Genre: Drama
Premise: When an escaped convict infiltrates the home of a single mother and her son, the mother unexpectedly falls in love with the man.
About: This is Jason Reitman’s next movie, which will star Kate Winslet, Toby Maguire and comeback kid James Van Der Beek! It’s slated for an early 2014 release. Reitman’s outshone his legendary director father (Ivan Reitman) as of late, directing well-received films like Juno and Up In The Air. But he better watch out. Ivan is about to make a comeback, getting ramped up to direct the mega-hot script Draft Day, starring Kevin Costner as a general manager during the most important day of the year for NFL teams, draft day.
Writer: Jason Reitman (based on the novel by Joyce Maynard)
Details – 125 pages (2/4/11 draft)
Jason Reitman is an interesting writer/filmmaker. He’s not making films like anyone else out there. Here’s the issue I have with Reitman though. I’m not sure who HE is. I know every director out there wants to be Ang Lee or Steven Spielberg, the kind of director who can jump in and out of genres effortlessly, but what’s the reason we go to see a filmmaker’s film? Because we know what kind of movie they make. Thank You For Smoking. Juno. Up In The Air. Young Adult. Where’s the common thread in those? I’m not sure I can find one.
It’s not to say someone can’t break the mold and make whatever movie they want, but it’s a hell of a lot of harder to gain traction as a filmmaker if that’s the route you’ve chosen. I think early in your career you need to pick one genre and stick with it, THEN break out. Right now, the thing Reitman is probably best known for is being the director of a couple of Diablo Cody scripts, and I’m sure that isn’t what he’d like to be known for.
To make matters worse, the only consistent element he’s got going in his films (they’re 30-60 million dollar dramas that sometimes contain comedic elements) is the exact kind of film Hollywood is trying not to make anymore. There’s no real hook to draw audiences in other than the acting, directing and writing, and it’s hard to get those things right. And these films don’t have much of an upside even if they DO do well. With Young Adult never really breaking out, this is a huge moment for Reitman. He’s gotta prove that there is an audience for these movies. And that’s going to be tough. Cause if Labor Day isn’t executed perfectly, it’s in a lot of trouble.
Labor Day tells the story of Henry…. Wait a minute. That’s not actually true. It tells the story of Adele… Actually, that’s not true. It tells the story of Henry, who’s TELLING A STORY about Adele. Yeah, so let me start over. It’s 1987. Henry is a 13 year old kid living in a small town with a single mother who’s still bitter about her divorce. She’s given up on love, and in the process, given up on life. The only thing she’s got going for her is Henry.
That changes when the two go shopping one day and are approached by Frank, who seems like a good guy with the exception of a few suspicious cuts on his body. Now you and I would probably walk away from this. But Adele, for whatever reason, decides to take Frank home with her, a man whom she later finds out is an escaped convict.
All of this is being recalled via voice over from Adult Henry, who’s basically remembering the crazy 4 day Labor Day weekend that occurred when his mother fell in love with a convict. Yup, poor Henry gets his sex education via the shaking and moaning and screaming that occurs in the bedroom next to his. It’s something he isn’t really sure how to handle. He thinks it’s strange that they have, you know, an escaped convict not only living with them. But having sex with his mom! Most people would consider that weird.
Eventually, Henry befriends a new girl in town, Eleanor, who puts two and two together and realizes Henry’s housing the fugitive. She eventually convinces him that he’s going to be cut out of the picture and abandoned if he doesn’t do something. When his mom mentions moving to Canada to start a new life, that seems to confirm the prediction, and Henry begins to wonder if he should turn Frank in. It all comes to a head when the race to get out of town is interrupted by the cops finding out where Frank is, and trying to stop him before he gets away.
The other day I was saying (like I always do) to stay away from the drama genre. Hollywood doesn’t like to make dramas. They not only have really low profit margins, but they have to be executed perfectly to work. The script has to be flawless, the acting has to be genius, the directing and the cinematography have to be awe-inspiring. They don’t have any margin for error because people only come to see these movies if they hear they’re great. Honestly, when’s the last time you said to a friend, “Let’s go see that drama movie that’s supposed to be okay!”
