Recently I’ve been talking a lot to John Jarrell, a screenwriter who’s been working in this business for over 20 years, and learning quite a bit from him. When he mentioned he was putting together a class, I told him that I had to promote it on the site, especially since I’ve been getting so many e-mails recently asking where the best screenwriting classes are. I think you’ll be able to tell right away how awesome John is and how much damn knowledge he’s accumulated over his career. But probably the best thing about John is what an awesome guy he is. He’s just a great champion of screenwriters everywhere and really wants to help. Enjoy the discussion and if you like John, sign up for his class here in Los Angeles!
SS: So tell us a little about yourself. Who are you?? What’s your screenwriting backstory?
JJ: Basically, I was a young guy who took on $50,000 worth of student loans to go to NYU Film and chase a dream of making movies one day. I literally drove out to L.A. in late 1990 with nothing but $200 dollars and my trusty ’66 VW Bug to my name. The old “confidence of ignorance” approach. (Not recommended, by the way.)
Five months later, with my Hollywood hopes and dreams being pulped into cream corn, I hit a clutch do-or-die shot and sold my first script. I was over the moon. Next thing I knew, I had real cash in my pocket and was flying home on a private G-3.
It had happened so fast, it all seemed to be too good to be true. Of course it actually was too good to be true. Which I learned pretty quickly.
My script didn’t get made and within a year I was broke and unemployed again. What followed was five unrelenting years of struggle simply trying to survive and put food in my mouth. (also not recommended)
But I did survive, and in ’97, based on a fresh spec, I got a break. I was signed by this small new agency called “Endeavor”. Things kinda took off after that.
Since then I’ve written films and tv pilots for many of the major studios and have worked with some of the best producers and directors in Hollywood. These include — Jeffrey Katzenberg, Neil Moritz, Joel Silver, Terence Chang & John Woo, Mike Medavoy, Richard Donner, Luc Besson, James Foley, Carl Beverly and Warren Littlefield.
Among other projects, I wrote “Hard-Boiled II” and a remake of Peckinpah’s “The Killer Elite” for John Woo, was one of the many, many writers on “Live Free, Die Hard” at Fox, and scripted the animated family film “Outlaws” for Dreamworks. I’ve also sold four tv pilots and just finished my first book — the real life memoir of a legendary Chinatown gangster from the ’70’s and ’80’s.
a. What do you think the key is to breaking into this industry?
b. What do you think the key is to staying in this industry.
JJ: A) To get a start in this Business, first and foremost, you need a great script. Not merely good, but GREAT.
Twenty years ago screenwriter Larry Marcus (“The Stuntman”) told me that if you have a great script it may take a week, a year, or even ten years, but if you’ve written something undeniably fantastic, someone will find it. Why? Because there simply aren’t that many great scripts out there. It’s straight-up supply and demand.
I was pretty young at the time, and remember thinking, “That’s bullshit.” But what he said was right, and I’ve seen that dynamic play out with both my friends and myself as we’ve pursued our careers.
The other key elements to “getting a break” are timing and luck, and unfortunately, as most of us know, you can’t always control those. But I do believe you can “create your own luck” to an extent by working relentlessly to push your project. Meet people, network, send your script out knowing 99% of the time you’ll probably hear “no thanks”, but don’t let that discourage you.
See, this is the real key for any aspiring writer — “It only takes one buyer”. That’s what my first agent told me, and it’s just as true today. You can hear 1000 “No’s”, have a million doors slammed in your face, but just one simple “Yes” validates everything. As a writer, I’ve always found strength and inspiration in that. You don’t have to conquer Hollywood, you just need to find that one buyer out there who gets it.
SS: What’s your general philosophy on screenwriting? What do you think makes a script work?
Having an airtight structure backstopping your script is absolutely critical in my opinion, especially these days when the window for experimentation and/or ambiguity is largely slammed shut.
Want to give execs and producers immediate confidence in whatever they’re reading of yours? Land your story’s structure. It allows them to “see the movie” straight out of the gate and provides a solid foundation for you as the writer to do your very best work. Structure is a key element of what we do at Tweak Class.
SS: Your big strength is probably action. I don’t see many good action scripts these days. In your opinion, what’s the secret to writing a good action script?
JJ: With the films I’ve written, I’ve always focused on creating “intelligent action” — elevating above and beyond genre expectations by making things smarter and more real. If there’s any “secret” to the process, that’s probably it. “Bourne Identity” may be the high-watermark in this department. It provided proof positive that when you raise the bar on intelligence and realism that high, you can reach a vast audience… even people who don’t usually like action films.
Remember, just because a project is labeled “action” doesn’t mean it has to be stupid. Yet, I feel like a lot of writers play down to that, even unconsciously. Repeating the shopworn clichés — the ball-busting, froth-spewing Police Lt., the scowling, uni-browed Russian drug lord, etc.
Sure, they still make movies with these one-D characters. But as an aspiring writer, you’re being held to a much higher standard than that. The limited pool of buyers out there want to see something fresh and inventive — even if they ultimately dumb it right back down to the most basic clichés (picture me laughing here).
