really excited about changing their lives one scene, and then Gary seems to think the whole idea is stupid the next.  I never once knew if Gary even wanted to go back in time and talk to his younger self.  It was so bizarre.  I mean, you have to be clear about what your characters want!

If Kolby wants to rewrite this script, here’s what I would suggest.  Create 5 main relationships with people that Gary has and have all 5 of them want something different from Gary in regards to what he should tell his yonnger self.  Make sure all of those relationships are strong ones, so there are some actual consequences (stakes) to Gary going against the other four.  If we don’t feel like this is a difficult decision for Gary with complicated ramifications and other people getting hurt by his final choice, then we’re just not going to care.

Then, give Gary a fatal flaw, something that’s plagued him his entire life, and have that flaw be in conflict with what everyone else wants.  The most obvious way to go about this is to make Gary’s flaw his selflessness.  Gary has always done things for everyone else instead of himself, and everyone else has stepped on him and taken advantage of him because of it.  These other five people have made a living on Gary helping them, and so Gary’s decision goes much deeper than simply “What will Gary do?” It becomes more about whether he’ll finally overcome his flaw and do something for himself for once, or will he continue to blindly help others who take advantage of him?

That’s where I’d start and see if you can create some interesting story choices from there.  No robots.  No futuristic cities.  Keep it simple.  Focus on what makes the concept compelling!

Script link: Second Chance

What I learned:  Establish clarity in what your characters want!  We need to know where your characters stand, or, at the very least, why they’re conflicted if they don’t stand on either side.  But if a character just randomly jumps from one end of the extreme to the other without explanation, we become confused as to who that character is and what he wants.  With Gary, I couldn’t figure out if he was over Sarah or still obsessed with her.  I couldn’t figure out if he wanted to do this Second Chance thing or couldn’t care less.  For those reasons, I never got a handle on his character, which alienated me from the story.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Desperate Hours.  One of the defining indicators of a great script is that, afterwards, you feel like you’ve already seen the movie.  The writing is so powerful, so descriptive, that all the images are already in your head.  The mobsters coming out of the train with their tommy guns.  The Lone Stranger whistling as he walks through town.  That final image when the Stranger and the girl finally meet…and what happens next.  I can’t get that moment out of my head.  SO GREAT!  Anyway, all this got me thinking how rarely I give a script a genius rating. So I thought I’d write an article on what, in my eyes, makes a script “genius.”  A mastery of the craft is a necessity, of course.  But what about the details?  What should one be focused on to construct one of these bad boys?  That question has me jazzed, so I’ve put together a genius script “short list.”  You do the things I’ve listed below and you will maximize your chances of reaching genius status!

CHARACTERS
It all starts with your characters.  Duh, right?  How many times have you heard that before?  Well Desperate Hours shows us WHY character is so important. Not only must your characters be compelling enough for us to root for the good guys and be intrigued by the bad guys, they must also exhibit a history, something that indicates the character has lived an entire life before they ever made it into this story.  Oh, and to make matters worse, that history must be integrated seamlessly.  This is where the pros separate themselves from the amateurs.  They can convey a ton of history in a character without bringing the story to a dead stop.  The only way amateurs know how to do backstory is via flashbacks. These pace-killers almost always destroy your story on the spot.  You’d much rather convey backstory in the present, keeping the story moving in the process.  That’s hard.  So how do you do it?

Well, there are a few ways, but one of the most popular is through the relationships in your story.  Create a past between two characters and you’ve instantly created a backstory!  Look at how easy that was!  This is an area where Desperate Hours really excels.  Every relationship has a backstory.  Frank and Sue were once in love, but he left for the war and she went and married George instead.  George has always known that his wife still holds a flame for Frank, which creates a backstory between he and Frank as well.  This history plays into every conversation that occurs between these three, which laces the dialogue with subtext and conflict.  And those are the things that make scenes compelling, interesting, and intense.  Because there are so many characters in Desperate Hours with juicy meaty backstories, almost all of the scenes are like this, laced with history and tension and conflict.

