Genre: Drama
Premise: Grief stricken over his wife leaving him, a man finds solace in an odd activity… stealing figurines of flamingos.
About: Writer Michael LeSieur is probably best known for writing “Me, You, And Dupree,” back in 2005.  If I remember correctly, that script sold for a boatload of money.  More recently, he’s been focused on television, creating the show “Glory Daze,” which centered around college life in the 1980s.  The Flamingo Thief landed on last year’s Black List.  Last I heard, it had Will Ferrel attached to star and was being produced by Ben Stiller.  The author of the original book, Susan Trott, has written 16 novels.  Many of them have received options here in Hollywood, but only one was made, “When Your Lover Leaves,” which was turned into an NBC movie of the week.
Writers: Michael LeSieur (adapted from the novel by Susan Trott)
Details: 112 pages – May 18, 2011 draft

Okay, I admit, I’m a sucker for these “guy gets left by his wife and has a mid-life breakdown” type scripts.  It’s why I loved the script for Crazy, Stupid, Love.  It’s why I loved the script for Everything Must Go.  There’s just something very relatable – something we’ve all been through – about being left by the person you care about most, then feeling lost and confused, not knowing where to go or what to do with your life because for the past however many years, that person WAS your life.

And when that kind of thing happens, you do strange shit. I was just talking about this with someone the other day.  Love makes you act irrational, makes you do really crazy things you’d NEVER do otherwise.  It’s almost like you turn into a completely alien form when you’re in love.  Someone you don’t recognize.

So hey, is resorting to flamingo thievery weird?  Sure.  But we’re all weird when we’re in love.  So don’t judge the star of today’s story, Tim Forrester.  I’m instituting a No Judging Zone for the poor guy.

The aforementioned Mr. Forrester, a high-powered attorney who’s the youngest partner in his firm, believes he and his wife’s marriage is going splendidly.  That is until they’re at a furniture store and she casually breaks the news that she wants a divorce.  Oh, and that she’s dating some real estate dude who owns the golf course record at the local country club.

Tim is devastated by this because, hey, he loves his wife!  His first reaction, then, is denial.  He thinks his wife is going through a phase, that she’ll get over Mr. Zero Handicap and move on.  But the only place she’s moving is into his house.  Not only that, but she’s setting up shop.  She ain’t gonna be leaving for a loooooong time.

This is, of course, where the irrational thoughts begin, and Tim becomes obessesed with finding out where Lefty lives.  So he grabs his brother, George, who is put together in every way Tim has fallen apart, and they park outside the guy’s house and stare at it for way longer than they should.  It’s here where Tim notices a couple of decorative flamingos on the lawn.  They’re so…smug.  And happy.  And flamingo-y.

So what does he do?  Well he goes back later and steals them of course.  And this is what begins his unhealthy obsession with flamingo thievery.  ANYTHING that has a flamingo on it – coffee mugs, antennae decorations, paintings – Tim must steal them.  Pretty soon, Tim’s alter ego, the “Flamingo Thief,” becomes a cult hero in the tiny community.  Nobody can stop talking about him.

While Tim is dealing with his flamingo issues, we find out his brother George isn’t as put-together as we first thought.  George likes to secretly go to upscale orgies, and even invites Tim to one of them to help forget his wife.  But when Tim accidentally pees in the jacuzzi, everyone at the orgy freaks and kicks him and George out.

The only person Tim can confide in is George’s daughter and his niece, Joy, who thinks it’s pretty cool that her uncle is the one stealing these flamingos.  Together they try to figure out why Tim is so obsessed with this strange fetish and come to the conclusion that it’s some sort of cosmic universal thing making him do it or something.  There’s a REASON he has to steal all of these flamingos.  Those crazy cosmos just haven’t told him why yet.

Eventually, Tim gets in over his head when he steals a large flamingo from a man’s home which used to belong to Frank Lloyd Wright and is therefore worth tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe more.  If he’s found to be in posession of this flamingo, there’s a good chance he’ll go to jail.  It’s when this reality hits him that he finally understands what he’s done – and knows what he must do.  He must return each and every flamingo.  But will he be able to do so without getting caught?