Two rules I try and live by — 1) Never write something you yourself wouldn’t want to read. 2) Whenever you find yourself writing a scene that feels stock, like you’ve seen it a million times before, cut it and start over. Believe me, if you don’t, sooner or later someone in the food chain will call you on it, and it may kill your read.
Bottom line, guys, make your scripts as smart and interesting and badass as you would want a film to be if you just forked over $12 to see it. That’ll help keep you honest and keep the quality of your writing high.
SS: For me, personally, I need some depth in an action script to respond to it. But you obviously talk to these action producers all the time. In your experience, what are they looking for?
JJ: Just like the rest of us, great action producers want something fresh and fun, a badass idea that gets them totally pumped. Christ, you can see their faces light right up in the room when you pitch ’em one they legitimately love. Remember, at heart, these guys are all big fans of action, just like we are.
The Business is making a lot less movies these days, so producers are even more selective about what they can finance. The good news is that they’ll always make action movies — the genre is old as Hollywood itself. So as a writer, help increase your odds of survival by thinking smart, badass and fun as hell — even if it’s a dark fun. Brother, if your world, characters or premise feels stock, you’re already dead and buried five pages in.
One more thing I’d like to add — Don’t kid yourself about “action” producers being ridiculous cartoons or “not getting it”. I’ve worked with Joel Silver, Neil Moritz, John Woo/Terence Chang… believe me, these men are SHARP. They have a depth of knowledge when it comes to genre that is outright intimidating.
Joel in particular was incredibly bright, one of the smartest men I’ve met in my life. When I wrote “Romeo Must Die” he had crossed the $100 Million Dollar mark FOURTEEN times. You don’t get there by accident, believe me. Man, that was such an incredible learning experience for me as a writer. Joel was a true connoisseur and had an incredible love for the genre, which he himself largely helped define.
SS: A lot of people don’t know the journey a script takes when it leaves your computer to getting sold. Can you tell us how that works? From when your agent sends it out to the sale, what happens?
JJ: Well, a lot of that has changed in the past four years. Pre-2008 when you wrote a great spec, you gave it to your agent and they would send it out to the different studios and producers that were logical, legitimate buyers.
Today, the emphasis is really on packaging. To a large extent, the studios have gotten out of the development business because of the expense, so now the agencies play a lot of that role. When an agency gets a viable spec, they try and attach a director or star in-house from their client lists first. Once they’ve cobbled together an appealing package, THEN they shop it to studios and financiers. The thought is that it increases their odds of selling it, and doubles or triples their profits because they rep the attachments involved.
“Naked specs” (scripts without attachments) still do sell, just in much, much smaller quantities. Attachments are king right now. But regardless of the Business of it all, what I said at the start still holds true — having a great script is always your best bet for navigating through the Hollywood crazy factor.
SS: What are a few of the best lessons you’ve learned over the years about screenwriting, stuff that’s really improved your writing?
JJ: Wow, there’s so many at this point, twenty years later. William Goldman’s advice to try and “begin each scene at the last possible moment” is a great one. Paddy Chayefsky’s “If it should occur to you to cut, do so” is also spot-on — even if it hurts like hell for a writer to do it. And there’s always Hitchcock’s dictum that “Movies are real life with the boring parts cut out”, which is an excellent guide for any writer constructing a screenplay.
In Tweak Class, we also get into very practical, real life advice for helping writers during the long struggle to finish a feature. Features aren’t sprints, they’re marathons, and there’s a psychological battle to fight every bit as much as a creative one.
Stuff like recognizing when you’re past it, when you need to stop for the day because you’re not generating good material is really important. As Dirty Harry so famously said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Page count means nothing, page quality everything. It took me years to get hip to this, to understand there’s no shame in calling it a day when you’re wasted.
Another thing I push hard, which may seem self-evident to some, is that you should NEVER, EVER edit the fresh pages you’ve written the same day you write them. You’re burnt out by then, snowblind. Give them a day minimum, a week’s even better, before starting to mark them up. From vast personal experience, I can testify this is the quickest and easiest way to destroy material that would have actually been pretty good upon later, clear-eyed reflection. (laughing again)
End of the day, I firmly believe that Writing is Momentum and a writer has to protect that forward progress at all costs. My class gets into a lot of workable ways to do just that.
SS: We all have weaknesses as screenwriters. What’s your biggest weakness? And how do you work around it?
JJ: One key weakness for me is simply not writing enough. When I look back over my career, I feel like I could have — and should have — written twice as much as I did. Writing is damn hard work, and facing a blank screen and all that comes with that is not exactly my idea of fun. Still, despite 27 features and 4 sold pilots, if I could do it over again, I would write a lot more.
Another weakness is driving myself way too hard when on a project. I have a bad habit of beating myself to a pulp psychologically, talking myself down during tough days. Funny thing is, it does not provide better results. If anything, it hampers your process. “Pressure is the enemy of art.”