Backstory is not the only thing you have to worry about with character, though.  You’ve probably heard from agents and producers and other screenwriters that your characters must exhibit three dimensions.  Except nobody really talks about what that means.  Well, we just dealt with one dimension – an overarching backstory.  Dimension 2 is an unresolved issue from the past (the most specific/important piece of your character’s backstory).  And dimension 3 is a fatal flaw.  If we take Frank from Desperate Hours, his unresolved issue from the past is not being able to save his family.  He tried.  He couldn’t do it.  And he’s always felt guilty and conflicted because of it.  Therefore he must save this girl in order to resolve his past.  Dimension 3, his fatal flaw, is his stubbornness.  Frank refuses to back down, no matter how ridiculous the odds are, no matter how much logic tells him otherwise.  He will do it his way til the very end.  There are other dimensions you can add to a character, but these three are ultra-important and give your character the most bang for your buck.

STRUCTURE
Besides structure providing a foundation for your story, which is its primary purpose, I’ve found that a great structure also creates three distinct and unique acts.  All three acts work together, of course, but each also works on its own, almost as its own individual movie.  The advantage of doing this is that the story constantly changes and evolves, keeping things fresh.  Bad scripts usually rehash the same act or sequence over and over again, creating a dull predictable script in the process.  In Desperate Hours, the first act is about a man reconnecting with the town he left behind after losing his family. It’s not that exciting, but the characters are so well set-up, that we’re willing to follow them to see where the story goes.  The second act, then, becomes about the mystery, a completely different storyline from the first act.  Who is this woman?  Who shot her?  Why was she shot?  Is she going to live?  We want to know.  The third act is, of course, the mobster invasion.  It’s a natural extension of what’s happened so far, and yet it’s completely different from everything we’ve seen so far.  This is not the only way to write a script, of course, but it’s something Desperate Hours did so well, I couldn’t help but think the approach should be used more often.  Anything that evolves your story, as opposed to stagnates it, is good for your screenplay!

INSPIRING CHOICES
This is an oft-forgotten X-Factor in a script.  You can have solid characters.  You can have a great mystery.  But if you don’t make consistent inspiring original choices that the reader isn’t expecting, it doesn’t matter.  It’s times like this when I realize how difficult screenwriting is.  Nailing the characters is fucking HARD.  98% of screenplays don’t do it.  But let’s say you’re one of the fortunate 2% and get past that hurdle.  You then have to nail the structure, with the story evolving through each subsequent act, staying fresh and fast-moving, never hitting any lulls.  That’s not easy to do either!  But let’s say you somehow get past THOSE TWO hurdles, you now have to make sure that each and every choice you make feels fresh.  With every choice in history already being done before, this part of screenwriting requires a particular kind of patience, a ton of trial and error and a willingness to admit when a choice isn’t working so you can go back to the drawing board and come up with something better.  Stuff like the Model-T Ford showing up in the river in Desperate Hours.  Great choice.  The surprise (spoiler) that the female witness was nothing but a prostitute.  Great choice.  Having the single mobster stroll into town before the attack.  Great choice.  Remember, even if you have all the screenwriting book stuff in place, it still comes down to your imagination, your creativity, and your fortitude.  How long are you willing to toil through choices until you come up with the perfect one, for every single choice in your screenplay!

BUILD
Great scripts build.  Too many writers don’t know how to do this, and as a result, their scripts stagnate in the second act.  Things continue to push forward, but the push happens on a horizontal plane instead of a vertical one.  To build your story, you must think vertically.  Think of your second act as a game of Jenga.  You must keep adding pieces to the top until everything dangles on a precarious foundation.  If even one piece is misplaced, the entire thing comes crashing down.  Try to do this with every aspect of your second act.  In Desperate Hours, instead of keeping the conflict local b/t Tom and George and Sue and Frank, Mariani uses his second act to bring the rest of the town in.  So now we’ve gone from the fates of four, to the fate of everybody.  This is called “upping the stakes,” and it has the added benefit of building the story, making everything bigger and badder.  If things aren’t getting bigger and badder, with more on the line, more people involved, more elements affected, then you’re not building.  So many scripts die because the writers don’t properly build their story.  Genius scripts masterfully build their story from the beginning of the second act all the way to the climax.