Every story needs an engine. And like I often discuss, the engine is often your hero’s goal (beat the terrorists, get to the beauty pageant, get the Americans out of Iran using a fake movie as cover). Even Flight, a drama I loathe, had a goal – to win the court case against the airline for pilot neglect. Labor Day bases its engine on something a lot harder to drive an entire story with – suspense. Suspense is something you typically use in doses, to drive a scene or a sequence. Using it to drive an entire movie is hard.
The suspense engine here is: “Will Frank, Adele, and Henry get away with this?” This is achieved by making us wonder whether Frank and Adele and Henry are going to ride off into the sunset and start a new life, or get caught. As far as I can tell, that’s the only thing driving the story.
That’s fine. A really well-told story CAN work this way. Here’s my problem though. For suspense to work, especially suspense that’s supposed to last the entirety of the movie, we have to freaking love the characters. And that’s where I had problems. The script is told through the eyes of Henry (in older Henry’s voice over). For that reason, we’re not watching the movie through the eyes of the two people who have the most to gain and lose here (Frank and Adele) but rather the character with the least to lose, Henry.
In addition to that, because we’re seeing two people fall in love through a third party, I never really felt those characters’ feelings. I never got close enough to them since I wasn’t allowed to see them unless it was through Henry’s perspective. It was kind of like watching two people kiss across the street instead of BEING one of the people kissing across the street.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t dislike any of these characters. I thought Henry was pretty interesting, Frank was pretty interesting, and Adele was pretty interesting. But “pretty interesting” doesn’t cut it when you’re making a drama. It’s not like The Avengers where a “pretty interesting” character is fine because you have 200 million dollars worth of special effects to fall back on. In dramas, THE CHARACTERS are the special effects. And for that reason they must be infinitely interesting, infinitely fascinating, infinitely compelling. After finishing Labor Day, I was just kind of like, “Ehh, not bad.” It was a nice little story. But that’s not enough for a drama. A drama has to be great.
Where could the script have improved? I think Eleanor should have had a much bigger part. She’s the love interest for the character we care most about, the one we’re closest to, Henry. Why do we get more time between two people we don’t really know than the actual person who’s leading us through this story?
If that could’ve been introduced earlier, and Eleanor could’ve found out about Frank earlier (in this draft, she doesn’t find out until the end), she could’ve pressed Henry to give Frank up sooner, lest he lose his mom to him, and there would’ve been a lot more conflict in the house, which as it stood was pretty conflict-free.
That was probably the biggest issue for me in the script. Frank’s situation was never really challenged. Outside of a couple of late characters dropping by, Frank could prance around worry free. And I’m not sure a movie like this works unless his situation is always in danger, unless we’re constantly feeling the possibility that he could be caught.
All in all, this draft of Labor Day had a slow story that lacked the kind of characters and conflict a drama like this needs. Hopefully, Reitman has sped the story up and addressed these issues in subsequent drafts. I admire the man for pushing stories in Hollywood that don’t usually get made, but the catch is those stories have to be awesome, and I don’t think this one’s there yet.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Link up your story elements! I discussed this yesterday. Try and link up the elements of your story so they work together as opposed to separately. I thought Labor Day missed an easy one here. Henry was falling for Eleanor, who confesses sadly that she can no longer go to art school because her parents won’t pay for it (element 1). Later, Henry sees a “REWARD – $10,000” flyer for turning in Frank (element 2). Henry should be considering turning in Frank to get Eleanor the money so she can go to art school. That’s his main conflict. That’s what he’s battling every time he comes home. Should he call the police and run off with his own girl, or not call them and let Frank and Adele run off together?
I’ve been feeling bad since I wrote the article last week about the six types of scripts least likely to get you noticed. I got a lot of e-mails from people who were writing those scripts, and boy were they unhappy. I was most affected by those who had written sports movies. I love sports and I love a good sports movie. So my heart goes out to those struggling to get their sports script through a system that just isn’t receptive to the genre. I still believe that the only realistic shot you have of getting your sports spec picked up is to option an interesting true story or write about a compelling sports figure. With the unending number of sports games that have been played throughout time and the number of sports figures that have lived and died on this earth, there are still so many interesting stories that have never been told. With that said, if you’re going to write a sports script, you may as well learn from the best. And Hoosiers is as good as it gets. I’m going to find out what made this script work, as well as pass you a few tips about sports scripts in general. There’s one thing I can’t explain, though. How is it that the writer of this great movie, Angelo Pizzo, has only written TWO PRODUCED MOVIES since???