Henry Miller has that great quote about writing — “Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.” He also said to “Keep Human” while writing. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to approach screenwriting from either of those perspectives. For me, for better or worse, it’s mostly war all the time… and believe me, I don’t recommend it to others.
SS: If you were a young screenwriter today, what kind of script would you write to give yourself the best chance to break in? And what would you do after you wrote that script to break in? What would your process be?
JJ: I suppose I’d do the same thing I did way-back-when — I’d cook up something commercial and put it right down the middle. My first script was pretty dark, tough Irish kids in the old Jersey City, and while it was good, we couldn’t find a buyer. I was new to Hollywood, and my first agent just flat out said — “Write me something I can sell.”
I was juiced up on youthful indignance back then, taking my script’s rejection way too personally, and decided that goddamnit, this business would not beat me! I resolved to write something they would have to buy — something a complete stranger would willingly give me money for. And that’s precisely what I did.
After that, I would try to line up a paying gig while writing a second spec even stronger than the first. Young writers have to keep WRITING. But back then, like a dummy, I didn’t do that. There’s a tendency for young writers to rest on their laurels and celebrate, and I was no exception. Within two years my script had gotten shelved and I was out of work. (more laughter)
SS: You work with the biggest agency in town, WME. How did you end up there? And where did you start as far as representation? Can you give us the journey from your first rep to your current one?
JJ: I ended up at WME through Endeavor. I was signed at Endeavor when it was just starting out, at the very inception. It was tiny and really felt like family back then, just the coolest environment and best ENERGY you can imagine for an agency in this dog-eat-dog town. Being involved at that time was an absolutely amazing experience, one of the high points of my professional life. Hard to imagine today, but I would just stop by and hang out with the agents, bouncing jokes off each other, having a blast, all that. There were some really special people there.
Of course, what happened later is history. Endeavor blew up, became WME, and many of those agents became superstars. Now it’s a completely different world. But often I think of those early days with a big smile in my heart.
My career prior to that was probably like many writers out there — boutique agencies that couldn’t quite get it done, agents that didn’t have the juice needed to get me in the room on things. And to be fair, I wasn’t exactly lighting the town on fire with my writing back then.
But ultimately, again, there aren’t any shortcuts. My getting signed at Endeavor came as a direct result of my finally writing a script worthy of getting noticed by the people I wanted to notice me. That’s how this game works, like it or not. You have to prove you belong.
SS: What’s the best screenplay, produced or unproduced, you’ve ever read, and why?
JJ: I have a massive vintage script collection at home and here are a few of my all-time favorites —
Larry Kasdan’s Body Heat. Good God, what a great read! Every single detail is so artfully laid out and seeded in, and the heat of it, the naked lust and desire, just bleeds right through the page.
Hampton Fancher’s early draft of Blade Runner — For pure writing’s sake, I much prefer this to the Peoples’ rewrite. It’s just more textural and evocative to me, with some slight differences that I really enjoy. A magical script in my opinion.
Oliver Stone’s Scarface — People these days forget what a world-class screenwriter Stone is, one of the greatest who’s ever lived in my opinion. What’s so mind-blowing about this particular draft is that damn-near EVERY LINE in the film is right there on the page as Stone intended it. As badass a screenplay as you’ll ever read.
Paddy Chayefsky’s Network — Pretty much the Holy Grail for screenwriting as far as I’m concerned. His command of subject, character and dialogue is unparalleled here. You’re reading these long, thick passages of dialogue — something you could never get away with today — and suddenly realize that every last word counts. It’s entirely surgical, and coming at you at lightning speed. Unreal. Do not attempt this at home!
Lastly, Andy Kevin Walker’s Seven — The greatest serial killer movie ever written, and one that’ll never be equaled. I remember reading it when it first hit town and having it scare the absolute shit out of me. I was living in a tiny Venice Beach studio by myself, and when I got to the sequence with the desiccated guy “Victor” and the Polaroids, I got up to make sure nobody was hiding in my closet. Andy really is the master of the brilliant twist on top of the brilliant twist.
SS: What’s your teaching philosophy?
JJ: I’d never really thought of it in those terms, but I suppose it’s that there are no magic bullets or secret potions. Screenwriting is a craft you have to work very, very hard at, and nobody, no matter how experienced or successful, is exempt from that. Making money at it and being good at it are entirely different things, as many of us well know from reading an ocean of shitty big money drafts.
I want my students to be legitimately good at it. To develop the skill set needed to make a career out of writing — not just hope they’ll get lucky optioning a script or two every ten years.
Most of all, I see all the writers in my class as peers. Anyone can come up with a great idea — the right idea — at any time, regardless of experience. I’m a produced screenwriter. So what? Does that give me a monopoly on great ideas? Hell, no. The cool thing about screenwriting is that the blank page is the great equalizer — anyone can work hard and excel there, regardless of who they know, who their parents are, who they’re connected to, and so on. That’s one thing I really love about it. That anyone can participate and succeed.
SS: I know your class is a little different from the other classes out there. Can you tell me what you focus on? What can your students expect from your classes?