CHARACTER-RELATED SUBPLOTS MUST BE INTERESTING
Here’s the thing – plot is important.  You need things happening in your story to keep the audience’s interest.  For example, when Frank and Tom go up into the mountains and find the dead Federal agents, that’s a plot point that’s needed to keep the story interesting/moving.  However, you can’t just depend on plot.  If the only thing keeping your story interesting is plot points, the audience will start to detach themselves.  Why?  Because audiences need a connection with people to stay interested in a story over an extended period of time.  In other words, they need to feel connected with your characters.  And this is done through character-related subplots. You’ll often bounce back and forth between plot point and character subplot.  If these subplots aren’t just as compelling/intriguing/fascinating as your main plot, you’ll lose the reader.  To achieve a great character subplot, the main relationship in each subplot must have its own hot-button issue between the characters that must be resolved.  In Desperate Hours, we have Frank and Sue.  Their issue is that they still love each other, but can’t be together (as well as a secondary issue of “Why did he leave her?”).  We’re drawn to this subplot because we want to see how that’s going to be resolved.  Then you have Frank and George.  Their issue is Frank’s building anger towards George due to him abusing Sue.  Again, there’s so much tension between the two due to this, that we absolutely have to see how the relationship will resolve itself.  So to summarize, create a dominant issue between two characters and explore these conflict-filled relationship subplots in the downtime between plot points.

I’ll be honest with you.  A lot of what I’ve listed above is kind of advanced screenwriting shit.  It isn’t easy to pull off.  I mean, I’m assuming you’ve already mastered the basic stuff, like knowing where to break your acts, how to arc your characters, which backstory should be included and which shouldn’t, that sort of thing.  But if you’re wondering about the kind of stuff a genius script contains, this is it!  Complex three-dimensional characters, an ever-changing story, a sense of building, inspiring choices, strong subplots.  So get back to your scripts, folks.  I don’t review nearly enough genius scripts on this site.  I need more.  And I know at least one of you is going to write one. :)

Genre: Period
Premise: A small town crippled by WWI and the Spanish flu finds itself facing major moral questions and a brutal invading force when a young girl shows up on a rancher’s doorstep covered in blood.
About: I don’t know much about this project or this writer.  If it’s the same Mariani listed on IMDB, he’s  a guy who’s making a bunch of shorts in whatever capacity he can, grip, sound, director.  Would be pretty amazing if he just came out of nowhere. (edit) More information coming in.  This is set up at Johnny Depp’s production company.  Hmm, that could be bad.  Since Depp has a million projects, this could be stuck in purgatory until whenever he gets around to it. :(
Writer: E. Nicholas Mariani
Details: 120 pages (Sept 13, 2011 draft)

As you may know, genius scripts don’t come around very often on Scriptshadow.  In fact, there’s an ongoing joke that I’ve never even given a genius rating.  Not true.  I gave the original Source Code draft that made the Black List a genius rating.

But it’s been so long that, I admit, I was wondering if I’d ever rate a script “genius” again.  In fact, I was thinking of replacing the rating when the new site is launched.

But then days like this come along and…well, they give me hope not just about the industry, but about art in general.  They let me know that there are writers out there who pour every ounce of heart and soul into their work and who have been at this long enough that that heart and soul amount to something.  That’s the thing – a lot of us have heart and soul.  A lot of us channel that into our work.  We just haven’t learned the craft well enough to channel it in the right way.  That takes time.  It takes dedication.  I don’t know Mariani’s story.  But I’m guessing he’s been at this for awhile.  You don’t write a script like Desperate Hours by accident.

So what makes a script genius?  That’s tough to say.  I think a mastery of the craft is one.  There are no technical mistakes in the work.  An understanding of how to explore characters, which Mariani is fan-fucking-tastic at.  Inspired choices (as opposed to boring and obvious ones – which is what I usually see).  And then that x-factor, that way you connect with the reader on an emotional level.  That last part is the tough one, because what inspires me emotionally may not inspire you emotionally.

The year is 1918.  Don’t know much about 1918?  Let me give you some background.  The Spanish Flu had just gone about killing 50 million people worldwide, over half a million in America alone.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, World War 1 had obliterated nearly every able-bodied man in America. America’d been stomped on, ground up, and spit out by God, and was just starting the healing process. It was fucking bad.