So with Everything Must Go, which was at one time my favorite script, I saw firsthand how a great script doesn’t always translate into a great movie.  I just found that script to be so damn clever, yet the static-ness of the visuals (We’re hanging out on a lawn the whole time) really hurt it once it became a series of moving pictures.  So I’m always wary when I read scripts like that now.  They’re completely character driven.  And if you don’t get the right actors to play the characters and the right director to do something slightly different with the direction, it can easily look like a bunch of rich people whining about their trust funds.

However, I’m not judging The Flamingo Thief as a film.  I’m judging it as a script.  And as a script, I thought it was pretty damn good.  The character work here is solid, and writer LeSieur does an excellent job making us care about and root for Tim.  One of the reasons so many movies start with the main character getting dumped is because you instantly care about a person being left.  Especially if they loved their wife as much as Tim did (look no further than When Harry Met Sally for proof).  We so want to follow this guy until he’s okay again.  It’s a brilliant way to shape a character, as long as you can inform it in a way that’s slightly different from what we’ve seen before.  And I believe LeSieur’s done that.

There were also plenty of unexpected choices here, which gave the script the requisite originality it needed to stand out from the pack.  Just the fact that the main character is stealing freaking flamingos is unique enough.  But the strange turn down the line that his brother goes to orgies was also unexpected.

And that’s another area where this shined.  I think if you’re ONLY exploring one character’s internal journey throughout your script, you’re not maximizing all the emotional cylinders.  Adding an arc to two, three, or even four characters, really ups the emotional quotient.  Realizing George is lying to his wife, lying to himself, and has his own obstacles to overcome if he’s going to find happiness, gave the story a “fuller” feel than had we just been following a flamingo thief.

And the niece was great too!  A lot of times writers will lean on the staple of the 12 year old girl who’s as wise as a hundred year old man with a wit as biting as a late night talk show host.  It’s soooo “been there done that.”  Not the case here.  The niece is just nice and sweet and understanding.  She listens to Tim.  She’s there for him . She helps him.  And I loved how she also finds her life thrown into disarray late in the script, when her parents break up because of the orgy ordeal.

When you write a character piece, you really only have to make sure that one thing is working.  The characters!  They have to go through arcs, they have to change, they have to be EXPLORED.  And as far as I’m concerned, all the characters worked in The Flamingo Thief.  Not sure how this would turn out in movie form, but in script form, it’s darn good.

What I learned: Explore character flaws with more than one character in your script.  Whenever I see this, I know I’m dealing with a pro.  Amateurs, if they’re exploring a flaw at all, tend to only do so for their main character.

(Posted by Sveta)

Carson is one magical creature but he can’t do it all himself. So…we’re hiring interns!

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Genre: Comedy

Thank the Lord for Chris Mulligan.  I was SPENT last night, struggling to keep my eyes open.  These sorts of things happen when you spend 2 unplanned hours of your day defending yourself against Twitter baddies.   So when I saw those two beautiful numbers sitting next to each other, 9 and 0, at the top of the document, I did a Gangnam Style dance that Psy himself would be proud of.  This wasn’t going to be a long read.

But would it be a good read?  I mean, 90 page scripts can easily read like 140 page scripts if the writing’s bad.  However, I had confidence.  This was a script that had been vetted through the first 10 pages process, remember.  I still remember the line that pushed it through.  When a woman asks if it’s true that Everythingman can time travel, he smiles, we back away, and see that the woman is now pregnant.  I thought that was clever.  I was in!

Our superhero, Everythingman, is kind of like a superhero version of Anchorman.  He’s arrogant.  He loves himself.  He drinks too much and bangs chicks.  But hey, he’s saving the world one villain at a time and he’s actually pretty good at it.

But Everythingman’s a bit unethical in some of his practices.  You see, one of Everythingman’s big powers is that he can steal powers from other superheroes and villains.  We see this in the opening scene when Everythingman steals a villain’s fire-generating power in the middle of a fight and then uses it against him.

Thing is, Everythingman has gotten more and more greedy with this ability, and keeps stealing EVERYBODY’S powers. That’s why he’s called “Everythingman.”  However, right after defeating this helpless latest bad guy, Everythingman flies into his standard post-victory press conference, where a 9 year old cancer-stricken “Make-A-Wish” foundation boy is thrust in front of him.  He’s pressured into granting the boy a wish, and guess what, the boy wishes he could have Everythingman’s powers!

