Genre: Crime/Period
Premise: A gang lord in 1949 Los Angeles becomes so big that the only way the cops can handle him is to go off-book and wage a war against his empire.
About: I think Gangster Squad is based on a bunch of real articles from 1940s Los Angeles newspapers. But it may also be a book, as the script says it’s based on “Tales Of The Gangster Squad” by Paul Lieberman. Either way, the story is adapted by author Will Beall, who burst onto the screenwriting scene with his script L.A. Rex (another LA war script – this one set in the present), which one of my other reviewers, Roger Balfour, loved, and which made the 2009 Black List.
Writer: Will Beall (based on the book by Paul Lieberman).
Details: 3/11/2011 draft. (It should be noted that this draft is newer than the main one that’s floating around out there. So this script might be slightly different from the one you’ve read).
I’ve been hearing about this one forrrrrrever. And the word on it? GREAT. But I haven’t read any scripts by Will Beall yet because peripherally (hearing about him through others) his writing sounds like a bit of a loose cannon. He makes up rules as he goes along, bolds, underlines, italicizes way too liberally, delves into the dreaded dual-line dialogue more than a fat man hangs out at Mickie D’s, and generally favors style over substance.
BUT…I admit that’s my take from afar. And forming opinions on people before you meet them? That’s so high school. So it was time to see what Beall was about on my own And time to see if this script was as good as everyone said it was.
Mickey Cohen is a naughty naughty guy. When he doesn’t like someone, he ties them up to the back of two Cadillacs and has each drive in the opposite direction. Why? Because Mickey wants it all. And he wants to instill fear in every single entity in LA so he can have it all. He’s got the cops. He’s got the judges. No one fucks with Mickey Cohen.
And if you do manage to catch him in the act? Well, he’s got the best lawyers money can buy too. Guys like Mickey NEVER go down.
Which is what the LA police realize. They see that this man is slowly turning Los Angeles into a steaming pile of trash. And if they wait around any longer, they’ll be driving the dump trucks. The guy who knows this more than anybody is Sergeant John O’Mara, one of the only clean cops left in the city. He and his superiors come up with an idea. If they can’t stop Cohen legally, why not attack him at his own game? Why not put together a vigilante police unit, one that doesn’t have to abide by the rules and regulations cops are bound to, to, pardon my french, fuck them up Old Testament style?
O’Mara is in. Now it’s a matter of finding his team. He grabs: A tech expert, the first black lieutenant in the department, the “deadliest cop in LA,” a young Mexican cop eager to prove himself, and a wild card dude who isn’t sure which side he wants to play for. The team goes in hard, hitting up Micky’s deliveries and anything else he has his dirty paws in.
Mickey, along with everybody else, is just confused. I mean, who the hell attacks Mickey Cohen?? The most feared man on the West Coast!! But after he gets over his shock, he realizes these mystery dudes are a real threat, and he gets all his little horses and all his little men riled up for one specific purpose – to take them down.
Who’s going to win this one? Mickey? Or the Gangster squad?
I know this is going to upset people, but this script was kinda designed for me to hate it. Period crime dramas aren’t really my thing, but a good story is a good story, no matter where it’s set or who it centers around. Case in point. I’ve been reading Ken Follet’s novel, “Pillars Of The Earth,” set in the year 1100, about a mason looking for work in a world that doesn’t have any for him. If there’s ever a subject matter I was designed to dislike, it would be this one. And yet, it had me from the first page.
The novel starts with the hanging of an innocent man. It’s a heartbreaking and heart-pounding scene. This is followed by the mason and his family losing their only lifeline, a pig they saved up for all year, stolen by an outlaw, who belts their daughter with a hammer to complete the crime. Subsequently, the family follows him to town and comes up with a plan to attack the man to get their money back. After another heartbreaking failure, the now homeless family is forced to live in the woods as outlaws. The pregnant wife soon gives birth to a child and dies in the process. The mason decides to leave the newly born baby in the woods to die, since there’s no way to feed him. Every once of these sequences just grabs you and yanks you in.
The point being, Follet uses basic character-focused storytelling to transcend subject matter, to make you connect with and care for the characters. After someone belts a little girl with a hammer, who doesn’t want to see the family get the villain back? Take them down? I never saw any of that with the characters in Gangster Squad. I mean, they’re much better written than yesterday’s entry, “Oz The Great And Powerful.” But even the big dog, O’Mara – I only knew the basics about the guy. He was a clean cop and was in the war and…well, that’s it. He was a clean cop who was in the war. Not exactly a five star motivation.
