Genre: Action/Sci-fi
What I wouldn’t do for a time machine this week! It’s Friday and I still haven’t found a place. I need to go back to Monday and, knowing what I know now, search better and more efficiently. With that said, THANK YOU for all the e-mails yesterday. You guys have given me a ton of apartment leads to follow-up on. I’ll keep you posted on how those go on Twitter. And please, keep them coming!
ALSO, thank you to all the Scriptshadow readers who came out last night! I had a blast meeting everyone in person and everybody was super-cool. My only regret is that I didn’t have more time to spend with each individual person. But maybe I’ll do it again when I move out here in a month. Assuming I have a place that is. And hey, what’s the worst that can happen if I don’t find a place? I’ll be one of the many homelesses. Being homeless in LA is almost trendy.
Return Fire begins with an earthquake in Switzerland. But something’s funky enough about this earthquake that it gets the American military curious. They think it might be a nuke testing of some sort. What the Swiss would be doing testing nukes, who knows? But the point is, the military wants to send in a Special Forces unit to check it out.
That unit is basically headed up by Jonathan “Santa” Santarelli, a young hotshot defined more by his war decorated grandfather than anything he’s achieved. We also have Hawks, a hot chick who’s deft at throwing knives around, Dang, a Cuban who’s obsessed with Star Trek, and a number of other dudes who really enjoy being the biggest badasses on the planet.
So our team flies to Switzerland, locates the epicenter of the earthquake, and finds a hidden bunker there with a couple of dead Nazis and a strange nuclear reactor thingy inside. Seems they’ve stumbled upon a secret Nazi science experiment gone wrong. Certainly nothing to worry about right now though. But as they prepare to leave, there’s a big flash, they pass out, they wake up, and the bunker now looks clean and shiny. Not just that, but those dead Nazi bodies are gone!
Of course Dang thinks they’ve travelled back in time but no one else is buying it – yet. Once they’re attacked by a few Nazis, though, public consensus sways. As hard as it is to believe…they may have just been transported back to 1945, two months before the end of World War 2!
A simple mission all of a sudden becomes, “How the hell do we get back to the present?” After cornering a Nazi scientist who’s a part of the time-travelling experiment, they learn that unless they kill a really bad Nazi (who’s realized via the Americans’ arrival that the Germans lose the war), there’s a good chance Hitler will be informed of the loss and travel back in time to start the war over again, this time making sure he doesn’t fuck it up. So it’s sort of like my apartment hunting issue. Without the threat of a thousand year Reich.
Okay so here’s the good news. This script is probably the best script of the week. The writing here is really strong. Paragraphs are short and packed with information. They’re easy to read. And a lot has been put into the prose. For example, here’s an early line in the script: “In the smoky doorway, SERGEANT MAJOR JACOBS (50s) leans on the jamb, a hard, lean man with a lined face and hair speckled a wise grey.”
So the script was just really easy and fun to read. However, there was something missing here and as I look back on it, I’m not entirely sure what it was. That’ll happen to me sometimes. I’ll read a script that, for all intents and purposes, has very little “wrong” with it. And yet there’s something that just doesn’t do it for me.
To find the issues, I usually ask myself a simple question: “What didn’t you like?” The first thing that pops out at me is that the story isn’t exceptional. It’s serviceable. It explores the premise. I’m just not sure it explores it in an interesting or unique enough way. Once we get back to 1945, the story devolves into a series of small tasks that revolve around finding this Nazi Bad Guy who may or may not tell Hitler they’ve lost the war, which would result in Hitler MAYBE going back in time and starting the war over again.
When I have to play “maybe or maybe not connect-the-dots motivation,” I’m not nearly as invested in the story. I like when motivations are crisp and clean. Taken. Save his daughter or she disappears forever. I get that. It’s not that “connect-the-dots motivation” can’t work. It’s just a gamble, especially when you couple it with a “maybe” scenario. That was the thing. I was never sure exactly what the Nazi bad guy was going to do OR what Hitler would do with the information once he got it.