Montage our way forward a few months and Cancer Boy is now the dominant superhero in town and Everythingman is a big fat nobody, with emphasis on the “fat.”  So what does Everythingman do about this?  Well, he teams up with his old sidekick, the rather plainly named, “Frank,” and plans to take down Cancer Boy to get his powers back, even though he knows this means Cancer Boy will die.

That is, um…..it.

Readers love short scripts.  But here’s the ironic thing. When they spot a script that’s extra short, 90 pages or less, they get nervous.  They fear there might not be enough meat to the story, or that the characters aren’t fully explored.  The fear is that the story will be too thin.  And I believe that’s what’s happened here.

Now we’re not talking infamous entries Orbitals or Frankenstein 90210 thin, but storywise, there isn’t a whole lot that happens in Everythingman.  Let me try and explain.

The opening is great.  We meet Everythingman in his environment.  We establish his flaw (his arrogance).  The scene is funny.  I’m pulled in.  But then Cancer Boy takes his powers, Everythingman goes into a deep depression, and eventually runs into his old sidekick.

And this segment lasts forever!

I know it couldn’t have been this long since the script is only 90 pages, but it felt like we got 50 scenes of Everythingman and his old sidekick, Frank, talking about nothing.  I remember looking up, seeing that I was on page 45, and thinking, “Jesus, we’re already halfway through this thing and nothing’s really happened.”

Then the two sort of goof around, preparing for their showdown with Cancer Boy and, I don’t know, it just seemed like there weren’t a whole lot of stakes involved.  Everything was so casual.  Not only that, but you could feel Mulligan struggling with the motivation thing the whole way through.  Our hero’s basically planning to kill a young child.  A child who’s doing a great job protecting the city.  Which pretty much makes Everythingman a great big asshole.

Now I’m not completely against this, since this is a comedy and it’s kind of funny how selfish Everythingman is to the point where he’s willing to kill a boy to get his powers back.  But when all the other story components are kind of loose and not working as well, something like that really sticks out. I mean look at Frank, for example.  He’s a good guy.  He always does the right thing.  Why in the world does he agree to kill this boy to get powers back for someone he hates (Everythingman stole his powers a long time ago too).

Something like that would work a lot better if, say, Everythingman needed Frank to help him defeat Cancer Boy and therefore went to him.  It becomes much more dramatically compelling if Everythingman must come grovelling back to the guy he screwed over for help than if that same guy conveniently shows up at his door right when he needs him.  But even if you got that element right, it’s still impossible to understand why this nice guy would agree to kill a boy.  It just doesn’t make sense.

Another part of the script that needs work is the explanation behind the powers.  It was all rather confusing.  Not only does Everythingman have all these superpowers, but there’s also this mysterious Genie in his past who gave him all these powers or something?  So in this universe we now have superheroes and…..genies???  Is this The Incredibles or is this Aladdin?

So he stole the genie’s ability to grant wishes, which is what allowed him to give Cancer Boy a wish – I think.  But did he only have 3 wishes to give away since he was a genie??  Was this his last one?  Why would he waste it on a random boy?  I don’t know.  It all seemed harder to follow than it should’ve, particularly for a movie like this, where things should be fairly straightforward.  So that will have to be fixed.

Moving forward, I think it’s important for Mulligan to pack more into his story.  Never take 10 pages to say what you can say in 5.  That was the big problem here.  It always took Mulligan twice as long to say what he needed to.  The first 30 pages could have easily been packed into 15 with a keen eye for cutting and a focus on short crisp scenes and no repetition.  This will allow more room for relationship exploration and subplots.

I think Mulligan had the right idea when he started delving into relationship stuff with Frank and his sister, but Frank was such a thin and confusing character (him just showing up to wish someone well who he hated made no sense) and the sister came in so late, that it was tough to care about whether they fixed their relationship or not.  I’d much rather get into Everythingman’s character flaw (his arrogance/ selfishness) and bring in a relationship that explored that.  We’re way more interested in him changing than Frank.