1) Character over sport! – Easily, one of the biggest mistakes writers make when writing sports movies is focusing on the sport instead of the characters. Remember, audiences don’t care about that final goal, that final shot, or that final touchdown, unless they care about the person making it. You almost want to approach your sports script as a character piece that has sports elements, as opposed to the other way around. Formulate a compelling controversial memorable main character, then feed the sports stuff in there. You see this in Rocky, The Natural, Hoosiers, Bull Durham, and all the best sports movies throughout time. A great main character first!!!
2) Try to give each player on the team small character flaws they must overcome – In a sports movie, it’s essential that each kid have that one clearly defined character flaw that’s holding them back from being the best player they can be. Take the short player in Hoosiers. He doesn’t believe in himself. He thinks of himself as just a practice player. He eventually learns to believe in himself and ends up helping the team win a key game. Every player has to have their own little storyline!
3) You need to give the coach a COACHING FLAW – Same deal. Every sports movie needs that coach who has a flaw that’s preventing him from being the best coach he can be. Gene Hackman’s character refuses to listen to his players. He’s only going to do it HIS WAY. In the last timeout of the championship game, then, we see him overcome this flaw when he allows the kids to run their play instead of his.
4) Every sports movie needs a TEAM PROBLEM – This is some play issue the team can’t seem to get over. Here, it’s the concept of “team.” Don’t dribble the ball up the court and shoot. You HAVE to pass the ball four times before anyone can shoot. This concept is a constant battle throughout the movie, with certain players refusing to go along with it. As a result, it was satisfying when they bought into coach’s game plan and started winning because of it.
5) Write around a sport – If you’re a big sports fan but don’t want to write yet another cliché sports movie about a team or player who overcomes the odds and wins the championship, consider writing about the people surrounding the sport. The reason this works is because it introduces us to a new exciting world we’re unfamiliar with. Cameron Crowe did this famously with sports agent Jerry Maguire. Zallian and Sorkin did it with Moneyball. And more recently, Scott Rothman and Rijav Joseph did it with Draft Day, the number one Black List script, which focused on an NFL general manager during draft day.
6) MIDPOINT SHIFT ALERT – Remember, a midpoint shift is a severe event in the middle of the story that shifts the second half of the movie so it feels different from the first. In most cases, that moment makes things worse for your hero. But here, it actually makes things better. The mid-point shift of Hoosiers is when Jimmy (the star player) announces that he wants to rejoin the team. With Jimmy now on the squad, it’s no longer about becoming a decent team, it’s about winning. It’s about having a legitimate shot at being great!
7) Make the romantic interest a source of conflict – I like when the romantic interest is also one of the main sources of conflict for the main character. You end up killing two birds with one stone. Here, Myra, the vice-principle and main love interest, is the only person in Indiana who hates basketball. Talk about a tough girl to chase if you’re the new basketball coach!
8) Write about the coach – As I watched Hoosiers for the billionth time, I realized something. There are no other truly good basketball movies in sports history (unless you count Air Bud and Love & Basketball). It doesn’t seem to be a sport that lends itself to cinema. I wanted to know how Hoosiers overcame that and not only became the best basketball movie of all time, but the best sports movie of all time. I came to the conclusion that it’s because the main character wasn’t one of the players. It was the coach. This falls in line with my above tip: “Write around the sport.” Concentrating on the coach allows you to tackle problems from the person with the most power over the game. The decisions a coach makes (who to play, who to sit, who to favor, who to discipline, how to train, how to strategize) in addition to the exterior pressures he faces (the way the town wants him to play, the way the manager wants him to play, the way the star player wants to play) typically make him one of the most interesting people to watch. That was definitely the case here.
9) Each game needs to be its own little movie – With each game in your script, you want to create your own little movie with its own specific problem, something the characters will all learn from and, whether they realize it or not, get better from. The first game in Hoosiers, for example, is about the players not listening to the coach. That’s the problem. So what does Coach do? He sits the most egregious player of the bunch, even when the team needs another player on the floor! He’d rather play FOUR players than have someone not listen to him. The problem is solved by the end of the game. The players now realize that it’s the coach’s way or the highway. And highways go on forever in Indiana.