And yet I’m not sure if that’s the main reason Return Fire didn’t pop for me. I think another issue is that nothing really shocking happened. Nothing surprising. And that’s a problem when you have a time-travel film. Just the nature of the concept necessitates some shocking things to happen.
For example, when Marty gets sent back in time in Back To The Future, how boring would the movie have been if all he had to do was get back? The surprising twist that makes that screenplay one of the best ever is that Marty accidentally gets hit by the car that has his mother fall in love with him instead of his father (who was the one who was SUPPOSED to get hit by the car). So now it isn’t just about getting back. It’s about making his mom fall out of love with him and in love with his father. That’s what made the script pop.
Here we have a nice little storyline with Santa running into the young version of his highly decorated grandfather, but I’m not sure anything interesting is really done with the storyline. It’s sort of like the writers want us to be excited just by the fact that they’ve integrated this character into the past. That’s not clever. That’s the BEGINNING of clever. You still have to do something inventive with that, as well as something surprising with the rest of the time-travel plot.
With that being said, these writers do have a future in Hollywood. Their writing is taut, professional, and easy to read. They understand mechanics and structure. For example, the characters always have a goal they’re going after (i.e Get back to the helicopter drop point, find and kill the Nazi Bad Guy), so the script is always pushing towards something. I just wish the things they were pushing towards were a little more interesting and unexpected. It was like the writers pushed right up to that 75% point of their imaginations and stopped.
Return Fire is one of those “almost” screenplays. You read it. You see a lot of good things. But afterwards, you leave wanting more. If the writers push themselves on the time travel elements, they might be able to make this work. Right now, unfortunately, it’s too standard.
Script link: Return Fire
What I learned: You have to remember that you are competing against MILLIONS OF PEOPLE’S imaginations in the scriptwriting game. Thousands of those people are pushing their imaginations to the brink to come up with something that the next guy hasn’t thought of. If you stop at something that’s simply “good enough,” chances are your script isn’t impressing readers. It’s when you push PAST that point – when you say to yourself, “This is good, but I can come up with something better,” that your screenplays truly start to shine.
Okay, so I have about four days left here in LA and the apartment search is not going well. I’ve been to $2500 apartments that are wedged up against the 10 freeway and have little children with six fingers on each hand running around outside of them. What this unfortunately means is I haven’t had time to write a Thursday article. I’m going to try to later today, but no guarantees.
In the meantime, I need my Scriptshadow network to help me out. Find me a place! I’d preferably like to live in Venice. If not, Santa Monica. If not there, Culver City, maybe West Hollywood, maybe the nice areas of Hollywood, or anywhere on the West Side. No Valley! I want a big cool apartment and I’m willing to pay up to $2500/mo. If someone on this site finds me a place, I will read their script as well as give them a detailed consult, which isn’t cheap! I’ll also get on the phone with them and answer any questions they have. If you find something, email me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com. Please, help me out!!! Thank you!!!
Genre: Horror
Premise: One night every year, strange creatures attack the major cities, killing thousands. Nobody knows who or what these creatures are, and no one can stop them.
About: Grim Night made last year’s Black List AND was purchased last year. The sale was best known for the writers’ inventive idea of making a trailer for their script. Now I’ve been promoting making one-sheets for scripts (e-mail me for details), but I never thought it would go so far as people making trailers for scripts. Cool idea. Check out the trailer below.
Writers: Brandon Bestenheider & Allen Bey
Details: 117 pages
I’m trying to be better. I know I don’t review enough horror scripts on the site and I want to change that. I just got back from a meeting where everyone agreed that the most risk-free way to make a movie was to a make a horror film. So it’s a really lucrative market to explore as a screenwriter.
Why, then, don’t I review them? Cause they’re often juvenile and horribly written, moreso than most genres. Horror writers care about scares and gore and disgusting imagery. They don’t have any interest in story or characters.