JJ: “A little different” is a polite way of putting it :) What surprises new students is how much FUN we have — and how much great work comes out of that. The class is extremely interactive, and that support and synergy can be outright electrifying at times. There’s no better rush than having a class get on a creative roll together.
But hey, don’t just take my word for it, check out our Facebook Group Page (“Tweak Class Screenwriting”) or the website (tweakclass.com) and see what my students have to say. Hell, go ahead and PM them and get their takes firsthand.
End of the day, I guess the Log Line here is that writers who join my class can expect to learn how the day-in, day-out business of screenwriting is actually practiced by professionals — both creatively and business-wise.
Not just the writing stuff, which is essential, but how to pitch, how to read a room, how to surf the million-plus curveballs any situation can throw you. It’s hard to win the big game if you don’t know the rules, right? Tweak Class focuses on getting your “A” game together in every sense, getting individual projects successfully plotted and First Acts written by the end of the ten weeks.
Every single member of my classes has accomplished both these goals, and trust me when I say you will too.
Genre: Thriller(?)
Don’t worry you Twit-Pitch fanatics. I haven’t forgotten about you. In fact, I was so excited about bringing a Twit-Pitch script back for a review, that I’m posting it a day early! How bout them apples? I figured since we dealt with some American history yesterday, why not extend it into a 48 hour American history marathon?! Scriptshadow Textbook Reviews? Coming soon!
I remember when I originally picked this up. The writing was so crisp, so clean, that I wanted to replace my bedsheets with it. I mean, the script starts out with some of the best descriptions of Civil War battle I’ve ever read. Karpala can detail a battlefield kill like no other. And then for us to realize that it was all just a reenactment via a Lady Gaga ringtone going off? Brilliant!
Now, before going forward, I should point something out. When I picked this up yesterday, I’d completely forgotten the logline. Which turned out to be a good thing because it meant reading the script clean. That lack of context allowed me to identify a huge issue that needs to be dealt with in the next draft. So, grab your Confederate flags Scriptsoldiers, it’s time to take a trip back in time…for the second day in a row.
During Reenactment’s opening reenactment, we meet 45 year old Doug Abbot, a fearless leader on the battlefield, but your average Joe with an ex-wife and a teenage son off it. You get the feeling that Doug’s life didn’t turn out the way he wanted it to, and these reenactments are the only moments of joy he has left.
So when he’s invited by another re-enactor to a secret reenactment known as the “Battle Of The Wilderness,” Doug is in. In fact, in order to salvage his deteriorating relationship with his son, Will, he invites him to come with. Will isn’t exactly keen on reenacting, but the fact that he gets to shoot guns, even if it’s with fake ammunition, is enough to get him onboard.
So Doug and Will, along with a few hundred other participants, are bussed into the middle of some nowhere forest where they’re introduced to their commanders and where they get ready for battle. They march through the forest, encounter the opposing army, and engage in the first volley of gunfire. But strangely, nobody from the Confederate side falls. Per the rules of reenacting, at least a portion of the other side is supposed to “die.” Nobody does.
And that’s when the Confederates fire on them. Which is when they figure out something is very VERY wrong. Dozens of men fall to the ground in a bloody pulp. These guys are using REAL AMMUNITION! Let the slaughter begin.
Once Doug realizes this, he grabs Will and a few others and hightails it into the forest. They’re getting the hell out of here. The problem is they’re so deep in the middle of nowhere that there’s nowhere out. At a certain point, Doug and his son get split up, and now it’s not just about escaping these crazy psycho REAL Confederates, but about Doug finding his son amongst this endless battlefield. Will he able to do it in time? And even if he does, how the hell do they plan on getting out alive?
Like I said, the writing here is pretty great. It’s that perfect mix of powerful description and lean paragraph packaging – the way screenplays are meant to be written! I mean check out this opening line: “A maze of white oak trees, holding up canopies of rich, green summer leaves. There is an early morning light, bringing with it an early morning stillness.” I know a lot of writers who would turn that opening description into 4 to 5 paragraphs! All we need is one here and the scene is set.
However, once we get into the meat of this story, some cracks, not unlike the cracks in the Confederate army, start to show. The first issue was simply what the hell was happening!?? I couldn’t for the life of me figure out if we had gone back in time or if this was occurring in the present day.
Here’s why. Karpala makes a huge deal out of how “similar” all the Confederate leaders look to their real life counterparts. Eerily similar. To me that meant we’d gone back in time and were dealing with the real versions of these people. Also, there were numerous references to how things weren’t where they were supposed to be on the map, which was another hint to me that they were 150 years in the past, where the landscape was much different. So for about 75% of the screenplay, I thought we were in the past, which is of course a completely different kind of movie.
Another issue for me was the tone. The non-battlefield stuff had this light, almost goofy family movie quality to it. Oh, there’s the goofy but annoying new boyfriend of the ex-wife. Lady Gaga ringtones. A boy and his dad trying to find common ground together. Yet once we got onto that battlefield, people’s heads are decapitated by cannon balls. Bodies are exploded into a dozen pieces by land mines. And there’s more blood in your average battle scene than in an entire Quentin Tarantino movie. I don’t know about you guys, but I couldn’t marry those two extremes together.