10) Create a compelling goal that works concurrently with the main storyline – If the only question you have for us in your sports movie is, “Will they win the championship?” we’ll get bored. You need other storylines working concurrently with the main one, another goal our main character must achieve. Here, it’s “Getting Jimmy,” the player who many consider to be the best in the state, but who has no interest in playing.
BONUS TIP – Tie your elements together – Where real writing comes into play is when writers learn to tie the elements that make screenplays work together. So in this case, Angelo Pizzo has written in some great conflict between our main character, Coach Dale, and the romantic interest, Myra. He’s also created this great subplot (that I just mentioned) where Coach Dale needs to convince Jimmy to join the team. Individually, both these situations work well, but it’s tying them together that makes them truly powerful. Myra doesn’t like basketball. She believes it’s way more important for Jimmy’s future that he focus on his studies, which is why she doesn’t want him on the team. Therefore, one of the biggest elements of conflict in the movie, Myra, is also the obstacle Coach Dale must get past in order to land Jimmy. That’s great writing!
I must apologize about the late post. You know, ever since it was announced that Kate Middleton went into labor last night, I’ve been unable to eat, sleep, or concentrate. Just like all of you, life cannot go on until this baby is delivered. I mean so many things can go wrong in childbirth. Is it not natural that one need to know that the baby is okay? And then of course we all need to know if it’s a boy or a girl. Well, she’s FINALLY delivered. And it’s a boy! (spoiler alert) So everyone can take the rest of the day off and relax after all that intense anxiety you’ve been under. I know I will.
But that’s not the only thing that happened this weekend. R.I.P.D. was officially R.I.P.D. upon its own delivery. I reviewed the script a year ago and thought it was pretty good. But man did it land with a thud. I’m trying to glean some lessons for writers from this but I’m not sure I have any. On the one hand, I encourage writers to come up with high-concept ideas, like R.I.P.D., but I think in this case it was so similar to Men In Black that audiences had no interest in seeing a lower-rent, lesser-cast version of that film. I mean, people aren’t even interested in seeing sequels of the original M.I.B. Why would they be interested in seeing a copycat film? If there’s a lesson here, it’s to write something familiar but different, with a little more emphasis on the different than the familiar.
Speaking of, R.I.P.D. is yet another example of the Ryan Reynolds Isn’t A Movie Star Paradox, which was most famously explored in an article written by sports/entertainment writer Bill Simmons. Indeed, it is strange that Reynolds continues to be so popular amongst studios when he’s never been able to open a movie on his own (his biggest successes like The Proposal and Safe House have him coupled with bigger stars). I like Reynolds. He seems like a good guy. I love that he takes chances in his career, and I think some of his movies have been really good, like Definitely, Maybe and Buried. But he’s gotta take advantage of this time. Unless he starts giving a better return on his investment, I’m afraid he might go the way of Ben Affleck in the first phase of his career.
Also, in news that has nothing to do with that, I’m hearing an awful, awful rumor. JJ Abrams is thinking of quitting Star Wars. The main point of contention is that Abrams has a family here in the States but will have to shoot the movie in England. It’s something I actually worried about as soon as Abrams took the job. He stated that he really wanted to shoot the movie here because of his family and an issue like that just doesn’t go away. Imagine being away from your wife and kids for a year. This isn’t a simple 3 day business trip to Cedar Rapids. We’re talking AN ENTIRE YEAR.
If he drops out, I don’t know who the heck is going to take his place. But the mad scramble will probably dictate a less-than-desirable replacement. Nightmare names like Rian Johnson and Edgar Wright popped into my head. I know those names bring about happy thoughts in certain geek circles, but trust me, those guys would destroy Star Wars. That’s why JJ was so perfect. He was a big director who knew what he was doing and also had that sensibility that could make Star Wars great. I’m afraid if he leaves, there are no super-big directors who would be interested, which means taking a shot in the dark on one of these lesser guys who hasn’t proven himself. Ugh. May the force be with us.