Well, Grim Night was a popular sale so I decided to give it a shot. Imagine my reaction, then, when a longtime Scriptshadow reader told me, “You shouldn’t have picked that. It’s the worst screenplay I’ve read in ten years.”
OUCH. Here I was, taking a chance on a horror script, and I happened to pick the worst one in ten years?? Talk about bad luck. However, myself and this reader have disagreed on many scripts in the past (he liked Hugo!!??), which I pointed out to him. He assured me, however, “This one we’ll agree on. Trust me.” Hmmmm…So, did I agree?
Grim Night starts “downtown.” Downtown where? Big city? Medium-sized town? No idea. The slug just says, “Downtown.” Okay, I’ll just make up a location for myself then. Ummm, big city.
Everywhere around this city are warnings. “Never forget,” these warnings warn warningly. “37,112 dead.” News footage fills us in on the rest. Every year, these things called the “Grims” come around and kill thousands of people in all the major cities.
They’re kind of like really nasty trick-or-treaters. They come to your door, ask you for something you don’t want to give them (a watch, a lock of hair), and if you don’t give it to them, they kill you. So for that one night, everybody stays indoors, huddled up, and prays that the Grims don’t bother them. Most people make it through the night just fine. 37,000 deaths is a lot. But over ten years? In all the major cities? As someone points out, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning twice. However, there are others who aren’t so lucky.
Our hosts for Grim Night are the Green family. There’s the father, Paul, who’s just a normal dad who’s occasionally late getting home. There’s the overtly brave 15 year old Sasha. There’s younger brother Josh, whose character development consists of owning a samurai sword. And there’s wife Liz, who takes Grim Night the most seriously (believe it or not, there are some people who don’t worry about Grim Night at all).
The night begins, and after a few false alarms (Josh’s buddy Cooper plays a joke on them), the real Grims show up. The Grims hide under giant “Grim Reaper” like cloaks so you can’t see their faces and instead of walking, they prefer to glide across surfaces.
The Grims are also cheap-asses, because instead of going off and buying their own wives a wedding ring, they demand that Liz give them hers. She reluctantly does and that’s it. The family feels like they’ve passed the test and they can go on with their lives.
Not so fast. Next, the Grims want a lock of Sasha’s hair. And after that, they want Sasha! Paul tries to fight them off but the Grims take Sasha into the night and Paul realizes that as soon as the sun rises, Sasha will be gone forever. So they need to chase the Grim who stole her! Grim-chasing is an inexact science and there are a few stumbling blocks along the way, but in the end they catch up to her and somehow get her back. But, is this Sasha still the Sasha they know? Or is she…like…ummm…evil Sasha now??
The big question: Was this the worst screenplay of the last 10 years? Umm, no. Not even close. Was it a good screenplay? Ehhh…sometimes? I mean, there’s definitely something spooky about what’s going on here. Creepy dudes in cloaks coming to your door and asking for shit. Then killing you if you don’t give it to them. I mean that’s the stuff horror’s made of, right? Being in a completely helpless terrifying situation.
My issue is that I just didn’t buy it. The beginning of the script establishes that this has been going on for years, even though it’s present day. So…going on for years where? In an alternate universe? So you’re asking me to now buy into a world that doesn’t exist? Sure, that’s part of movies. Star Wars doesn’t exist. But the difference here is that everything else is the same. It’s depicted as “reality” when it isn’t reality. The writers have changed our planet’s history in order to set up this scenario, and I just couldn’t get past that.
The other issue I have is how nonsensical everything is. The Grims come by to…take your ring? What are they going to do with a ring? Pawn it at the local pawn shop? I don’t get the sense that after Grim Night they all sit around and play cards, gambling away the things they’ve stolen for kicks. So there has to be some motivation here – some reasoning for this odd behavior. But we never get it.