But the real problem here is the endless number of characters. I stopped counting but I’m guessing there’s somewhere around 40. How am I supposed to keep track of 40 characters?? All the obvious problems popped up as a result. I’d constantly forget who was who and have to go back and check, leading to dozens of read interruptions, a cardinal sin in writing (A reader should never feel like he’s working to figure out what’s going on). After awhile I got sick of having to stop every two pages so I just kept reading, even though I wasn’t 100% sure who I was reading about (writers should know this happens all the time. At a certain point, a reader just gets sick of having to check back on stuff, and barrels forward without exactly knowing who’s who – At this point, your script is usually screwed. So always make sure every character is distinct and memorable!)
The real problem with this though is that the more characters you add, the less time you have to develop the key characters in your story. A character is going to come off a lot more interesting if you have 40 pages to develop him as opposed to, say, 15, which is what I’m guessing the 6-7 key characters in Gangster Squad got.
This can be done (and needs to be done with Gangster movies, which are usually character heavy), but it basically amounts to figuring out ways to make characters relatable and interesting and deep in 1/4 the amount of time you usually have. And only the most skilled writers can pull that off.
The thing is, the idea for GS is cool. I love the notion of a team of cops putting down their badges to wage a war against a kingpin because that’s the only way they can defeat him. That’s a movie I want to see. If we only would’ve focused MORE on that group, and not the thousands of other little subplots and characters instead. Get to know each of those guys intimately, care about them, and then send them off against Cohen. I mean that’s how they did it in The Godfather and that worked out okay.
BUT! As we all know, this is a preference I get attacked for all the time. It’s the reason I didn’t like Dark Knight Rises. I like clean narratives where I’m not confused 30% of time about what’s going on. Some writers like to take the more ambitious “epic” route and some readers/audience members enjoy the larger canvas as they like having to work for their meal. I dig that kind of story if the writing’s clear enough to handle the larger tapestry. But I didn’t personally see that here.
On the flip side, the dialogue in GS is top-notch, and I’m guessing that’s why a lot of people love it so much. It is SO HARD to create authentic fun crackling dialogue for period crime pieces. Believe me, I’ve read plenty of scripts where the writer couldn’t come up with a single convincing sentence of dialogue from that era, so I know. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough for me to join the Gangster Squad. I think I’m going to go see what Mickey Cohen’s doing.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I will say this until the day I die. The more characters you add, the less time you’ll have to develop your protagonist (and other key characters). So think long and hard before adding that new character. Do you really need him? Can you use one of the characters you already have instead? We’d much rather learn more about your hero than endure two scenes of Random Dude #5.
Genre: Fantasy
Premise: Before Dorothy, the great Oz himself had to get to Oz. This is his story.
About: Directed by Spiderman director Sam Raimi and starring his villain in that film, James Franco, as Oz, this film debuted its trailer a few weeks back. This draft made it on the 2010 Black List, although I think it was fairly low. Screenwriter Kapner was an interesting choice for the material. His most previous credit was 2009’s “Into The Blue 2,” although he’s probably best known for his 2000 screenplay, “The Whole Nine Yards.”
Writer: Mitchell Kapner (based on the books of L. Frank Baum)
Details: 4/08/10 draft
You know, moving to LA last week, I kinda felt like Dorothy. I rode a tornado of sorts (my car) from a state right next to Kansas. I crash-landed on a witch (Oklahoma City). I had to follow a yellow brick road the rest of the way to a magical land. I met some strange characters along the way (Oklahoma City Hotel Guy – which you’d know if you were following me on Twitter – for the record, I usually update my Twitter followers on when I’m going to post. So on the days I’m late, that’s a good resource to know when the post is coming). And now I’m finally here. Trying to find the man behind the curtain.
Which is probably where we should start today’s review. You see, everybody knows the story of Dorothy. But how many people know the story of the man Dorothy goes looking for? How did *he* get here? And once he got here, how come he never went back? And how did he go from a guy who looked like James Franco to a guy who looked like Sam Kinison?
It might be fun to find out. Or just plain stupid. Just because you can look back at a well-known fictional character’s life doesn’t mean you should. A big part of the reason some characters are so memorable is because the writer showed us just the right amount of them. No more, no less. So I have to be honest. I’m curious why it’s so important that we learn Oz’s origin story.
Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmanuel Abroise Diggs (or “Oz” for short) is an illusionist, which in the early 1900s held some entertainment weight. Without countless Youtube videos to waste their time on, people needed something to pass the time. And these illusionist dudes did just that.
But not unlike today’s entertainment industry, unless you were one of the top dogs in your profession, you needed something else to pay the bills. For Oz, it’s booze. So after his show (from which no one seemed to enjoy) he busts out his very own homemade moonshine and sells it to the audience, who we realize only ever came here for the booze in the first place (in a really cheesy choice, the acronym for the liquor is “H.O.M.E.”).
Afterwards, Oz unwisely hooks up with one of his audience members, the irresistible Mrs. Hamilton, only to be found by Mr. Hamilton! Oz is chased through the circus, leaps onto a hot air balloon, thinks he’s safe, until he spots the biggest storm in Kansas history. I think we know where this is going. Yup. The next thing Oz knows, he’s awaken in Oz.
And boy, you thought Oz was wild before. That doesn’t even come close to what’s going on in this dysfunctional countryside this time around. Besides the munchkins, there’s the Hammerheads, the Dainty China army, Whimsies, Gnomes, Growleywogs and Mist Maidens.
But the biggest presence here in pre-Dorothy Oz? Deceit! Everyone’s lying! So it’s hard to figure out who to trust. At first Oz befriends a witch named Theodora, who seems like a cool chick. Theodora tells him they’ve been waiting for his arrival, that he’s here to save Oz. Which means he has to follow her to Emerald City to meet her sister, Evanora, so they can plan out how they’re going to kill the Wicked Witch Of The South!
But when they get there, Evanora is convinced that Theodora sent Oz to kill her! So she wants Oz to kill Theodora! If that isn’t confusing enough, one of the flying monkeys, Kala, wisps Oz off to the “Wicked” Witch Of The South, Glinda, who you may remember as Bubble Witch from the original Wizard Of Oz. She tells Oz the “real” story, which is that Theodora and Evanora are the wicked witches, and Glinda is a good witch!
Not really knowing who to trust, Oz goes with his instincts and gets behind Glinda. But if it were only that simple. Theodora and Evanora are putting together an army to squash them. Glinda, as well as the people of Oz, turn to Oz for direction. He is, in their minds, their savior. So Oz will have to piece together an army of creatures that were never meant to fight, to take over Oz and save it, once and for all, from the evil witches.
When you think about it, Wizard of Oz is one of the most f*cked up stories ever. It’s weird. It’s odd. It’s actually kinda creepy. Those flying monkeys? Wuddup with that?? However, in that classic first film, everything just seemed to magically come together. It’s rare that you make that many unique choices and they all fit. The only other movie I can think of that did it (off the top of my head) is Star Wars. So to try and replicate that weirdness and hope lightning strikes twice…that’s asking for trouble.
And we see that trouble all over the place here. I mean, there’s a lot of weird shit happening, but none of it gels together in the same way that original did.
I think the biggest problem is Oz himself. He’s just not very interesting. And it all started with his introduction. I couldn’t tell *who* Oz was supposed to be. Was he the terrible illusionist blind to his lack of ability, or was he genuinely good at what he did? It was never clear. One second he’s doing a cool trick and the next a lame one.
If your main character is wishy-washy, your script is dead. I’m sorry but it’s dead. If we don’t know the main character’s exact problem, then he’s just confusing the whole way through. And we won’t care about him.
What I’m trying to say is that in a script like this, you need to identify Oz’s fatal flaw, since this is a story ABOUT HIM and therefore you’re writing a character piece. Maybe his flaw is that he doesn’t believe in his own abilities. Or maybe you go in the opposite direction and it’s that he overestimates his abilities. From there, you throw tests at the hero that challenge that flaw. If he doesn’t believe in his abilities, for example, then you write a scene where he must prove his worthiness for the Queen. Everybody’s looking at him. He must perform. But he buckles under the pressure because DEEP DOWN he doesn’t believe in himself yet. Then, in the end, when it finally matters, he’s able to push past those insecurities and prove his worth. That’s how you create a character arc.
Here, it was just…I don’t know. Oz would do a magic trick every once in awhile, and some people would believe he was a wizard and some wouldn’t. It was just never clear.