So yeah, this felt too thin to me.  There were some funny lines and some funny moments.  But you always need more than that in a screenplay.  You need a compelling story that involves you the whole way through.  This kinda felt like one long extended joke.  :(

Script Link: Everything Falls Apart

What I learned: You want a lot of “plot points” in your script.  A plot point is anything that pushes your characters through a relevant barrier in the movie.  In Avengers, each time we brought one of the superheroes into the story, that was a plot point.  When the bad guy shows up on earth, that was a plot point.  When all the superheroes finally get together to plan what they’re going to do, that was a plot point.  When they’re attacked, that was a plot point.  The less plot points you have, the thinner your story feels.  And that’s how Everything Falls Apart felt to me.  There simply weren’t enough plot points to make this feel like a full move.

Since moving back to LA, I’ve been offering up bite-sized reasons for why I returned, but haven’t really gone into any detail.  Well, it’s time to go into detail.  After the madness that was The Disciple Program, I started getting a lot more e-mails and calls from agents and producers, and the discussions all seemed to steer in the same direction – Why aren’t you producing?

Hmmm, I’d never thought about producing before.  I always kind of thought of producers as the enemy.  The Player burned into my brain that producers were clueless twits who destroyed everything that was sacred about screenplays, turning them into emulsified processed chicken nuggets battered for mass consumption.  I didn’t want to be one of those guys.

But you already are, the responses came back.  You’re finding material.  You’re bringing it to the rest of town.  That’s one of the hardest and most important things a producer does – FIND MATERIAL.  Hmmm, I thought.  I guess they were right.  I *was* finding material.  I could do that.  All of a sudden, I looked at producing in a whole new way.

This gave life to a few ideas, the biggest of which was to create a production shingle for Scriptshadow.  If I was going to be finding and producing multiple projects, I needed a company to do it under.  I’ve been slowly putting that together to launch later this year, and in the meantime, well, trying to figure out what the hell a producer does!  So in classic Scriptshadow style, I’m going to let you know what I’ve learned about the profession over the past couple of months and what it means for you.

First off, producing is a lot of MEETINGS.  This is a huge change for me, since I’m used to sitting behind a computer 18 hours a day.  Going out to meeting after meeting is not only the complete opposite of that, but it takes up large chunks of your day.  So I’m still learning how to manage my time in this new world.

Why do producers have so many meetings?  From what I gather, it’s all about establishing relationships and trying to find mutual points of interest so you can potentially work together.  As I was telling a group of writers last night, a big part of selling a script is timing.  Let’s say I found this really great zombie script set in the desert last night.  Well, if I go to a meeting and an exec says, “But what we’re really looking for is a great zombie script!”  Boom, I just read a great zombie flick!  I give it to him.  He reads it and loves it.  He buys the script.

Now if I hadn’t just read that script?  If it wasn’t still fresh in my mind?  Or if I was tired that day and cancelled the meeting with the exec, setting something up for a month from now instead, that sale may have missed its window.  I still have a great zombie spec, but now nobody I know is looking for one.

This is what I mean by timing and this is why all these meetings are so crucial.  You’re looking to accumulate information and interest from a number of parties, hoping to match those interests up, giving someone what they need right when they need it.  Now I’ve helped a writer sell his script AND I’m a producer on the project.  How exciting!

This leads to the obvious question.  What does a producer do?  You know what, I’m still not sure, lol.  There seem to be a lot of different types of producers and there seem to be a lot of different types of ways to produce.  But so far, this is what I’ve gathered.

The first option is to physically produce the project yourself.  So, for example, I would directly purchase a script from a writer, raise the money for the project myself, hire a director and actors, and make the movie under the Scriptshadow banner.  I guess this is what’s referred to as an “indie producer,” because you’re doing everything independently.  This is a tough route to take because raising money all by your lonesome is difficult.  Therefore, this route feels too complicated for me at the moment.

Therefore, what I’d like to do instead is find material through Scriptshadow, partner up with a much more established producer (say Scott Rudin), sell the script to one of the studios with both of us attached, then let him use his muscle and expertise to get it through the system.  In essence, I would be more of a silent producer.  I’m in it to learn because, let’s face it, I don’t know what I’m doing yet.  I mean, I can help a writer whip the script into shape, but I can’t call Tom Hardy and ask him if he’s free in three months to shoot a desert zombie film.  Not yet anyway.

