Can a screenplay from a New Zealander prove this week’s Scriptshadow theme wrong? Or do I still stick by my guns and say: “Stay away from quirky character pieces when writing a spec?”

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, a PDF of the first ten pages of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script and “first ten” will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effect of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: When a simplistic man meets a simplistic woman on the internet, wedding bells start ringing. But when he finds out his crazy ex-girlfriend not only still has, but has since lost his engagement ring, he must team up with her to find it.
About: This script was written by a New Zealander! And I think he’s going to be making the movie himself. He was curious to see how the script would play to an American audience.
Writer: Michael Dunigan
Details: 104 pages

Anne Hathaway for Roxy?

It’s funny this script showed up when it did, because it fits in nicely with the week’s theme – writing a character-driven indie spec. Actually, there’s a little more of a hook going on here, and you could argue this is also, if not solely, a romantic comedy. But it seems to have its roots firmly in the indie world, and it has a ton of quirkiness, something I’ve taken to task in this week’s article.

I actually got an e-mail from the writer saying he was scared of my review now because of my recent quirky-bashing. So I just wanted to clarify something. I have no problem with quirkiness IF it serves the story. It’s only when it’s used to serve its own purpose that I have an issue. For example, if a character wears a kilt just because the writer wants him to, I’m rolling my eyes. But if he just moved to the U.S. from rural Ireland and hasn’t purchased any American clothes yet, then it makes sense. So was the quirkiness in “The Very Last Girl” justified? Or was it just for its own sake? Time to find out.

Owen Marley is one straight-laced dude. This is not the kind of guy who’s going to dance on tables at a party. He’s the guy next door who gets irritated by all the noise coming from the party. So it makes sense that he’s searching for his next girlfriend online. And lo and behold, he finds her. Her name is Laura and while she’s pretty, she’s kind of morbid and depressing, obsessed with the meaningless of existence. Perfect for Owen! The first date is a smashing success, even though it looks to us like the two are having the most boring time in the world. They apparently enjoy this kind of (non) activity.

A few days later, Owen pops the question, and the two prepare to head into wedding bliss. But it turns out that Owen’s ex-girlfriend still has his engagement ring, which has been in his family for generations. Asking any ex-girlfriend for a ring back is going to be awkward, but asking this girl is going to be particularly difficult. That’s because Roxy, Owen’s ex, is psychotic. Don’t let her day job (a school teacher) fool you. She’s like a six year old on crack. Oh, and she no longer has the engagement ring.

BUT she thinks she knows where it is and tells Owen that if he wants it, he’ll have to join her to get it. So the two go riding around town, descending down manholes and hunting down local metal hunting enthusiasts in search of the ring, at one point running into a dangerous biker gang, who end up kidnapping Owen’s fiance. Along the way, Owen starts to realize that maybe Roxy isn’t as bad as he thought she was. And with fiance Laura starting to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome from her female biker captor, Owen probably doesn’t have any choice but to like Roxy anyway. But when Roxy throws a horrifying last second revelation at Owen, will the former love-birds be able to recover? Or will Owen find himself back at the starting gate, alone once again?

So what did I think of The Very Last Girl? Here’s how I determine my level of like (or dislike) for a script. Would I recommend it to anyone? Would I pass it on to a friend and tell them to read it? And if the answer is “no,” why is it “no?” I wouldn’t recommend this one and here’s why. There’s something too predictable about it. Too familiar. Even with all its quirkiness, I felt like I’ve seen this movie before, and nothing new was brought to the table. Typically, I hate being 20-30 pages ahead of a script, and that turned out to be the case here. Now I was 20-30 pages ahead of St. Vincent De Van Nuys as well, but the difference was that those characters were all unique and deep and compelling. These characters never really went below surface level.

Take Vincent from “St. Vincent,” for example. He had this whole backstory with being a war hero and having a wife who’s since been lost to Alzheimer’s. Maybe that was my issue with “Last Girl.” The characters didn’t have any backstories. They were defined by their present traits only. Roxy was weird. Laura was morbid. Owen was boring. I’m not even sure what the backstory between Owen and Roxy was. If it was stated, I missed it, but I was constantly trying to figure out why the two had been together. They were such different people. I know opposites attract but I would’ve liked to know specifically why they attracted.

Then again, I started to get a little skimmy after the midpoint, so I may have missed some details. That’s what writers sometimes forget. If a script isn’t catching a reader’s interest, their mind starts to drift. They can’t help it. If you’re not interesting them, they’re going to stop paying attention. And I’m not saying it was super bad in “Last Girl’s” case, but there were a few times where a couple of pages went by and I was like, “Whoa, I don’t remember what I just read.” If I’m giving notes, I’ll go back and read those pages. But if I’m just reading a script? Those pages get lost forever.