So, in slightly less depressing news, I saw The Conjuring this weekend with Miss Scriptshadow. We’d both read the script, both liked it, and so were interested in seeing the finished product. Well, long story short, Miss Scriptshadow hated it. Which kinda baffled me because she loves scary movies.
The scene that set her off was the opening one, in which paranormal investigator husband and wife team, the Warrens, investigate a creepy doll that keeps writing to its owners, “Miss me?” in really bad crayon handwriting. Indeed, the scene felt like it was part of another movie. Coupled with its cliché scary doll cheesiness, there was a goofiness to it that contrasted heavily to the otherwise “take me seriously” tone the rest of the film exhibited. It just goes to show how powerful an opening scene is. Give us the wrong one, and we could decide we hate your film within a couple minutes. The scene didn’t turn me off as much as it did her, but something did feel off about it.
My problem with the film had more to do with the same issues I saw in the script stage. Now to their credit, the writers did eliminate a lot of the “one month later” and “two months later” stuff they had in the screenplay that gave the story a laid back feel. Instead, after the opening scene, they kept everything in one continuous timeline and made it build. In other words, they added URGENCY, which is important in any movie, but especially a horror film, where you should feel the danger increasing at a scary rate.
But getting back to my main issue, it really bothered me that every time the Warrens saw something freaky, they went, “Oh yeah that. Ppffhhh. That’s just the demon wanting attention.” “Oh, the reason the clocks stop? That’s just because it’s the time the ghost died. No biggie.” Even when they’re researching the haunting, the answers seem to bore them. “No wonder these guys are experiencing hauntings. A witch used to live here and killed her child.” I don’t know about you, but I’m scared when people have no fucking clue why they’re being terrorized and they’re freaking the fuck out about it. Everybody here was too damn calm. We needed the Warrens to be like, “Yo, we’ve never seen this before. We’re scared. We don’t know what to do.” Remember The Exorcist? Part of what made that so scary is that the priests themselves seemed terrified. We never get that with the Warrens, who always seem to be in control. That was a super-big issue with me. If they could’ve fixed that, this might’ve been a classic.
I did learn something cool from the script-to-screen translation though. One of my favorite moments in the screenplay was when Lorraine Warren was in a crawlspace in the house, and starts pulling on this rope, and pulling on it and pulling on it, and all of a sudden, at the end of it is… THE WITCH’S HEAD (who had hanged herself when she was alive – hence the rope connection). It was terrifying. But they didn’t do that in the movie. Instead, she lifts the rope up and sees at the end… a noose. Scared for a moment, the floor of the old house then breaks beneath her, and she goes shooting down through the walls into the basement. Injured and unable to move, she starts hearing scary-ass shit. She now must fend off potential danger from every side of her. In other words, the writers sacrificed what was originally a jump scare (the witch’s head), and milked an entire scene of scares out of it. There’s your lesson. If you have a choice, no matter how good your jump scare is, see if there’s a way to milk one long scene of scares instead. That’s always the better option.
Finally, I still think the script itself, while interesting and original, was clumsy. I was never entirely sure who the main characters were. Was it the parents in the house or was it the Warrens? It felt like the writers weren’t sure either, as we’d occasionally jump back to the Warrens’ home where a barely-there subplot was happening with their daughter. The entire Warren’s Home storyline felt like that friend who nobody wants to bring to the party. “Oh man, I guess we have to call Bill.” Everybody rolls their eyes. Yeah, I guess so. Everything that happened over there felt like an afterthought. But in retrospect, I’m convinced that the studio sees the Warrens as their franchise. They’re the ones with all these scary stories to tell. Sequels upon sequels upon sequels. Therefore, they have to give them weight in the story. The problem with that was, because we had to spend so much time with the Warrens, we didn’t really get to know the Perrons. I mean, somebody tell me anything about the father in this script. You can’t. There was nothing. But hey, The Conjuring 2 is already ramping into development so it ended up working.
With The Conjuring and The Purge being two of the biggest return-on-investments this summer, you best start thinking about writing that horror spec. People love to be scared, so scary movies will always have an audience. Just try and come up with an idea that’s either based on a true story (Conjuring) or that has a really high concept (Purge). You do that, we’ll be analyzing your film here on Scriptshadow soon.
