Genre: Horror/Procedural
Premise: An allegedly rehabilitated Dr. Jekyll is pulled out of prison to help hunt a new monster who seems to be using an improved version of the Hyde serum.
About: “Hyde” made the 2010 Black List.  While writing Hyde, screenwriter Cole Haddon concurrently wrote the story in graphic novel form for Dark Horse.  That novel is titled “The Strange Case Of Mr. Hyde” and is available on Amazon.  
Writer: Cole Haddon
Details: 114 pages (8-06-10 draft) This is the first draft (the one that made the Black List).

I’m still kind of geeking out after meeting Eddie O’Keefe last night, one half of the writing team of When The Streetlights Go On.  These guys just ignore ALL RULES.  The draft of theirs that made the Black List?  That script was written in SIX WEEKS.  Oh, and did I mention it was their FIRST SCREENPLAY.  Wowzers – that goes against everything history has dictated regarding first scripts.

Eddie talked about how he and his partner, Chris, don’t focus too much on structure, but rather come up with this huge playlist of songs that they feel is appropriate for the material, and just let the music guide their writing and their choices.  Again, this is sooooo NOT the way I’d recommend anyone doing it.  Because believe me, I’ve read stuff from writers who’ve written that way before, and it is NEVER GOOD.  So to see these guys use such an undefined unstructured approach so effectively is both scary and inspiring.

With that said, they DID read all the screenwriting books before they wrote the script.  They do understand things like active characters and act breaks and all that.  So they did have that in the back of their mind when they were writing.  They’ve also written lots of short stories and both attended film school – so it wasn’t like they were going into this screenwriting thing completely unprepared.  Still, I love how that approach works for them, because it’s what makes their work so unique and unpredictable.  Oh, and he told me that in addition to Streetlights and Broadcast, the two have written a script that he feels is EASILY their best work.  It’s just not very well known.  Eddie says he’s going to send that to me and I cannot wait!

What does this have to do with today’s script?  NOTHING!  I just wanted to get my geekery on and this felt like the right place to do it.  However, Eddie and Chris did not write today’s script.  So let’s move away from formless writing to something a little more structured, and surprisingly good!

So as you probably know, back in the day, there was this doctor named Henry Jeckyll.  Dude liked to experiment.  And dangit if he wasn’t such a believer in his work that he’d experiment on himself!  That didn’t turn out so hot, though, since one of his experiments turned him into a monster, a monster who crawled through 1880s London looking for people to mutilate. Eventually, the coppers caught up with him and killed his ass, and the world was forever better.

Or was it?

Five years later, a rash of prostitute killings have started up again, and the crime scenes look like something out of a superhero film.  20 some feet between fleeing footsteps. Blood trails halfway up the sides of buildings.  Whoever’s pulling off these killings is superhuman.

But who could it be?  Hyde was killed five years ago.  At least that’s what everyone was told.  Our resident inspector on the case, the off-putting Thomas Adye, learns that Hyde, in fact, wasn’t killed.  Why would you kill something with that much power when you could study it instead (Paul Riser from Aliens would be proud!)?  So the dual personalities of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde have been kept underground in the interim, locked up in a Hannibal Lector-like cage that only an unprivileged few have access to.  Adye is tasked with going to talk with Dr. Jeckyll to see if he can get a beat on who this monster is and where it might be.

The two don’t hit it off AT ALL and Adye leaves hoping he’ll never never have to see Jeckyll again.  But when he runs into the murderer who shrugs off a few bullets like he’s being tickled by duck feathers, he realizes he’s in way over his head.  If he’s going to take this killer down, he will need the help of the man he despises the most, his underground cell buddy, Dr. Jeckyll.

Away the two go, into the streets, pounding the pavement, talking to anyone who might know who this killer is.  Of course, the scum of the underground don’t like to talk to cops, so it’s hard-going wherever they turn, especially with the mischievous Jeckyll delighting in every little misstep Adye takes.

After a couple of false-positives, the duo finally find out who they’re dealing with (spoiler).  In case you haven’t figured it out yet – yup – our “psycho killer” is none-other than Jack The Ripper.  Yikes.  As if we didn’t have enough problems.  And since Mr. Ripper also seems to have gotten his hands on Dr. Jeckyll’s serum, he’s basically like a serial killing nuclear bomb!

So our mismatched couple will need to put aside their differences to catch the killer before he continues his run.  But it’s starting to look like the only way they’re going to stop him, is if they use some of that infamous serum themselves…

Duh duh duh duhhhhhhh…..

I’m not really a fan of these outdated public domain monsters. I know there’s a reason some of this stuff stands the test of time, but to me I’m always thinking, “Ehhh, isn’t a hundred years enough? Shouldn’t we, maybe, try to come up with new monsters and new stories?”  I know saying such words could get me blackballed from Hollywood, but seriously – let’s create something new, not rekindle something old!

With that said, this is about as good of a job as you can do with this kind of story.  The atmospheric writing (I love the way Haddon describes Jeckyll’s face as “UNEXPECTEDLY HANDSOME, startlingly so…” when it first slams into his jail cell bars, his features clear for the first time after being hidden in shadows the entire scene) and forward-moving story kept things fun throughout.  In these procedurals – these “chase the killer” scripts – it’s all about pushing the story forward, keeping the momentum going, and I thought Haddon did that brilliantly.  There’s never a moment where we’re just sitting around discussing shit.  We’re always AFTER THE KILLER.

The real star of the script though was the relationship between the straight-laced Adye and the mischievous Jeckyll.  This updated (or backdated) take on the buddy-cop dynamic was, dare I say, scrumptious.  It was hilarious to watch Adye obsessed and freaked out by every little detail, contrasted with Jeckyll, who was just thrilled to be out of his cell for a few days.  This was one big field trip for him, and dammit if he wasn’t going to play on everything before the whistle to go back inside blew (God I hated that whistle!).

I (spoiler) thought bringing Jack The Ripper into the mix was also clever, as was giving him access to Jeckyll’s serum, making him super-human.  I mean what’s scarier than a monster version of Jack The Ripper??  Maybe the only thing I was worried about was that this felt a teensy bit similar to the abomination known as Van Helsing. I hope if they make this, they don’t “kids family” it up but stick with the darker more intense approach.  That will definitely hurt opening day grosses, but it will pay off for the film in the long run.

Honestly, the only reason I didn’t rate this higher was because it’s not my thing.  But for what it is, it’s pretty damn enjoyable.

What I learned: A common screenwriting debate is whether you should write dialogue “properly” or if you should add accents and speech imperfections.  Take for instance this line on page 12 from Chief Inspector Newcomen: “Stay away from Hyde, Inspector. ‘E’s like a poison that keeps working at you. A poison, just ask ‘is mate Utterson.”  The way I see it is is this – you can add speech imperfections as long as you don’t overdo it.  As soon as I have to WORK to get through all the accents and deliberate misspellings, I get pissed at the writer, because a reader should never have to work.  So use it sparingly if you REALLY NEED TO, but don’t slaughter your dialogue with it.

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. :)