The idea of a war in Oz with all these weird creatures is a tantalizing one, especially for a director, who gets millions of dollars to show audiences something they’ve never seen before. So I could see the climax being fun. The problem is, none of the characters – and I mean not a single one – was unique or interesting or compelling in any way. Which was strange since this is such a unique interesting compelling world. With that being the case, the final battle comes up empty. We don’t really care who wins. It’s just eye candy, without the candy since it’s still in the script stage.
Oz was never able to wrangle in all of its strange parts. I’m sticking with the original.
What I Learned: The power of a good character arc is the most influential emotional component you can add to your screenplay. Audiences like to see characters learn and change for the better. It makes them feel good inside. The original Oz film based its entire story on that. You had a scarecrow who didn’t think he was smart enough, a lion who wasn’t brave enough, and a tin man incapable of feeling love. The changes (“arcs”) those characters went through is what was so memorable about that film. With that aspect never defined here for any character – especially Oz – there was zero emotional attachment to the story.
Picking this script up again, I immediately remembered why I advanced it. It starts off with a cute cuddly scene – a father and daughter joking around in a car – and when we least expect it, a truck comes out of nowhere and obliterates the driver’s side, instantly killing the father.
I thought, “This writer knows how to grab a reader’s attention,” which is important. Believe it or not, there are tons of writers out there who still write a very soft first 10 pages, reasoning that their script “takes time to get into,” and “needs to breathe before it gets going.” You wanna talk about breathing? Well those long steady breaths you’re hearing in the distance? That’s your reader falling asleep.
I’m not saying every First 10 needs to have a car crash, or a bar fight, or a fridge nuked. But something needs to happen in there to catch our interest. You’ve already taken care of the hard part – coming up with a logline that’s gotten us to actually OPEN the script. Don’t blow your chances by writing a boring First 10.
I became a little concerned after the car crash when I realized it was just our main character’s dream. The girl woke up from the nightmare, and was now really going to get in the car with her father. She thinks her dream is a premonition, tries to stop him, but away they go anyway. Cut to funeral.
I don’t know…..something about it just didn’t feel right. I can’t pinpoint what it was but I thought, “That could’ve gone smoother.”
We then jump forward 18 years to present day and our little girl, Angela Pruitt, is now a successful sales rep at a pharmaceutical company. She’s actually going to a big conference this weekend where she’ll be promoting a new drug her company is selling.
Little does she know, a self-made reporter/blogger named David (“handsome in an unkempt way”) goes around specifically debunking these b.s. pills and has tasked himself with exposing the company’s scam. So he shows up to the conference under an alias, “Dr. Tom,” and prepares to take them down.
But little does David know, Angela is specifically on the lookout for any doctors named Tom. As we learned in the opening sequence, whatever Angela dreams comes true. And her whole life she’s dreamed that she’s going to marry a “Dr. Tom.” Conveniently for the story (ahem), she never sees the FACE of this man in her dreams. She only knows that she’s at the altar marrying someone named “Dr. Tom.”
Naturally then, Angela comes on to Dave…err Tom…hard. And he’s not complaining. This girl’s hot! They spend the evening together, and it’s clear that these two were meant for each other. They ooze that disgusting couple perfection that the rest of the world’s hopeless romantics would die to feel for just one second.
That is until Angela finds out Dave is lying, and that he’s really, well, “Dave.” Dave admits he was bad, but is surprised at just how upset Angela is. It’s then when he learns about the premonition stuff, and that his lying wasn’t just about the lying, but that his name doesn’t match up with the man she’s supposed to spend the rest of her life with.
Dave, who doesn’t believe in any of this nonsense, suggests an idea. In order to prove that her dreams don’t hold any merit, he’ll go interview all of the people in her life to, um…hmmm, well I’m not sure – I think figure out where this dream obsession came from and show that it’s not real?
The problem is, while Dave does his Sherlock Holmes routine, Angela ends up shacking up with a REAL Dr. Tom, and becomes convinced that he’s the one she’s supposed to marry. If Dave wants to win this battle, he’s not only going to have to prove to Angela that she loves him, but that everything she’s ever believed is a lie.
Okay….hmmm. Well, I don’t think this script suffers from the same problems as some the other Twit-Pitch scripts, which was mainly lack of effort. But I’m not sure this story ever had a leg to stand on. The foundation of this building was so flimsy, that it was hard to move around without the entire floor shaking.
I guess I never really got past the name thing. It just seemed silly to build an entire movie around a guy who lied about his name. I don’t know what I was expecting after reading the logline, but definitely something more sophisticated than that.