This is your chance to discuss the week’s amateur scripts, offered originally in the Scriptshadow newsletter. The primary goal for this discussion is to find out which script(s) is the best candidate for a future Amateur Friday review. The secondary goal is to keep things positive in the comments with constructive criticism.
Below are the scripts up for review, along with the download links. Want to receive the scripts early? Head over to the Contact page, e-mail us, and “Opt In” to the newsletter.
Happy reading!
TITLE: Elijah’s Gold
GENRE: Disaster thriller
LOGLINE: Set in the near future, when an industrial experiment involving the Higgs-Boson particle goes terribly wrong, resulting in an explosion that kills millions of Americans, an ex-con is recruited by a prison pastor to uncover a conspiracy to cover up the cause of the disaster.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): “Two of my professors at USC who believe very strongly in this script are already working hard to set up meetings with agents and managers around town for me.”
TITLE: Recovery
GENRE: Drama
LOGLINE: When a man involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident learns the victim is his brother’s wife, he must decide whether coming clean and appeasing his conscience is worth the risk of shattering his family.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): “Since the last time Recovery was up for AF consideration, back in November 2012, it’s undergone a page-one rewrite. The resulting draft garnered a quarterfinal placement in this year’s still active Page Awards, and I feel it’s ready for another shot at AF glory.”
TITLE: Ascended Master
GENRE: Horror
LOGLINE: A small town racer decodes an occult book of alchemy that enables him to build a winning engine. As his success grows, he discovers the entity behind his new found engineering skill is slowly killing his kids.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): “It is the only spec script you’ll ever find that combines drag racing and alchemy. Growing up in the seventies around racing, there was always some “magical” technique the local racers sought out to get that extra edge. This pursuit led more often than not, to horrific results. I always wondered what would happen if one of those obscure techniques actually worked…”
TITLE: FEVER DREAMS
GENRE: Drama/Thriller
LOGLINE: When a man begins having lucid dreams in which he and his deceased wife are back together again, he must decide which world he wants to live in—reality or dreams.
TITLE: THE DIRECTOR’S GIRLFRIEND
GENRE: Dark comedy/Erotic thriller
LOGLINE: His marriage on the rocks, a hard drinking writer falls for the barely legal, incredibly hot, psychotic girlfriend of the movie director living next door.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ (from writer): “I’m a movie research coder, Diane is a blog writer/copywriter. Diane has placed in a couple screenwriting competitions. We’ve both had a manager at one time or another. This script has been under option for over five years by a pair of producers who love it, but just don’t have the dollars to move it forward. Why should you read it? When I gave my first rough draft to my partner she read it in disgust and handed it back, calling it porn. Those scenes have kinda been dialed back, but I’d like to think it still has some porn left in it. And who doesn’t like porn?”
The weekend is here. Writer Jay Eden would love if you busted out your old record player and took a trip into the past. Vinyl lovers unite for… WHITE LABEL!
Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects 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: Dark Rom-Com
Premise: (from writer) When a young vinyl music store owner loses everything — love, friendship and vinyl records — he struggles to rebuild his life, hindered by pimp-like friends, a beautiful agent provocateur and an ex-girlfriend who refuses to let their relationship die until she finds a suitable successor. In the vein of HIGH FIDELITY and 500 DAYS OF SUMMER.
About: (from writer) WHITE LABEL landed me a Blacklist manager for three days when I sent it out last year. We had a weekend love-in, swapped lots of emails, planned a campaign to attach a director and talent — then she emailed back the following Monday and said she was simply too busy to take on another client. The script (under a different name) got a professional rating on SPEC SCOUT, and was ranked on the TOP 10 list of the best scripts of 2012 by a Scriptshadow reader (someone I have never met, honestly!).
Writer: Jay Eden
Details: 113 pages
One of the cooler things you can do in LA is head up to Sunset and Vine and visit Amoeba Records. It’s this huge sprawling store with about a billion records. It’s kind of amazing to think about. Vinyl died off a long time ago. In fact, it’s died many deaths. First by cassette, then CD, and now digital. Many people who swore by the vinyl listening experience watched helplessly as their flagship sound experience was ripped away from them.