Another issue I had was that our main character, Owen, was boring (sorry, I can’t think of a nicer way to put it). This was somewhat offset by Roxy being so crazy, but having a boring main character is tough, even if you’re going the “protagonist as straight man” route. Not to keep bringing up “St. Vincent De Van Nuys,” but look at the main character in that script. He’s a drunk asshole who always says what’s on his mind and refuses to open up to anyone. Plus he had all that backstory. That guy was interesting! Even if you want to argue that the little kid was the main character, HE was interesting. He was adopted. He was super smart. He was weird – different from all the other kids. Owen existed almost invisibly throughout this script.

On the plus side, the story had a clear objective and therefore the characters were always moving towards something. That kept them active. There was also clear conflict between the two leads, Owen and Roxy, which kept their conversations exciting, even if that conflict was a little forced.

I’m not sure if there was a ticking time bomb (was the wedding tomorrow? I can’t remember). But even if there was, there were no true stakes attached to Owen achieving his goal. Laura was going to marry this guy no matter what (before the Stockholm Syndrome) so you got the feeling that even if he didn’t find the ring, they were going to be just fine. I remember with The Hangover, you knew that if these guys didn’t find the groom, they were going to be in some deeeeeeep shit. I never got that feeling here. And that’s important. If we don’t feel the stakes of the objective, how can we be invested in the story?

So this one didn’t quite do it for me. Moving forward, I’d make Owen more interesting and I’d also build more backstory into the characters. That’s what’s missing the most, in my opinion. The characters just aren’t deep enough. They have these surface level quirks, but I don’t feel their history, what’s going on inside of them, enough. You fix that and you’ll fix a lot of this script’s problems. I wish the best of luck to Michael!

Script link: The Very Last Girl

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If I can’t remember one distinct trait about a character, then that character hasn’t been developed enough. I can’t think of one distinct trait about Owen. And this is the character taking us through this story! Make sure that your key characters all have at least one distinct memorable interesting trait about them.

So there I was, reading this week’s screenplays, minding my own business, and it occurs to me that there’s an interesting question emerging. On Monday, I had this quirky character driven dramedy about a family of grown-up siblings who realize they’re all adopted, and on Wednesday I had a script about an unlikely friendship between an old drunk and a 12 year old geek.

There were some similarities here. Both were small independent films that put the focus on the characters. But more significantly, there was very little plot to either one of them. I’d almost say they were “plotless.” That got me thinking just how hard it is to break into the business with one of these types of scripts. I mean let’s be honest. These are the kinds of scripts that can end a logline’s career. Which REALLY depresses loglines because they live to impress people! This is likely why so few people have actually read these scripts. Even if they’re recommended, whoever got them probably said, “Errr…Why the hell would I read that??”

I remember, at one point, writing in Relativity’s review, to NEVER write a script like this if you wanted to get reads. Then two days later, I’m propping up St. Vincent like it’s the second coming. So which is it? Write’em or don’t write’em? Well, I do stand by my original statement. You shouldn’t write a script like this if you’re trying to break in. When it comes down to it, Hollywood is a numbers game. The more people you can get to read your script, the better chance you have of finding someone to buy it. And when you throw a low-concept character-driven idea out there, the amount of read requests you’re going to get is going down by 80% – AT LEAST. Not only do producers and agents avoid these things like the plague because they never make money, but as a reader, I can tell you, a bad character-driven drama is the worst kind of script to get stuck in. These things can get soooo boring soooo fast if they’re not written well. And most of the time they’re not written well.

But, I’m guessing you’re reading this, pointing your fingers at the screen and saying, “Yeah, but I’m DIFFERENT.” You Angus T. Joneses of the world want everyone to know that you’re an amazing writer and therefore don’t need to be held to these lame Hollywood standards. Your character piece is going to be that powerball winner, because it’s THAT good. Okay, okay. I know we writers didn’t come to Hollywood because we’re the smartest lot. We chose one of the riskiest professions in the world cause we’re kinda nuts. And if we’re already risking embarrassment and ridicule from our much more successful family and friends, why stop taking chances now? So if the dramatic character-piece route is the one you’re going to take, it is my duty to prepare you for it. Here are five essential elements to include to give your indie character piece the best shot at success.

A BIG INTERESTING MAIN CHARACTER A BIG ACTOR WOULD WANT TO PLAY
This is one rule that doesn’t change no matter what kind of script you’re writing, whether it be The Disciple Program or St. Vincent de Van Nuys, you still gotta nab a big actor, because the film’s gotta get financed, and you’re not going to find financing without a star, and a star isn’t going to attach himself to your script for some “sorta okay” role. So you gotta write someone intriguing, different, someone who’s going through some major internal shit, someone who does weird things or is unique or retarded or deranged or strange. Look at De Van Nuys. Vin is an asshole, says what’s on his mind, gets wasted all the time, gets to act post-stroke, is full of repressed emotions about his wife. This is a character someone’s going to want to play, something an actor would see as a challenge. With Relativity, there was craziness, but there was zero depth to the characters. It was skin deep. What actor wants to play a skin deep “wacky” character? You gotta give them more.