Also, once I started thinking about the story, there were certain things that didn’t make sense. Apparently these REAL reenactments were put together once a year. And during each of them, somewhere between 400-500 men were killed. Now I’m not a math major, but doesn’t the FBI start getting suspicious when 500 men who went on a reenactment trip don’t return?
Story-wise, the one thing I felt needed strengthening was the father-son stuff. If the central objective of the script is for the father to find and save his son, we have to really care about that relationship. I didn’t NOT care about that relationship, but there was nothing exceptional about it either. Therefore I was only mildly interested in whether Doug would find Will. Since that’s pretty much the whole movie, that area needs to be beefed up.
I think Karpala needs to create more of a divide between Doug and Will. Something more deep-seated that’s been at the core of their relationship for awhile. For example, maybe Doug bailed on his wife, and Will’s never forgiven him for it. Now that we have a strong unresolved issue between the two, we as an audience will be rooting for them to reunite so they can finally resolve that issue.
So yeah, the writing in this one was great, as I expected it to be after those first 10 pages, but there were too many little issues that added up. Not bad, but not good enough to get me all smiley and happy. :(
Script Link: Re-Enactment
What I Learned: Beware the forced plot point! Readers know! Look, we all WANT things to happen in our screenplays to move our story along the way we want it moved along. But it still has to make sense! If it doesn’t, it feels forced, and we readers shake our heads in quiet dismay, muttering to ourselves, “That would so never happen.” Clearly, Karpala needed to split Doug and Will up so Doug could be looking for Will the whole movie. The problem is, it makes absolutely NO SENSE WHY THEY SPLIT UP. Doug says something like, “You’re going to wait here while I go do this thing.” So wait, this father who loves his son more than anything is going to leave him alone in this insanely dangerous and unpredictable battle zone instead of take him with him??????? No way. Come on guys. Make sure all your plot points make sense.
Genre: Historical/Action
Premise: George Washington must lead a dying army to fend off a band of British mercenaries intent on destroying America.
About: A couple of interesting things about this one. First of all, Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) is set to direct it. Now THAT could be interesting. Also, the writers here are traditionally comedy writers. Their credits include the Olsen Twin classic (heh heh), New York Minute, the college comedy, Accepted, and I believe they wrote the original spec for the tonally strange Tower Heist.
Writers: Adam Cooper and Bill Collage
Details: 115 pages
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Scripts about the birth of America are boring. I don’t know if it’s the cheesy wigs. I don’t know if it’s the fluffy clothes. But there’s something about Washington and Jefferson and Adams that just screams…BORING! There, I said it. I let the bayonet out of the bag. But it’s true! Lots of speeches about happiness and liberty. Declarations of independence. Hey, it’s all great for history. But for entertainment purposes, I’d rather watch a weeping willow grow.
Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that we, as Americans, hold these men up as flawless heroes. Washington couldn’t even tell a lie! But if you want us to care about your characters, you HAVE to show us their flaws. Flaws are what make them real. Nobody’s perfect. And nobody should want to be perfect. Perfect people are BORING!
So the only way anyone’s going to write a good story about this period is if they dare to challenge our heroes. They have to stop idealizing them and show us the things that made them human. Well, we finally have a script for that.
When we meet 46 year old George Washington in The General, he is not yet the president we know. He’s the Commander In Chief of the American army. And the American Army has their hands full. They’ve lost Manhattan to the British, and they’re losing many more territories by the day.
Worst of all, the army’s about to get a lot smaller. They only have like 30,000 troops as it is, and many of those are the walking wounded. But higher on the Suck Chart is the fact that the deadline on those soldiers is running out. Their tour of duty is about to end.
So instead of going out there and fighting battles, which is what Washington wants to be doing, he’s stuck touring the nation, begging Congress and rich people for money to keep the defenses strong. It’s not going well. Many people are just like, “Fuck it, let the British have their country back and let’s just be done with this war.” Washington is becoming the lone voice in a sea of surrender. This man will die trying to keep this nation free.
And he almost does. When the British attack the very fort named after him, Washington is nearly killed, and carried away onto a row boat to begin what would easily be the best pre-20th-century chase scene ever put on film. Washington and five men in a row boat are chased by three giant British war ships down the river. This is the kind of shit you need if you’re going to write a movie about the birth of our nation – shit that’s actually cool!
Another great decision the writers made was not focusing on the redcoats themselves as the enemy, but the MERCENARIES the British hired to invade America. Wait a minute. Did I just say we have mercenaries in a Wigs and Whistles costume pic? Yup! A heartless German gun for hire named Johann Rall and his Hessian army do not play by the rules. They pillage. They burn. They kill civilians. They just don’t care. And these are the men Washington is going to lose his country to.
Whereas the British believe that securing land is the key to victory, Rall has a different opinion. He believes you don’t win this war until you kill “The Virginian,” until you kill Washington himself. So that’s all Rall cares about – chasing Washington down and turning him into bayonet stew. His obsession, however, becomes a little unhealthy, and in the process he becomes blind to the unthinkable – that Washington might actually come after him first.