Once I do this three or four times and get some produced credits, establishing myself as a “legitimate” producer (whatever that means), I might be able to go into the studios myself, instead of having to partner with one of the bigger guys.  Also, since I have more of a track record, it would technically be easier to raise money myself. So heck, I might go back and produce movies independently yet!

One of the more interesting things I’ve learned about producing so far is the credit system.  When you’re asked what kind of producer credit you want on a film, what’s the first credit you think of?  You want that Executive Producer credit right?!!  Not so fast.  Even though the EP credit sounds the fanciest, it’s actually smaller than the producer credit!  I know.  Doesn’t make sense, right?  And here I’ve been going to movies all my life thinking the EP guys were more important than the producer guys.

Anyway, you want to aim for the producer credit, then an executive producer credit, then a co-producer credit, and finally an associate producer credit.  Each credit will mean a different amount of money when the deal is made with the studio to buy the project.  Come in as an Executive Producer instead of a producer, and it might mean the difference of a hundred thousand bucks.  So if you plan on following in my producer footsteps any time soon, aim for that producer credit!

So what does all of this mean for you? Well, I remember a couple years back when I’d occasionally come across a cool script or a cool writer yet couldn’t do anything about it.  My contacts in Hollywood were limited, so I’d basically pat the writer on the back and say, “Good job and good luck.”  Once I start Scriptshadow Productions, however, I’ll be able to go back to and potentially do something with those lost scripts (and lost writers!).  I’ll also have access to more untapped writers than any place in town.  So I’ll have plenty of options to hire people to rewrite material I need punched up.  What I thought were missed opportunities all these years could turn out to be future Hollywood writing forces.  That’s exciting.  And it’s the reason you guys should keep submitting Amateur scripts to the site.

Which brings us to what I’m looking for.  What kind of movies do I want to produce under the Scriptshadow banner?  Well, the way I see it is the genres that sell the most matched up with the genres I like the most are thriller, sci-fi and horror.  However, I don’t want dumbed down versions of these genres.  I want stories that are unique in some way (something I haven’t quite seen before), characters I care about (and who are complicated and interesting enough that A-List actors will want to play them), and stuff that has some meat on it, that makes me think a little.  I want to make the next The Others or The Orphange, not the next Texas Chainsaw Massacre 5.  I want to make the next Source Code or Inception, not the next Cowboys and Aliens.  If you have that kind of material, and you’ve been slaving away at this craft forever, and are on the cusp of your break, send me those scripts!

What’s really important to me is that Scriptshadow Productions stand for something the companies in this town haven’t stood for in a long time – QUALITY WRITING.  I want everywhere in town to know that when they get one of our scripts, it’s going to be a quality piece of material.  That’s what I started this site trumpeting, and that’s how I want to operate my business. So even if you don’t have a thriller or sci-fi or horror script, but you have a great spec, I want to be the one pushing it.  I want to be the one getting it out there.  I want to put the emphasis back on the screenplay again.

So that’s it for the moment.  This part of my career will continue to evolve in the coming months, and I’m sure be both an adventure and a learning experience.  I’ll keep you guys updated on my Twitter account, and maybe put up another post at the end of the year, giving you an update.  And hey, feel free to use this opportunity to ask me any questions you may have.  Anything related to producing or Scriptshadow Productions or just questions about producing in general, shoot me your thoughts and I’ll try to answer.

In the meantime, if you’re one of the many Hollywood companies fighting the same daily battle I am and you wanna meet up, shoot me an e-mail.  Let’s help each other.  As for right now, I’m going to try and figure out the answer to the question that started this article: What the hell does a producer do again?