When you combine that with this super-convenient plot device that Angela knows the NAME of her future husband and the JOB TITLE of her future husband, but not what he looks like? It just felt like the writer was taking too many liberties, constructing a scenario for his screenplay to work, but not one that would hold up in reality, however skewed that pretend reality was.
Once you’re not on board with the setup, it’s basically impossible to win back the reader. Everything they read has them coming back to that setup. When Angela finds another Dr. Tom to date, all I could think was, “Really? She knows the name but not the face of the guy? Plot Convenience 101.”
But even if I hadn’t had that problem, the plot itself doesn’t develop in an interesting way. This whole thing with Dave going out and interviewing family and friends…? I’m not even sure what that’s supposed to accomplish. This is somehow going to help him prove to her that her dreams aren’t true? It felt like one of those situations where a writer looked at the vast amount of space ahead of him after he finished his first act and went, “What the hell am I going to do for the next 60 pages??” and figured investigating, while not ideal, would at least take up some time.
And you NEVER want to do that when writing a screenplay. You NEVER want to bide time in your script. Every storyline should be imperative. Every story decision should have high stakes. As Dave was interviewing the best friend here, I thought, “What happens if this goes badly?” Or “What happens if this goes well?” I couldn’t determine how the scene had any effect on the movie. In other words, the stakes were unclear.
Take a scene in the recent spec script turned film, “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” Recently separated Cal and Emily, who we’re hoping will get back together, are forced to come together for a parent teacher conference. After a nice talk in the hallway, they walk inside the classroom and Cal sees that a woman he slept with recently is his son’s teacher! All of a sudden, there are real stakes to the scene. Cal and Emily just made some major strides in the hallway, but now Cal must get through this meeting without the clearly upset teacher revealing their history. The stakes are high. 20 years of marriage and a reconciliation are on the line. I just never got the feeling that anything was on the line during that whole “investigation” subplot in Man Of Your Dreams.
Also, on top of this, as I try to tell everyone who writes romantic comedies, the dialogue has to be CRACKLING. And when I say “crackling,” I mean fun quotable lines in every conversation the two have. I don’t think I ever said to myself, “This dialogue is bad.” But I never thought it stood out either. And if you want any chance in the world of selling your romantic comedy script, I GUARANTEE you, your dialogue has to stand out.
If that’s not a strength of yours, you the writer have to decide whether romantic comedies are really your genre, or if you’re putting as much effort into your dialogue as you can.
Romantic Comedies are hard. And this script unfortunately fell into a lot of the traps amateurs fall into when tackling the genre. Man Of Your Dreams felt like a car with all the standard settings. When you write a script, you need to give us the car with all the upgrades.
(Thursday review up early since I’m on the road to LA baby!!!)
Genre: Action
I’m not sure it’s ever a good sign when a contest entry comes with the e-mail, “Sorry for any typos. I ran out of time.”
………..
You hear that?
That’s the sound of my chin hitting my chest accompanied by a long slow wheezing sound. I suppose I should be used to it by now – the lack of effort put into these Twit-Pitches. But yesterday gave me hope! It made me a believer in Twit-Pitch again! I had fallen down the Twit-Pitch mountain but I had gotten back up and I climbed, oh how I climbed, to the top of that mountain again and I said to the people in the valley, “HALLELUJAH!”
Only to get shot in the back and tumble off the cliff once more.
Now we’re not talking about a “Cut Copy Paste” reunion here. The writing was competent. And ironically, I only saw a couple of typos. But this script confused me. The first five pages were some of the strongest of the competition – with a group of 1901 terrorists breaking into a tower and stealing blueprints to the White House. But for some reason – maybe from the logline? – I thought this script was going to be an action comedy. But that’s not the case. It’s a straight action film. Which definitely took some getting used to (I think I gave up looking for laughs around page 30). But even once I realized it was a straight action movie, I was frustrated by how little freaking happened! I mean, there’s a TON of action in this script. More than a night in the Jersey Shore house. But there’s zero story. It’s as if Matt bought himself a case of Mountain Dew and wrote one giant 110 page action sequence all weekend. I’ll get more into that in a second.
Like I said, The Last Rough Rider begins in 1901 with a group of Columbians stealing the White House blueprints. The scene creates intrigue. It creates suspense. It sets up a mystery. What are they stealing the blueprints for? Whatever are they planning to do?