LOTS of cool things about this one. Where do I start. First, the character flaws! Yes, Washington has some actual flaws in this screenplay. He’s arrogant. He’s stubborn. He’s even a little jealous. This is not the Washington we know, and thank God. Our first president becomes a million times more interesting under the guidance of Aronofsky.
It’s got a great bad guy! This Rall bastard is the real deal. Such a great idea to focus on the mercenary angle. Also loved how they made Rall’s pursuit of Washington PERSONAL. Remember, you’re always looking to specify conflict. If it’s too general, the audience won’t connect. But if you focus on one person’s obsession with taking down another person, now we have something clear to latch onto. We actually care what’s going to happen because what’s happening is SPECIFIC.
The writers even brought in a ticking time bomb! Yes, I loved the focus on the army’s soldiers about to end their tour. It instantly adds stakes. You could feel that if Washington didn’t make his move now, he’d lose his army and America was done for good. I love when writers tackle these tough period subject matters but still fall back on sound storytelling principles.
Yet another smart move was constantly reminding the audience how impossible the odds were. When you think of that time, you assume that with all our land and us defending our own country, that we were probably going to win no matter what. But the writers constantly reminded us how many of our soldiers were injured, how low morale was, how amazing the Hessian army was. This created a sense of desperation, of America being the huge underdog. And who doesn’t root for the underdog!?
There was really only one problem in the script for me, and that’s when Washington and army camped out across the river from Rall for 30 pages. I hate hate HATE when characters just sit around for extended periods of time in scripts. It means they’re not being active. It means they’re not doing anything. Sitting around is almost ALWAYS boring unless you have a ton of conflict to deal with inside the protagonist’s party. And they didn’t really have that here.
Also, the ending wasn’t as good as I was hoping for. I didn’t really understand what Washington was trying to do. He was trying to cross the Delaware River and take over a town called Trenton, but I had a hard time figuring out if Rall was there or someone else.
That was the thing. The writers did such a good job setting up that personal showdown between Washington and Rall, that, in the end, that’s all I really cared about. It does happen but, I don’t know. It just felt like it could’ve been done better.
Still, this one surprised me. And I think Aronofsky is going to do something really cool with it!
What I learned: Make it difficult for characters having an argument to have their argument. Remember, straight up arguments with people yelling at each other are boring. You need ways to make them different or interesting. A great way to do this is to place people around the arguing party that prevent them from being able to argue. In the opening scene of The General, Washington is raising money at an event when a congressman challenges his approach to the war. Washington is furious and is readying to scream at the guy – but everywhere around him are potential financial contributors, so he must have his argument in a quiet restrained manner. I just always find these confrontations more interesting than the blatant, “You scream at me, I scream at you” arguments.
Genre: Biopic
Premise: While growing up, a young boy gradually learns that his father, who’s his hero, is the world’s biggest deadbeat.
About: Adapted by A-List screenwriter Steve Zaillian (Schindler’s List, Gangs of New York, Moneyball, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) back in 2000, from the memoir, “Duke Of Deception: Memories Of My Father,” by Geoffrey Wolff. The movie never got off the ground, probably for story issues I get into here in the review.
Writer: Steve Zaillian based on the novel by Geoffrey Wolff
Details: 133 pages
This has to be one of the stranger screenplays I’ve read in awhile. First off, there’s no real story to speak of. It’s just watching a kid grow up with this weirdo deadbeat of a dad. Despite that, either because Zaillian is such a good writer or because of the perverse need to see how bad this dad gets, I kept pushing through. And because I wanted to keep reading, I wondered if I should give this a “worth the read.” But a lot of what we read here is so disturbing, and we hate this father so much, that we’re kind of thrilled when it’s over. Yeah, I wanted to know what happened. But thank the heavens above that I never have to revisit this story again (except through this review – darn it!).
So what’s Duke of Deception about? Well, it’s about a guy named Duke who’s, um, deceitful. The bulk of the movie takes place in the 60s (I think – there was a hell of a lot of jumping around in time – if only 2000 Zallian had been able to read my Clarity article!), where, I guess, people just trusted each other more. You could walk into a big department store, open up a line of credit, buy $3000 worth of merchandise, then tell them you were going to pay later. And they’d allow it!
So Duke took advantage of this. Oh boy did he take advantage of it. See, here’s the thing about Duke. He’s never had a job. In fact, he’s never accomplished anything in his life. He’s created this whole pretend life where he went to Princeton and fought in the war, but it’s all a lie, just like everything about him.
But anyway, Duke uses this “credit” ruse to buy anything he wants and NEVER pays. And I mean NEVER. He never pays a single bill in his life. If the bills start becoming too much, he moves to another store/vendor, or just moves the family out of town.