STAY AWAY FROM ‘QUIRK FOR QUIRK’S SAKE’
Call it the Garden State or Little Miss Sunshine effect, but after those films, lots of writers started writing things like guys dressed up in 17th century jousting armor pouring cereal in the kitchen because it was a neat quirky image! Look, I have no problem with 17th century jousting armor characters pouring milk into your script AS LONG AS IT FITS THE CHARACTER AND THE STORY. If the ONLY reason you’re putting it in there is because you think it will be cool or neato, prepare to meet some reader backlash. Readers want things to make sense. They want every choice to be organic to the story. They don’t want a bunch of random wildness that has nothing to do with anything. If your main character keeps a white tiger in his living room, he better be a failed circus trainer who got booted out of his Vegas show recently and not an average 20-something slacker who just happens to live with a tiger. “HEY! WHAT IF OUR HERO HAD A WHITE TIGER??!” “Why?” “CAUSE THAT WOULD LOOK SO COOL ONSCREEN!” “But why would he have a white tiger?” “Who cares about why! It’s quirky. It’s crazy. People will love it!”

ARC YOUR MAIN CHARACTER
If you’re writing a character piece and your main character doesn’t have a flaw that’s holding him back in life, then don’t bother writing your indie character piece because this is what writing indie character pieces is all about – exploring the flaw inside your main character and watching his journey challenge that flaw. So in De Van Nuys, Vincent has cut himself off emotionally from the world. He refuses to connect with others. That’s his flaw. But in the end he finally learns to move past his wife’s death and allow others in again. Or in American Beauty, Lester’s flaw was his need to live life without responsibility. When he rejects the opportunity to sleep with Angela in the end, he overcomes that flaw. So yeah, do some character arcing dude. Or else write something a lot bigger that has a lot better chance of getting you noticed!

ALL YOUR CHARACTERS SHOULD HAVE SOMETHING GOING ON
Don’t let the term, “character piece” fool you. A better term would be “characters piece,” cause if you’re only trying to make one of your characters interesting and different and flawed, then your script is going to feel thin. The thing with character pieces is they have to have depth – there’s gotta be more going on there. That’s why we read them, because those other “big idea” specs don’t have enough going on under the surface. For this reason, ALL of your characters should be going through something, trying to get past some roadblock in life.  Vincent has his whole “refuse to connect” thing. Maggie, the neighbor, is trying to move past her broken marriage and deal with the lack of time she has to spend with her son. Even Charlisse, the hooker, has to learn when it’s time to clock out and be a friend as opposed to only being there when she’s getting paid.

YOU GOTTA TAKE SOME RISKS WITH THESE SCRIPTS
There’s that word again: RISK. Here’s the thing. You’re writing something that has very little shot at being read. So don’t disappoint the reader who DOES pick up your script by giving them a boring predictable indie character piece. Take some chances. Go to some unexpected places. Alan Ball wrote a four minute scene into American Beauty with a bag blowing in the wind. The writer of De Van Nuys has his main character slap a homeless legless beggar’s coin cup out of his hands. If we’re going to take the time to read a script that we’re betting is boring, you have to make some risky choices to prove that your story ISN’T boring. Or else you’re better off writing commercial fare, where it’s easier to get away with safe choices.

In summary, I still say you stay the hell away from an indie character piece as your break-in script. I mean even De Van Nuys had some extenuating circumstances. The writer was a commercial director for the past decade. He’d been in the business for awhile. He was directing this script AS WELL as writing it, which meant he didn’t have to go through the traditional channels of getting the script read, of having to come up with a logline that excites someone enough to take a chance on you, the unknown amateur screenwriter. But I get it. You still believe in your script. And you know what? YOU SHOULD! If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? But I’ll make one last plea. If you do write one of these, try to give the script ANY kind of hook, any kind of angle that makes it stand out from the boring character piece pack. Give us a janitor who’s smarter than everyone at MIT (Good Will Hunting) or a couple who don’t know they used to be a couple because their memories were erased (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind). And then follow the guidelines I’ve laid out above. They’re going to give your indie script an actual shot at getting some attention! Good luck!

Today’s screenplay has been gaining a lot of heat lately since the attachment of Bill Murray. But is the main character too unlikable to save the sweet character piece?