Genre: Animation/Film Noir
Premise: In a futuristic world co-habitated by aliens and humans, the last human private eye is hired to investigate the fidelity of a well-known pop star.
About: Ray Gunn is an old project that writer-director Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) wrote.  He’s gone on record as saying he’d like to revive the project, and might even do so after his next film, the earthquake pic, 1906.  Co-writer Matthew Robbins has had a long and interesting career, writing Spielberg’s first movie, The Sugarland Express, then later writing such films as Dragonslayer, Mimic, and Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark.  He’s currently working on the Guillermo Del Toro big screen adaptation of Pinocchio.
Writers: Brad Bird and Matthew Robbins (story by Brad Bird)
Details: 112 pages – June 28, 1996 draft

For those of you who’ve been told that you’re bad spellers or bad grammarists or bad at, you know, writing the right “their,” there is hope!  In 1996, Superstar director Brad Bird apparently didn’t know the difference between “it’s” and “its.”  For those of you wondering (and there should be a lot of you wondering – since I see this mistake ALL the time), “it’s” means “it is.”  If you’re writing “it’s” and it doesn’t mean “it is,” then you’re using it wrong.

And speaking of “it’s,” it’s a bad idea to write an animation spec!  Why?  Because animation specs never get purchased!  Those wily egotistical studios like to develop their animation ideas in-house.  Bastards!  However, if you’re really really into animation and want to write animation films someday, then writing a sample animation spec may be a good idea.  Just know that you probably ain’t going to sell it!

Okay, now that I’ve depressed you to pieces, let’s pick up those pieces and see if we can’t re-discover an amazing forgotten screenplay.

Raymund Gunn is a private eye in a future world where the private eye business has gone blind.  Or in other words, people don’t hire dicks anymore.  It’s much easier to get a spybot to do the job for you.  They’re cheaper and way better at the job.  So I guess you could say Ray is the last of a dying breed.

One day, the eccentric and very rich Arnold Dom pops into Ray’s office and offers him a much needed job.  He believes his wife, the ubiquitous pop star, Venus Envy, is cheating on him with another man.  So Ray goes off to do what he does best, and finds that Arnold is right.  Venus is intimately involved with a dude.  But not just any dude – an alien.

However, when Ray hands the photo proof over, he notices something odd.  Venus – or the woman he thought was Venus – is missing a tattoo on her hand.  Ray’s been had.  This is Venus’ body double in the salacious pics, not Venus.  And Arnold chose Ray (instead of a spybot) specifically because he knew he’d miss that detail.  Now, armed with this “proof,” he can clean up in the divorce settlement.

Feeling used, Ray stumbles around town all depressed-like, eventually running into Venus, who likes to sneak around town in disguise and sing her own songs under her alter-ego, Red.  The two start to fall for each other, but when Venus’ body double is murdered, Venus becomes the main suspect, and Ray will have to prove she’s innocent or lose the woman he’s fallen for forever.

Let’s start with the obvious.  Bird and co-writer Robbins have written an animation film about people cheating on each other and having sex with one another.  A PG-13 animation film is box office suicide.  So I’m confused as to why these two ever thought this was a viable project.

But even without that, there’s something very cliche and predictable about this story.  I suppose you have to play by the genre’s conventions to a certain extent but that doesn’t mean you should make every obvious choice in the book.  Private Eye.  Hired to prove a woman is cheating.  Ends up falling for the woman.  It all just felt so…familiar.  Even the whole alien-futuristic setting felt “been there-done that.”

If I’m being completely honest though, I’m not the best judge of film noir material.  I’ve said this before, but I need to feel emotionally connected to the characters to care about them and their story.  Film Noir seems to be more about the world to me – about the “cool” factor.  About the dirt and the grime and the double-crossing and the dialogue.  To me, all that stuff is icing on the cake, not the cake itself.  I’d rather explore a person’s flaws, their relationships, the overcoming of their past.  This just doesn’t seem to be the genre to explore that, so I’m typically bored.

And to heap even more honesty onto this review, these scripts are REALLY HARD to read.  You’re digging through miles and miles of world-building (describing your big unique sci-fi world) just to find the occasional dramatic moment, or read the rare entertaining scene.  Tack onto that an overly-complicated quadruple-crossing plot, and it becomes more like work to read Ray Gunn than fun.   Once that happens, it’s check-out time.

So the lack of an original story, the lack of excitement over this genre, and the messiness of this narrative just didn’t endear me to it.  Will be interesting to hear what you guys think though, especially you film noir fans!

What I learned: A screenplay should never feel like work to the reader.  The second it feels like work, you’ve failed.