Oh yeah, the family. We’re actually telling this story through Duke’s son Geoffrey’s eyes. Geoffrey, unfortunately, is brought up by this lying bastard, and, as a result, becomes his biggest victim. That’s not to say Duke doesn’t love his son. Actually, Duke loves Geoffrey more than anything in the world. But Duke makes Geoffrey think he’s this amazing special person who can buy 50,000 dollar cars at the drop of a hat, when all he really is, is a giant deadbeat con man who’s stolen money from every person he’s ever met.
So while Duke spends his life running from the men he owes money to, he puts on a show for Geoffrey that they’re all wrong and he’s the one who’s right. Therefore, while everyone else catches up with Duke’s con, Geoffrey obliviously goes through life believing his dad is perfect.
Duke’s constant need for things gets so bad, in fact, that after his first wife leaves him because of the tremendous amount of debt he’s put them in, he marries a woman just to pillage her bank account, which will allow him to keep buying things. As Geoffrey grows up, he keeps seeing fights between his father and his wives, but always assumes its the wives’ fault. His father is perfect. He could never do anything wrong.
It isn’t until all his women leave him and Duke moves in with Geoffrey as an adult that Geoffrey finally gets a first-hand look at what his father’s been doing. Duke starts taking money from his own son and not paying it back, simply because there’s no one else to take money from. Duke even goes to jail for all the creditors he owes, allows Geoffrey to bail him out, then never shows up for court, forcing Geoffrey to eat thousands of dollars in bail fees.
It finally becomes clear to Geoffrey that his father is one giant fraud. A loser. A deadbeat of the highest order. The question is, what does he do about it? Does he keep enabling his addiction? Or does he finally grow up, accept his father for who he is, and leave him?
Yeah, so like I said, this is one odd screenplay. I mean the first thing that comes to mind when finishing it is: How could anyone consider this a movie? Because it’s not. It’s just a man being a total fraud douchebag for two hours. I mean, it’s fascinating in a way. To see how in denial he is. But there’s no story here. There’s no plot driving a story. There are no goals – no purpose. It’s just, Duke fucks over one person after another.
That’s the script’s biggest fault – its repetition. It never really evolves into anything more than where it began. Okay, he gets things and doesn’t pay for him. And then he gets more things and doesn’t pay for them. And then gets MORE things and doesn’t pay for them. At what point does it become, “Okay, that’s enough things he gets that he didn’t pay for??!”
Having said that, the script has a couple of strengths. Zaillian is a master at popping in the occasional great scene. There’s a great sequence, for example, where Geoffrey falls in love with the trash man’s daughter. So he goes to his father and asks, “Could you make sure you pay the trash man? Because I like his daughter.” Duke assures him that he will, and yet a few days later, the trash man comes by and dumps every bit of trash from Duke’s house back onto his lawn for not paying. The daughter stands there proudly, and tosses a gift that Geoffrey gave her onto the lawn as well, as if to put an exclamation point on how worthless she sees Geoffrey and his father to be.
The script also has a really intriguing final act, when Geoffrey comes face to face with his father’s lie. When his dad starts taking advantage of his own son, Geoffrey’s forced to take the blinders off, and it’s not pretty what he sees. Because it’s not just that his dad’s taking advantage of him in this moment, it’s that he now knows this is how his dad has always been. That there’s never been a single authentic thing about him. Imagine that for a second. You’ve always looked up to someone as your hero. Then you learn that everything about them is a fraud. I had this same experience when I found out the truth about Milli Vanilli.
So in the end, I don’t know what to make of this odd script. It almost feels like a backstory for a story to come later. I could say this is “worth the read,” because there are parts of it that are entertaining in their own odd way, but I’d be betraying the need for…I don’t know, class in a script, which the character of Duke makes sure there is none of.
I feel so dirty after this one. I think I need to take a shower.
What I learned: You need MOVIE MOMENTS in your script. Zallian is great at this! He makes sure there are 5 or 6 scenes in every script that are genuine bona fide moments that EXPLODE off the page. Besides the trash scene I mention above, there’s also a scene, when Geoffrey is told to stay home for that day’s game by his baseball coach, where Duke angrily speeds into the middle of the game, demands that the current batter take a hike, and insists that the coach put Geoffrey in RIGHT NOW! The whole game awkwardly stops as an unwitting Geoffrey is forced to bat. It’s just a tense fun scene, and it reminded me that sometimes you have to step back from the macro and make sure your script has a group of memorable highly entertaining scenes as well.
Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama
Premise: A terminally ill data cruncher is tasked with crunching the company’s most unsolvable job, the mysterious Zero Theorem.
About: If there’s ever been such a thing as a dream geek pairing, Terry Gilliam (12 Monkeys) and Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Bastards) would be somewhere in the top 10 (okay, let’s face it, Terry Gilliam and any actor would be in the top 10). Right now, The Zero Theorem is in pre-production. Gilliam has been trying to get this movie going for awhile, with Billy Bob Thorton attached at one point. This will be writer Pat Rushin’s first produced credit. He was an English professor at the University Of Central Florida and has had his work published in a number of magazines and newspapers.