Enter Frank Sullivan, a man who’s felt the worst of it.  Frank lost his wife and his two children to the flu, and hasn’t gone back into the world since.  He lives out on his ranch, miles away from town, and if he has his way, he’ll die without ever coming in contact with another human being again.

But, you see, the world is changing.  Hope is slowly creeping back into people’s daily lives, and Sullivan’s best friend, Tom, who’s both the sheriff and the mayor (hey, you gotta improvise when 1 out of every 4 people around you drops dead) convinces him to come join the town for a little celebration that night.

It’s there where we meet Doctor Sue Fowler (a title she’s received, like many others in town, via extenuating circumstances), a woman who Sullivan has all sorts of history with.  The two were going to get married until Sullivan ran off to join Theodore Roosevelt’s famed “Rough Riders,” and fight for his country instead.  Sue was then forced to marry her second choice, a drunken abusive man named George, who she’s been stuck with ever since.

The two are absolutely still in love, but there’s nothing they can do about it, so all they can do is stare forelornly into one another’s eyes and wish things would’ve ended up differently.

However, their time together is about to get a lot more intimate, as that night, when Sullivan gets home, he finds that a woman who’s been shot to pieces has stumbled into and passed out in his house.  Sullivan races back to town, gets Sue, and the two do everything in their power to save the girl, a task that will be limited due to her near-death status and turn-of-the-century medicine.  However, the woman *is* holding on, just barely, and that means there’s hope of finding out what she’s doing here.

The next day, Sullivan and Tom follow the woman’s trail back to the hills, and find a brand new model-T Ford crashed into the river with two dead Federal agents inside.  When news hits town that a huge mobster trial is going on in Kansas City, everyone slowly puts the pieces together.  The woman is the star witness, and the mob is willing to do anything to put her out of commission.

And this is where things get interesting.  You see, it doesn’t take long for the mob to figure out the woman is still alive.  And that means they’ll be sending more people down to take care of her.  But what does the town do about this?  This isn’t their problem.  They don’t know this woman.  They just got done losing half their population to war and disease.  Things are finally starting to look up again.  Why get involved in more death, in more danger, when they don’t have to?  Let the mob have this girl and everyone can be on their merry way.

Except that’s not what Sullivan believes in.  You don’t abandon someone in need.  You don’t sacrifice someone who can’t fight for themselves.  Frank is one of the few people left on this planet who stands for something.  He believes in sticking your neck out and having your neighbor’s back.  Hell, he was part of the Rough Riders, the toughest crew in America.  Not to mention his own personal reason.  Frank watched helplessly as his family died one after another, unable to do anything.  He couldn’t save them.  But he can save this girl.

And this leads to one of the best third acts I’ve ever read or seen in my life.  Please for the love of everything, make this movie, because this third act is going to go down in fucking cinema lore.  When the mob strolls into that town, and Sullivan prepares for a showdown of him vs. them, I don’t remember ever being as electrified as I was in that moment.  I was just fucking CHARGED.  I’m not going to spoil everything that happens but I’ll just leave it at this: FUCKING AWESOME.

I suppose I should go into what works here, but I can never really do that with a script I fall in love with.  Basically, the script uses its first act to establish and make you fall in love with its characters, its second act to build the mystery of who the girl is, and it’s third act for the big showdown.  So yeah, in that sense, it’s perfectly freaking structured.

I suppose one can make the argument that the first act is slow, but I don’t know, I fell in love with the characters so much that I didn’t care that the story wasn’t emerging at warp speed.  I loved how Mariani established the setting.  That was so key – letting us know where America was at the moment, with everyone having lost someone, and then how that directly affected our main character.  Who doesn’t sympathize with someone who’s experienced such a terrible loss?  I was onboard with Sullivan from the moment I met him.

Then, when the mysterious girl shows up, it just gets better and better.  We have a mystery driving the story now – and an intriguing one.  Where did she come from?  Why was she shot at?  When we pull that car out of the river, I got goosebumps.  “Whoa,” I thought, “This is getting really good.”

And while this was happening, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of research and detail that went into everything.  There’s this throwaway moment early in the script, in town, where a group of old Civil War veterans marches down main street singing a solemn tune about their own war experience, and I just thought, “Who the hell thinks of that??”  That only comes from a writer who has just so immersed himself in that world, who knows 1918 so well, he might as well have grown up there.  Which is SO RARE in scripts I read, that a writer knows that much about what he’s writing about, which is one of the many reasons why Desperate Hours is so great.