Genre: Dramedy
Premise: When a struggling single mother and her oddball son move next door to an aging angry neighbor, the son and the neighbor form an unlikely friendship.
About: This script finished low on last year’s Black List, and has pretty much disappeared until recently when Bill Murray signed on to play the lead. The script will be directed by its writer, Theodore Melfi. Melfi has been around for awhile (with credits dating back to 1998), apparently doing most of his work on the indie scene and with short films, although nothing you’ve probably heard of.
Writer: Theodore Melfi
Details: 105 pages

Okay so, remember how Monday I said beware when writing these movies because nobody pays attention to them unless they’re amaaaaazing. Well, I think we have something that approaches that elite category here. Not quite sure it gets there, but it comes close. However, in order to bolster my original claim, I should point out that I have been avoiding this script like the plague. I’ve gone through last year’s Black List maybe a hundred times when looking for stuff to read. And whenever I came across this title and this logline, I thought, “Borrrriiiiing” and move on.

I want you to think about that for a second. This script was on the Black List. This script had already been vetted by the industry and considered good. But with the boring logline and religious-sounding title, I still wasn’t interested. And I’m betting that’s why a lot of other people hadn’t read it either. It wasn’t until Bill Murray became attached that anyone cared. So make sure when you’re coming up with your movie idea, that it’s one that makes people want to pick up your script and read it. And if it isn’t? If it’s a character piece? You have to be fine with the fact that you’re probably getting one-tenth the reads that you’d be getting with a snazzier logline. If you’re okay with that, then take a shot brother!

Speaking of brothers. Or fathers.  Or whatever it is they call the people in churches who lead those boring sermons – I’m happy to report that this script is not religious. It covers saints, but there’s going to be no preachy-preachy going on here. St. Vincent is about a man in his late 60s, Vincent, who’s given up on life. He lives in his house that looks like it could be a candidate for a Hoarders season premiere, and spends most of his time bitching about how the world sucks to his only friend, a pregnant African American hooker named Charisse.

Now Vincent would stay in his Hoarder house all the time if he could, but he’s running out of money, so he’s forced to go out and beg banks for more time or try to win money at the dog races. Oh, and he’s not against getting totally shitfaced at the local watering hole and zig-zagging home in his car either.

This wondrous lifestyle is interrupted when Maggie and her adopted nerdy 12 year old son, Oliver, move next door. Vincent makes it known that he is not a fan of his new neighbors, but when Oliver gets locked out after school one day, Vincent allows him to stay at his house until his mom gets home. While Vincent would never admit to caring or liking anybody, there’s something interesting about this kid, and because he has bills up to the ceiling and is desperate for cash, he tells Maggie he’ll babysit Oliver every day after school. Maggie doesn’t love the idea, but since she’s struggling to make ends meet herself, she doesn’t have any other options.

Vincent introduces Oliver to his lifestyle, including the hookers, the gambling, and the drinking. Oliver doesn’t do any of this stuff, of course (except for gamble), but he’s there when Vincent does it. And it shows him a whole new world he never knew existed.

Back at school, where Oliver is predictably having a hard time fitting in, his first big classroom assignment is coming up with a presentation about a modern-day saint. I think you know where this is going. It’s pretty obvious. And yet the story twists and turns in these little unexpected ways to keep the journey interesting. St. Vincent is a story about friendship, about opening up, and about never being too old to give life a second shot. It’s pretty darn good!

First thing I noticed about this St. Vincent? It takes that big screenwriting risk of making its main character EXTREMELY unlikable. I mean Vincent is downright nasty. At one point, he swats a can of money out of a legless homeless man’s hands! Jesus Christ. That’s almost as bad as your hero shooting a dog in the first scene.

This decision always fascinates me because a big reason for disliking a lot of the scripts I read is that I don’t like the main character. He’s a jerk, an asshole, or just plain unlikable. Yet here Vincent is extremely unlikable, and yet I still want to follow him. I still want to see what happens next.

I think this has something to do with our desire to see bad people change into good people. We want to see them transform. But as far as why I hate some scripts because of unlikable protagonists and didn’t have that reaction this time around, I’m still not sure how that’s achieved. There were some “Save The Cat” moments later on (which I’ll talk about in the “What I Learned” section), but I’d formed my opinion before that. Even though Vincent was an asshole, I still wanted to go on this journey with him.

It also never ceases to amaze me how dependable the “running out of money” trope is in writing. I mean we see it in virtually EVERY movie as a motivation. Someone’s running out of money (in this case Vincent) and that’s what motivates the central plot element (babysitting Oliver). You’d think that something this cliché would turn people off, but maybe it’s so relatable that people just go with it. I don’t know but it certainly worked well as a motivation here.

Another interesting thing about St. Vincent is that there IS NO GOAL. For someone (me) who preaches the importance of character goals to drive your story, I’m always intrigued by screenplays that don’t adhere to this and still work. So why does the script work? Well, when you don’t have a goal driving your protagonists, you still want to have a high-stakes impending situation the characters are moving towards. This way, we’re still interested in reading on, because we want to see how that situation plays out.