We then meet Theodore Roosevelt and his 12 year old son, Kermit, hunting. Teddy is big, tough and manly, whereas Kermit is weak, squeamish, and uncomfortable. He’s only here to impress his father but it’s clear he’d rather be reading books or playing ches—HOLY F*CK! OUT OF NOWHERE A BEAR LEAPS AT THEM! Teddy and Kermit roll out of the way. Now whereas most people would run AWAY from a thousand pound bear, Teddy Roosevelt runs AT the bear. And wrestles it. And kills it!
Yes, Teddy Roosevelt IS the last true rough rider. And to drive this point home, he hauls the bear carcass into a cabinet meeting and starts gutting it (strangely, this is the only comedic scene in the movie). Oh yeah, Mr. Roosevelt isn’t president yet. He’s only vice-president. And apparently he gets on a lot of people’s nerves, to the point where no one thinks he’s presidential material. He’s just not very…sensitive.
Anyway, while the cabinet bickers about a dead bear in the middle of the Oval Office, our evil Columbian terrorists sneak through the gate and take over the White House Hans Gruber style! You gotta remember this was pre 9/11….by 100 years, so security wasn’t very tight.
They hold everybody hostage in the Oval Office except for Teddy, who they send off to a remote room. Teddy isn’t there for long, as taking out two guards is the difficulty equivalent of eating a stack of pancakes for him. And from that point on….well…Teddy runs around the White House trying to save the good guys and kill the bad guys. That’s….about it. There’s nothing else that really happens in the story. Which makes it kinda boring.
Now you may be saying, “Well isn’t that exactly what Die Hard did?” Yeah, but here’s the difference. Die Hard had plot developments. Things were happening. They were trying to open the 7 layers of the safe. The media showed up. McClane befriended the cop. The power was cut.
Nothing happens in this story. It’s the most under-plotted script I’ve read all year. It’s just Roosevelt running around aimlessly. There’s no form to it. There’s no structure. It’s just the same scene over and over again. I know this because when I read these scripts, I take notes on all the major and minor plot developments that happen so I can write a summary of the story in the review. I went 80 pages here and didn’t write a single thing because there wasn’t a single development.
The only plot element driving the story was the admittedly cool X-Ray machine that the Columbian scientist was using to see what was inside the White House walls. This is apparently what they came here for. The problem is, we see this happen at the beginning of the takeover, and then we don’t hear about it again for another 90 PAGES! So the only interesting thing about the story was barely in the story!
It’s your job as a writer to make something happen every 10-15 pages. Give us a twist. Introduce an unexpected element. If the same thing keeps happening over and over again, we’re going to get bored. And that’s why this feels like it was written in a weekend. There just didn’t seem to be any thought put into the plot. It was just, “Let’s have Teddy Roosevelt run around.”
This is the kind of script that would’ve benefited greatly from clear “mini-goals.” Instead of only having a giant vague goal of “saving the White House,” which leaves open the possibility of too much general-ness, lay out specific tasks Roosevelt needs to accomplish one after another to GET to the point where he saves the White House. These mini-goals are the key to focus.
For example, John McClane’s first goal is to contact the police. Then it’s to stop the police from mucking up the situation. Then it’s to evade the terrorists Hans sends after him. Once you break your action movie down into these little chunks, giving your hero sequences to conquer instead of entire movies to conquer, the story becomes much more manageable.
To make matters worse, the only plot point in the movie (the x-rayed wall plot) didn’t even pay off in an interesting way. In fact, I don’t even know if it made sense. The Columbians were basically looking for the blueprints to the Panama Canal so they could…control it? Or something? How would blueprints allow you to control the canal? And why did blueprints to the Panama Canal need to be hidden inside the White House walls? And my history is shaky. Had the Panama Canal been built yet? Were they trying to control something that was already there or control something that would be there in the future? No idea. And why do we need an x-ray machine to check inside the wall to see if something is there or not? Why not – oh I don’t know – KNOCK DOWN THE WALL!?? Seems like it would be a lot cheaper and a lot faster.
I’m going to take a wild guess here and say this was written AFTER Twit-Pitch. Once again, I’ll remind you: We readers know when a script has been rushed. You’re not going to trick us. The choices are generic. The plot is basic. The characters are plain. To get that stuff right takes time and a lot of rewriting. So as much as you’d like to think you’ll be the exception, you’re not fooling anybody. If you don’t put in the work, it always shows.
This is sad because I was thinking Rough Rider would be a dark horse in the competition. Instead it’s a dead horse. :(