Anyway, the script reaches the midpoint with this amazing dual thrust going on.  On the one hand you have the slow and steady buildup of the approaching mob.  It’s clear the town is in WAY over their heads with these guys, who are gradually cutting off all communication so the town can’t call for help.  And then you just have this amazing fucking character work, with each and every character having a backstory and a flaw they have to resolve before the end of the script.

Seeing Sullivan’s issues with George (Sue’s husband) play out — I can’t remember a more compelling character conflict.  I mean it’s just so layered and freaking INTENSE!  But it’s not just him.  It’s Tom, it’s the guy who brought the flu back to town, its the cowards versus the brave.  And that’s another thing!  Like we were talking about a few weeks ago – this script has a clear theme: FEAR.  The levels of it.  How we all back down.  How we’re all afraid.  But how there’s a time when you have to say enough is enough.  And how that moment is different for everyone.

AHHH!  This script is just so fucking good!

But when it really all comes together is the scene where THE STRANGER finally appears from a lone train, whistling through the town at night, a man who, we know, has come looking for this girl, and how he strolls into the bar, the most arrogant fearless mf’er in the world, and how he meets up with the only person on the planet who isn’t afraid of him.  This is one of the BEST SCENES I’VE EVER FREAKING READ!  When Sullivan tells The Stranger to “hold on” so he can go pummel the shit out of George, before coming back and telling The Stranger to “continue,” I was just…I was speechless.  And when the stranger walks back to the train, whistling the whole time, then finally STOPS, intitiating “the signal,” and we get one of the coolest fucking images we will ever see in movie history…I kind of thought I’d stumbled my way into script heaven.

I realize that at this point I’m a bumbling moron and not very helpful but this is what a great script does to me.  And by great, I mean REALLY GREAT.  As in going straight to the top of my Top 25 – and I mean WITHOUT QUESTION.  NUMBER 1!

This script….wow.  I mean…wow.  I don’t have words.  Whoever has this, please make it now.  You’re sitting on a dozen Oscars.

What I learned 1: SETTING in period pieces.  Establish it!  This script doesn’t work unless we get the opening title cards explaining that the flu and WW1 have obliterated America.  The town’s reluctance to engage the mob is a direct result of that, so without that knowledge, the script would’ve lost a ton.  Too many writers write period pieces without establishing what was happening at the time, and we need that context if we’re to understand and enjoy the story.

What I learned 2: Loss creates sympathy.  A main character losing someone makes us root for them.  Sullivan has lost THREE PEOPLE he loved more than anything.  So we care IMMENSELY for him right away.

What I learned 3: LIVE IN YOUR SCENES.  You can’t get the most out of your scenes unless you place yourself in them, unless you look into your characters eyes, notice the detail in the surrounding elements, breathe the air, listen to the sounds.  Immerse yourself in your scenes to find those little nooks and crannies that amateur writers ignore.  Detail is EVERYTHING.  It’s what makes your scene and story specific, unique.  There’s a great scene in Desperate Hours where Sullivan comes into town for the party riding his horse.  Times have changed though.  Everyone else has moved onto cars.  And Sullivan looks like an ancient has-been for tying his animal up next to these shiny metal technological beasts.  However, when a storm comes through later in the night, it’s Sullivan who looks like the smart one.  The cars are spinning their wheels, twisting around in the mud, whereas he casually hops up on his horse and gallops away.  I just don’t think you imagine a scene like that, with those cars digging their own graves, unless you place yourself down there in the mud, see the texture, taste it, realize that a 1918 Model T Ford probably isn’t going to be able to maneuver through mud that easily.

What I learned 4: ALWAYS KEEP YOUR MAIN SOURCE OF CONFLICT NEARBY – When Sullivan and Sue are nursing the girl back to health, Mariani doesn’t leave them alone there for long.  He gets George (Sue’s husband) over to the house and puts him there with them, causing all sorts of weird energy and tension.  Way more interesteing than giving Sue and Sullivan and unimpeded path back to a relationship.