Writer: Pat Rushin
Details: 95 pages
The more I read, the clearer this whole “voice” thing becomes to me. Let me explain. Almost all the scripts I read follow the same exact pattern, make the same exact choices, have the same exact sense of humor, have surprisingly similar dialogue. There’s nothing in the script that stands out as unique. And when there isn’t a single unique thing about your script, how do you expect it to stand out? Why would you expect anyone to remember your screenplay an hour after they’ve finished it?
This is why “voice” is so important. If you can do anything differently – if you have a part of your writing that only YOU can add – people are going to remember you.
That’s the feeling I got right away when reading The Zero Theorem. It was unlike any script I’ve read in awhile. It’s sort of 13 Monkeys by way of Midnight Cowboy with a splash of Eternal Sunshine with a sprinkle of The Matrix? Original enough for you? We’re introduced to a strange man named Qohen Leth, a 40-something gaunt hairless fellow, presumably in the near future, working for an obscure data-crunching company.
Qohen is one weird dude. He’s tired, distant, and hates to be touched. He also thinks he’s dying. And the only thing he cares about is a big call he assumes he’ll be getting soon which will tell him what he needs to do with his life. See that’s the thing. Above and beyond everything, Qohen feels like he doesn’t have a purpose. And that whoever’s calling him will finally give him that purpose.
So Qohen applies for a medical exception which will allow him to work from home so he can be around at all times just in case that call comes. He gets the exception, but on one condition – that he tackle the biggest number-crunching job the company’s ever had – The Zero Theorem. Nobody’s been able to figure out The Zero Theorem. No matter how many times they’ve tried to crunch the numbers, they won’t stay crunched. Qohen is their last shot.
The kicker? If he solves Zero Theorem, management will make sure Qohen gets his phone call. That’s one of the weird things about this script. We’re existing in this slightly “off” universe where the boss at a company can make sure a Fate phone call can get to one of his workers. I’m not sure how Rushin pulled this off, but it somehow makes sense.
Anyway, Qohen soon finds The Zero Theorem to be as impossible as it’s hyped to be. The numbers just don’t work. When he complains to management, “Management” sends his 15 year old boy genius son, Bob, to help him. Bob is as eccentric as Qohen is bizarre. For example, he calls everyone else “Bob” so he doesn’t have to waste brain space on remembering new names.
Qohen and Bob develop a unique friendship and together find out what The Zero Theorem reveals – the meaning of life! Yeah, that’s a pretty big deal – and it’s something Qohen in particular wants to find out, especially because he’s been stuck in this paralyzed state ever since his wife and son died in a fire. He craves meaning. He needs a reason to go on. So Qohen and Bob give the theorem everything they’ve got. Will they solve it, especially once they learn management is working against them??
A main character who refers to himself as “We.” A 15 year old boy on life-support who refers to everyone by his own name, Bob. A buxom blonde infatuated with virtual reality. A manager who never shows his face in public. Heck, this script had me when it introduced a rapping virtual psychiatrist on CD-ROM. There was nothing about this script that was ordinary. I had NO idea where it was going.
A lot of times, that can end up in disaster. If you get too random, your story falls off the rails. But this script managed to stay random yet still incorporate a clear story with a clear goal (Figure out Zero Theorem so Qohen can get his phone call). Cool!
I think that’s what really stuck out to me here – that the script managed to feel so different yet incorporate a lot of the most basic storytelling tools. Take, for example, the creation of a sympathetic character. Qohen is lonely. He’s an outsider. He doesn’t relate to anyone. Characters like these are really easy for an audience to sympathize with. People naturally root for lonely people, people who are misunderstood. From Edward Scissorhands to Elliot in E.T.
On top of that, Qohen lost his family in a tragic fire. It’s something that’s completely destroyed him emotionally. Again, people will ALWAYS root for characters who have experienced personal loss. So we’re rooting for this guy HARDCORE from the get-go.
And I just liked the contrast and conflict within the script. I loved how Qohen was just about the most anti-social creature in the universe, and we pair him up with a love interest who’s the most outgoing person in the universe, the buxom force of nature, Bainsley. It’s decisions like these (a pairing similar to Eternal Sunshine) that ensure tons of conflict between the characters, which results in the dialogue writing itself (whenever someone says, “The dialogue practically writes itself,” that usually happens because the conflict in the scene makes the dialogue really fun/easy to write).
Now the ending of the script starts to get a little wacky and hard to follow, not unlike Friday’s amateur effort, where there were simply too many variables to keep track of. So if the story has a weakness, that’s probably it. I’ve found that whenever you promise an answer akin to the meaning of life in your script, you’re usually not going to deliver, so it was a dangerous route for Rushin to take in the first place. But outside of that ending (which was still pretty solid), this weird little story had me digitally dancing through the pages.
What I learned: If you do not have a distinct voice – and not every writer does – the only thing you have is your ability to tell a great story. I look at a movie like Contact as a good example. I don’t sense an original voice when I read that script, but the story is extremely well told. That said, you should always be looking to see what makes you original as a writer and try and highlight that in your writing. If you don’t have anything unique about yourself that stands out, it can be a tough road getting discovered.