In this case there are two. The first is that Oliver has to come up with a saint for his class presentation. This isn’t that big of a driving force because we all know who he’s going to pick. The other works better – Maggie’s custody hearing with her ex-husband. There’s a chance that her husband may take Oliver away. And that’s something we DEFINITELY feel the stakes for because we like Maggie and don’t want to see her lose her kid, and we come to like Vincent, and don’t want his and Oliver’s friendship to be broken up. So you can see while even though none of the characters are aggressively going after something here, there’s still an end point to their storylines looming, and that’s what keeps us reading.

Outside of the structure stuff, this script just had a lot of nice moments to it. It wore its heart on its sleeve but did so with just the right amount of pull. I loved the friendship that emerged between Oliver and the school bully. I loved when we found out why Vincent was so hardened and beaten down by life. I liked these little touching scenes like when Vincent and Oliver win the trifecta at the dog races together. I even warmed to the hooker character, who was the only character I wasn’t onboard with initially.

This is a textbook example of how to write a good character piece. Give characters interesting backstories that affect their present-day stories. Place characters who wouldn’t otherwise be together together and see what happens. Give each character their own flaw that’s holding them back, which they must overcome by the end of the script. And make sure to give us a satisfying ending that pays off all the effort we put into these characters. I see too many character-driven screenplays that end with a whimper. While it was a little stage-y, I liked Oliver giving his big “Saint” speech in front of the school. To quote Jesse Pinkman from Breakng Bad, “It was pretty moving, yo.”

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The “Late-arriving save-the-cat moment for an unlikable protagonist.” Here’s the thing, when you have a character who’s an asshole – when that’s his flaw – you need to establish that in the first 15 pages. You need to show him being an asshole so the audience knows that’s who he is. You can’t work in an artificial “save the cat” moment because screenwriting books tell you you have to. It’ll just confuse the audience. “Well he’s an asshole. But no wait he’s nice!” Which is it?? What I learned here is that after you’ve established a “bad” protagonist’s flaw, you can recoup the reader’s dislike for him afterwards by adding a “Late-arriving save-the-cat moment.” Melfi establishes this when Vin beats back the bullies attacking Oliver and with the arrival of Vincent’s wife, who we find is stuck at a home with Alzheimer’s. The way he cares about his wife, loves her, even pays the nurse to rotate her pillows in the freezer every hour because she loves cool pillows – this is what makes us fall in love with Vincent. This is what makes us root for him.

One of the more notorious unproduced screenplays out there, with promises of DiCaprio galavanting through the sets of The Wizard Of Oz in order to solve murders.

Unfortunately, I’m off today, trying to make some last second changes so that a certain book by a certain person (hint: it’s me) can be ready to buy by next week.  For that reason, I’m bringing in one of our awesome new consultants, Steven, to tackle today’s screenplay.  And he doesn’t disappoint.  Sorry I couldn’t contribute on “Mann/Logan” guys, as I know it’s one of the more interesting projects stuck in development hell.  I’d still like to know what you think though, so I’ll be following the comments section closely.

Genre: Mystery/Noir
Premise: In 1938 Hollywood, MGM’s problem-solver falls in love with a famous actress while cleaning up her husband’s murder.
About: This script from writer John Logan (“Hugo”, “The Aviator”) came close to being made in 2007, with Michael Mann set to direct Leonardo DiCaprio, but New Line’s bid of $100 million came short of the projected $120 million budget. The project is now, presumably, defunct.
Writer: John Logan
Details: 122 pages – undated draft

Screenwriter John Logan

It’s pretty astonishing, when you consider the sheer amount of the creative power behind it, that “Mann/Logan” never got off the ground. Certainly all of the pieces were in place: a big-shot writer (Logan), a bigger-shot director (Mann), and the biggest-shot leading man (DiCaprio), working with a script so well-regarded that even the decidedly non-screenplay-centric website Slate did a two-page piece on it. Yet, despite that, not a single studio pulled the trigger on the project. Now all we have is the script itself, and some vague daydreams of what might have been.

It’s 1938 in Hollywood, and while the rest of the world prepares to burn, the major film studios are still enjoying their Golden Age. The money is pouring in for everyone, but MGM stands above them all. Indeed, for MGM, the future looks brighter than gold. It’s in the process of shooting a couple of films you may have heard of: Gone with the Wind, and The Wizard of Oz. Still, all that money can’t change the one simple truth about people: we’re none of us above doing something profoundly stupid, short-sighted, and ugly. Luckily for the rich and powerful (and for MGM), they have Harry Slidell on retainer.