If you’re going to build a mythology THIS BIG (evil creatures killing thousands across the world), I suggest you know why your antagonists are doing what they’re doing. And I’m not sure the writers know this. Whenever writers don’t know why their characters are doing things, the writing takes on a murky generic feel. The less you know about the why, the more you have to fake it. And readers can always tell when you’re faking it.
Then of course there’s absolutely zero character development. I mean ZERO. Like we don’t even know what was going on in a single character’s life before this screenplay started. The dad could’ve been a lion-tamer a month ago for all I know.
Then there were weird choices that made no sense, like right in the middle of all this terror, Sasha goes upstairs and takes a bath? Uhhh, what??? There were just a lot of weird things like that that popped up.
In the end the script just felt thin. The real coup here is the trailer. The writers understood – as I’ve been telling you guys – that the landscape is changing. You have more avenues to get yourself noticed than you’ve ever had before. Take advantage of them. Try new things. They may not always work out. But remember that you could have Citizen Kane on your hard drive. But if you don’t figure out how to get people to read it, it doesn’t matter.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Use anticipation to reel a reader in. If you use Anticipation correctly, it’s almost impossible to lose the reader. I dare anyone to read this first act of Grim Night and not want to keep reading. That’s because the writers do a great job of building up our anticipation for the Grims’ arrival. We absolutely HAVE to see what they look like and if they’ll go after our family. Anticipation is one of the easiest ways to rope a reader in so if you can write a story that takes advantage of it, consider it. Just remember, once you’ve burned that anticipation (and we meet the Grims) you have to use other tools to keep us invested, like suspense and original choices and twists and turns and character development. I don’t think Grim did that effectively.
Genre: Thriller
Wunderkind starts out focusing on a 23 year-old wunderkind named Julius Heinrich. Heinrich was handpicked by Hitler himself to spearhead his rocket/nuke program, to the dismay of the program’s longtime members. But, of course, the war ended before Heinrich could really get his talons into the program and blow up the rest of the world so Hitler could become leader of the universe.
Over the next month and a half, Scriptshadow will relaunch its site. I have some great things in store for readers, but one of the things I’m most excited about is the time it will free up for me to start working on my next project – Developing a new system to find great screenplays from unknown screenwriters.
For 100 years, Hollywood has basically used the same system for finding screenplays. Each company, whether it be a studio or agency or whatever, has readers cover all incoming scripts, and anything the readers like gets passed up to their superiors, who if *they* like it, pass it on to their superiors, and so on and so forth.
Here’s the thing though. Over the past 5 years, the script-sending game has changed dramatically. The obvious difference is that scripts are now sent digitally as opposed to via a hard copy. This has led to a more instantaneous flow of scripts, and I feel like it should be ushering in a new filtering process. But it hasn’t. The model for weeding through screenplays has pretty much stayed the same.
Well, I want to change that. I feel we need some new ideas and some new voices. We need the younger generation – the generation not tethered to these outdated models – to look around and say, “How can we do this better?” I’ve already started looking for new ways to find great scripts, starting with my Twit-Pitch contest.
But I’d like to develop a large all-encompassing model for finding great screenplays that’s smarter, faster, and more efficient. I want to do what the studios and the agencies are too lazy to do. I want to change the system. And I thought, “Who better to ask for advice than the very people submitting these screenplays?”
So, I’m interested to hear what you guys would do if you were me. I’d like you to come up with a system for weeding out the bad screenplays and finding the good ones that takes into consideration today’s technologies and new avenues. There was no Scriptshadow 5 years ago. There wasn’t a huge community of people reading screenplays for enjoyment and education every day. There was no Twitter. PDF scripts were a luxury at the time.
Pretend that you’ve just been given the job at Scriptshadow Studios to build a better mousetrap. I have thousands of scripts coming into me from Amateur writers. How do we weed those down efficiently and find the good ones? The sooner we figure out how to do this, the quicker we revolutionize the business. So, I’m leaving it up to you guys. I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments section. Show me what you got!