Slidell, see, is what you’d call a fixer. Need to get out of a speeding ticket? Get a ride down to Mexico for a discreet abortion? Cover up a pill addiction? Call Slidell, an ex-cop in a fancy car who can make all of your troubles disappear. The script opens up with Slidell cleaning up a murder. Specifically, the murder of an Academy Award-winning producer employed by MGM. A producer who just happens to be the husband of one of MGM’s contract stars, the beautiful Ruth Ettis.
Slidell’s no slouch. He knows this isn’t a robbery gone bad (for one, the producer’s Oscar is still on the mantelpiece). All signs point to a domestic dispute, and that means all signs point to Ruth. Trouble is, his job is to keep her out of jail. That’s what MGM pays him for, after all. So he puts a c-note in the maid’s palm, makes the whole deal look like a suicide, and slips the cops some money to make sure they’re all in agreement. Easy peasy, right?

Nope! When Slidell goes into LB Mayer’s office at MGM for a quick debrief, Mayer refuses to believe Ruth did it. Why? Well, he claims a certain affinity for the actress—“Someone is trying to hurt my Ruth. I don’t like to see women hurt.” So he encourages Slidell to investigate further. Harry is skeptical, but the money is right. So off he goes.

Allow me a quick aside. There is literally no reason for Mayer to send Slidell on his forthcoming odyssey, other than for the pretty lame excuse that the plot needed something to put Slidell into motion. The question of who killed the producer is meaningless—even If Ruth did do it, Slidell already solved that problem for her and for MGM. And it’s not as though Mayer’s stated reason (that he cares about Ruth, and about women) is a sound one. Mayer and Ruth never interact in the entire script; in fact, Mayer doesn’t interact with any women at all. Because we’re dealing with film noir, you’d think that Mayer might be engaged in some sort of underhanded machinations, but you’d be wrong, alas. He’s just a plot device, masquerading as a character.

Look, I’m aware that this is a minor plot hole. Probably most of you think that I’m giving mindless pedantry a bad name. But this is the entire story’s inciting incident—all of the subsequent action flows from this one event. And if you can’t bother to tighten up your plot enough to make that inciting incident airtight, what hope does the rest of your script have?

In any event, before Slidell goes to see Ruth, he swings by the set of the Wizard of Oz to see Judy Garland. It’s obvious that Slidell has helped Judy out of a few jams in the past. Judy is deferential and melancholy but profoundly thankful for the unnamed services Slidell has performed for the troubled girl. Thankfully, there are no romantic undertones to the exchange. He’s more of a big brother figure, and he’s sweetly protective of her.

Finally, Slidell goes to visit Ruth on set, to see what she has to say. They have a meet-cute. Slidell still thinks she’s guilty, but he’s becoming less sure in his convictions as he spends more time with her. Romance bubbles up. He can see she’s an ex-dope fiend, and his protective nature begins to override his more rational suspicion that Ruth is a murderer. Then Ruth reveals that she’s being blackmailed by an anonymous someone who has incriminating photos from her days as the decidedly less-glamorous prostitute, Brenda Gomey. Ruth insists further that the blackmailer killed her husband after a scheduled meeting to pay off the blackmailer went awry.

So Slidell careens through sleazy Los Angeles to track down the blackmailer, who just might be the killer, too. He interrogates a series of suspects, each shadier than the last. He runs down the husband’s drug dealer at the horse races in Hollywood Park. He meets the obese queen of the Los Angeles underworld. He hangs out with famed gangster Bugsy Siegel for some reason. He goes down to Mexico to question Ruth’s former madam. Between each of these engagements, he falls deeper in love with Ruth.

If you’ve ever seen an episode of Law and Order, you’ll know immediately the identity of the mastermind. That’s fine, as far as it goes, because we go to the movies not for a great plot twist, but for great characters. After all, rosebud is in the vernacular not because the twist in “Citizen Kane” was so exciting, but because Orson Welles played Charles Foster Kane so memorably.

Which is why it’s so disappointing when an otherwise wonderful script has as its center an enormous black hole. In the case of “Mann/Logan”, that black hole is named Harry Slidell. Slidell isn’t given an inner-life, or much of a history, either. He has no hobbies, as far as we can tell. He seems to rely existentially on his work, but not in any sort of passionate way. He isn’t charming or funny, really, and he’s not exactly a forensic expert on the level of Sherlock Holmes. Almost all of his leads are the products of him greasing palms or bashing heads. He’s a blunt-force instrument, not a scalpel, and the former are inherently less interesting than the latter.

As a writer, you must always have a strong grasp of your protagonist. Without that, your script becomes unmoored. There’s a telling description late in Act 2, when Logan tells us that “Harry –always cool, always in control — blows.” Except that Slidell, from all available evidence, is never in control. He’s the consummate non-professional. He freaks out when a man tears his sport coat, and blubbers about how expensive it was. He kicks that same man in ribs after he has already been badly beaten and subdued by Slidell’s partners. He violently attacks a doctor for giving Judy Garland drugs. Etc. The result is that Slidell is a distracting, schizophrenic dichotomy, acting inconsistently throughout the script.

And that’s a real shame, because so much of the rest of “Mann/Logan” is top-notch. Bugsy Siegel is superfluous to the narrative, but his rise to the top is a blast to read. LB Mayer is similarly fun—imagine Al Swearengen in charge of MGM. The urban hellscape of Los Angeles, so convincing in its danger, might as well be its own character.

But by far the most interesting and effective aspect of Mann/Logan is its extraordinary portrayal of women. The only time the script sings is when it’s focusing on them. Judy Garland is heartbreaking, and her exchange with Slidell at the beginning of the script (“Judy, you eating?” “Not a lot. They don’t like it when I eat … I sneak malts.”) is poignant enough to give pause to any parents thinking of bringing their kids to Hollywood. Ruth Ettis is the polar opposite of the manic pixie dream girl. She’s one of those rare female leads that exists for reasons beyond bringing pleasure to the male lead, particularly in the way she grapples with how her movie star persona has allowed her to set aside her former life. Even one-offs like Rosalind Quinn, Ruth’s former madam, and Bess, the queen of the Los Angeles underworld, are tragic figures in their own right.

The Mann/Logan script wants to convince you that Hollywood is an indifferent beast, full of idle malice. Mayer, surveying his domain, explains to Slidell that “the river of money goes on forever. It is incapable of weeping for those left behind.” This is true up to a point. In a noir, everyone gets hurt in one way or another. In Mann/Logan, only the women do.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: It’s important to steer into the curve. More crucially, it’s important to recognize that there’s a curve to be steered into. We’re all heard stories of writers setting out to create what they thought were serious dramas, but ended up as farces or slapsticks. This can happen on a more micro level, like when you structure your plot to be consistent with what a cool-as-a-cucumber private eye would do and say, except the private eye you’ve committed to page might be a lunatic with a short fuse. On a bigger level, you might think you’ve written a pulpy noir, when your real story is an eloquent takedown of the way Hollywood chews up its women. Find the most interesting parts of your script, and explore them further, even if—especially if!—it takes you away from your original vision.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: When four grown-up siblings come back to visit their parents on their 35th anniversary, they’re greeted with a devastating family secret that changes everything they know.
About: This script leapt up and grabbed onto the 2007 Black List with its fingernails, refusing to let go.
Writer: Peter Craig
Details: 109 pages, March 23rd, 2007 revisions

My new thing is using one review slot a week to dig up an old script from 4-10 years ago, and review it. The hope is to find something everyone forgot about. There are times where a couple of big specs hit and the waves they generate are so high that all the little guys get swept away. And maybe those little guys wrote something good. I’ve seen my share of strong scripts that were either passed over or entered development hell immediately, so I’d like to be the lighthouse that guides those scripts back to shore.

The question is, how clueless do I want to be in choosing these scripts? Do I not want to know ANYTHING other than the title and that they finished on the Black List? Apparently, that’s the call I made this week, and booyyyyyyy do I regret it. Okay so look. We all have off days. We all pick up or write a bad script every once in awhile. But does it have to be a back-from-the-dead-hopefully-this-will-be-awesome Scriptshadow review script? Humph.

Today’s script falls into that love-it-or-hate-it subgenre known as the “Wacky Family Independent Film.” Oh man! Those family members. They’re all so wacky! This was popularized by Wes Anderson and somewhere between the years of 2002-2005, everybody and their crazy grandpa was writing one of these. I think I wrote one too. And it was dreadful. So I feel you, Peter. But there was a success or two. Little Miss Sunshine did well, right? I mean, its writer is now writing the next Star Wars movie. But then you had your Running With Scissors’es…es. And those were just as unpleasant as the Sunshine’s were pleasant. Even Wes Anderson seemed to get bored of the genre he popularized, pumping out pale imitations of his earlier films.

Which I guess leads us to Relativity, which I’m relatively sure isn’t going to get a lot of feedback here on Scriptshadow. In fact, I’m willing to bet the comments will dive to subatomic levels, which is probably a good lesson for screenwriters out there. The comments section on Scriptshadow is pretty a pretty good indicator of the public’s general interest for a film. If an idea or genre is boring, people aren’t going to see it (or comment on it).

So with that said, let’s start butchering—er, I mean reviewing. I’ll try to be clean and kind. I’ll try to make this painless. Then I’ll broil the meat instead of fry it so we can have a healthy Monday Scriptshadow meal. Waddaya say?

50-somethings Claire and Franklin Fergusson should be at the precipice of a wonderful weekend. They’re about to celebrate their 35th anniversary with all four of their excitable grown-up children, who are coming home to joyously participate in the festivities.

Except Claire and Franklin have been hiding a deep secret from their children. All four of them were adopted! So when unkempt Charles, nervous twin Vincent, uptight Conrad, and artsy Judith, show up and hear the news, they’re…hmmm, well, upset to put it mildly. The biggest issue seems to be that all of them thought they were born into a rich prestigous family, when in fact they were all poor and deserted by their families.

Vincent is so confused by the news that he runs away. Charles becomes manically obsessed with the fact that Vincent isn’t his real twin and decides to celebrate his “individual” birthday as a sort of “fuck you” to the news. Judith learns she was the daughter of a Russian spy and a hooker and doesn’t know what to do with herself. And I’m not sure what happened to Conrad. He got shafted as far as storylines go because I can’t remember a single thing about him.

As far as the plot, that’s pretty much it. Our four 30-something adopted grown-ups just sort of run around and pout. There’s no goal. No real story. It’s just people complaining to each other. I’m not going to say it’s all bad. I did giggle a couple of times. And if you’re into this kind of humor, you’ll find it funnier than I did and that might help cover up some of the script’s other problems. But that’s the thing. Relativity had so many problems that they couldn’t possibly all be covered up.

So let’s pretend we live in an alternate reality where I’ve been asked to guide this script through development. I would start by adding an actual story. Currently, these kids come home to a 35th anniversary that nobody cares about, that has no festivities or schedule, and that has no stakes attached to it whatsoever. Why would you make that the story center? It’s boring! Make it a wedding instead. Probably Vincent’s, since he brings his fiancé home anyway. Now we have more of a ticking time bomb. We have something that can be interrupted and ruined, which means the stakes will be higher.

Then, instead of this adoption information being offered up voluntarily, which feels beyond artificial (there’s no reason for the parents to bring this up now other than that the writer wants to so he can have a story), the information should come out by accident. One of the kids stumbles upon it at the house. Or another finds a semi-clue and puts two and two together. The kids confront their parents. The parents admit it. Now the situation feels a little more believable.

And here’s a question: Why do the kids have to find out all at the same time? It might be more interesting to have the news spread from kid to kid gradually. That could be fun, with Vincent being the one person the others know CANNOT FIND OUT HE’S ADOPTED. They know he’ll have a mental breakdown. And they know it will destroy the wedding. So everyone’s trying to keep the secret, but at a certain point, too many people find out, and then right before the wedding, Vincent finds out, and everything goes to hell.

I’m afraid that particular story improvement would only slow the bleeding though. This script has too many issues. My biggest problem was that there wasn’t a single authentic moment in the entire screenplay. Nobody acts logically. Choices are made for cheap laughs rather than exhibiting what the characters would really say or do in these situations. For example, one of the kids points out that they SAW the mom pregnant when they were young – which means at least one of the kids can’t be adopted. The mom counters that they suspected the kids might possibly remember an adoption, so to trick them, she stuffed her dresses with pillows to give the appearance that she was pregnant.

Oh. M. Gee.

Seriously???

I mean, come on.

Okay, look. I get that this is supposed to be broad. It’s wacky. It’s nonsensical. And that’s supposed to be the funny part of it. But there wasn’t one REAL moment in the entire script. And because nobody acted real or authentic, I didn’t care about them. Even in Wes Anderson films, like Rushmore, the characters have hearts and feelings. This felt like 7 Jim Carrey’s running around trying to out-overact each other.

Relativity also severely handicapped itself by making its main characters a bunch of rich snobs. These are by far the hardest characters to make likable. There are exceptions where rich people can be made sympathetic (actually, anybody can be made sympathetic by a skilled writer), but no effort was made to do so here, and as a result, everyone came off as stuck-up, ungrateful, juvenile or annoying.

Then you had the Quirk Factor Level 17. Everything was done specifically to try and be quirky. And I’m not going to get carried away with this. I’ve been there. I’ve written the same kind of characters and the same kind of situations. I think every writer goes through that phase. But when the family members were driving around in a bumper car that was decked out to look like a race car, or the grandfather announced that he had breast cancer (yes, the grandfather)…I just died a little inside. I couldn’t take it anymore.

These kinds of scripts are too artificial for me. I need something to be grounded in reality or to know Wes Anderson’s going to make it all alright on screen. This was way too wacky for my taste. I was thinking about giving it a “What the hell did I just read” but then I realized it wasn’t badly written. It was just not my thing. Hence, it wasn’t for me.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When doing a character piece, particularly a companion piece, don’t leave your characters out to dry by not giving them a plot, as was done here. Since the 35th anniversary carried no weight and didn’t mean anything to anyone, there was nothing that needed to be done, and therefore nothing for anybody to do. That forced the characters to try and keep the story interesting via their wackiness alone, which they weren’t able to do. Instead, give your characters a looming goal or end game that carries with it HIGH STAKES. Something like a wedding would’ve worked great here. Now characters have things to get done (preparing, planning, creating) which makes all of them more active and more interesting. With an end game, you also give the audience something to look forward to. They’ll want to know if Vincent finds out about being adopted or not. And if he does, what is he going to do?? Look at Little Miss Sunshine. They had to get to the pageant. So they all had a directive, a goal, stakes. You give yourself a way better chance to write a good story going this route.