So to think that there’s this entire store that still sells these things. And not just that – they’re ALWAYS packed. It’s baffling. With that being said, I have to admit I’ve never been a music geek. I mean don’t get me wrong. I’ve bought a hell of a lot of songs on Itunes. But I’m not someone who can tell you what venue Led Zeppelin first played in. Or what studio Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” was recorded in. It’s just not my thing.
Music is something for me to experience and enjoy, not dissect. And really, I wouldn’t have it any other way. One of the downsides of being in the movie business (and I use that term loosely, don’t worry), is that in order to survive, you have to dissect, you have to watch things over and over again to understand why they do or don’t work so you can talk about them intelligently, as well as apply that knowledge to your work. I’m not going to lie, that takes some of the fun out of it. It’s hard for me to just sit down and enjoy a film these days. I’m too busy thinking about all the shit that’s gone into it.
With music, I don’t have to worry about that. It’s why I can enjoy “Satisfaction” and “Gangnam Style” in equal measure. I don’t have to bring any of that judgmental snarkiness over from the film world. Which leads us to White Label. This is a script written by a music geek for music geeks. And for that reason, while I appreciated it, it never truly resonated with me. It sort of drifted around me. I enjoyed some moments, but was never totally enthralled.
White Label puts us back in the decade of big hair and male mid-riff shirts (the 80s) and follows a guy named Matt. Matt is the owner of a store named Urinal Vinyl, a record shop famous for its giant urinal in the middle of the floor, where those desperate for rock schoolage can sacrifice their old shitty records and be given the truly best rock in return. In other words, it’s a gimmick that separates UV from every other record store in town.
But the fun and games of the 70s and early 80s are coming to an end. That’s because a new medium is hitting the streets, the compact disc. And they’re making their way into every record store in California. Every record store except for one. Urinal Vinyl. That’s because Matt refuses to bend to the constraints of capitalist America.
Cut to our romantic foil, the royally fucked up but unimaginably beautiful Charlie, one of those women who could find trouble in a church. Charlie works for one of these compact disc companies and realizes if she could infiltrate Matt’s little store, she could find out what they’re up against. So that’s exactly what she does, hoping to rope Matt in and get all the information she needs and use it against him. But it’s not that easy. Matt is still in love with his dead wife (who he’s able to physically see and talk to by the way) and just getting an uninterrupted moment with him is like trying to get some one on one time with Madonna (80s reference).
There are tons of other people coming in and out of the shop with their own stories as well. There’s Ray, Matt’s best friend, who’s in love with an Argentinian woman he can’t have. There’s Bunker, a 15 year old kid who’s so obsessed with the Goth girl working at the store he comes in every day and stares at her from the corner. There’s Todd, Charlie’s married boss whom she erroneously believes will leave his wife. There’s Phil, who’s married to Matt’s sister. There’s Maddie, who’s trying to rope in Matt as well. Oh, and of course there’s Emma, Matt’s dead wife. Shit, there’s a lot of people here!
Charlie eventually finds a provision in the rental agreement on the building that will close the place down unless Matt finds 30k. All this espionage is getting harder and harder to do, of course, since she’s falling for Matt. And in the end, Matt will have to call on all the famous rockers who once graced one of the greatest record stores in the world to rock out and raise money so they can save the place where they got their first rock education!
I feel really bad about reviewing White Label because there’s more passion and depth in this script than most of amateur scripts I read in a month. You can tell when a writer really loves his subject matter. He gives the words a power you just don’t see when a writer’s writing for the market. I can vouch for that here with Jay. I felt the sweat he laid out on the page. But this just isn’t my thing. So no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get fully into it.
Regardless of that, there’s some really great character development here. Every single character has something going on, from the best friend (who’s obsessed with the coffee shop girl) to Charlie, who has several different people she’s trying to please. I’m a big fan of writers who give every character something to do, something important happening in their lives.
Here’s the irony in that, though. There are too many characters here to begin with. And because Jay is so good with character-building, it actually ends up working against him. Because he’s adding storylines for characters that probably shouldn’t be in the script in the first place. Start with Emma, Matt’s dead wife. I’ve seen the “dead wife who talks to the lead character” half a dozen times before in the last two years alone. We even reviewed a script with this exact hook a few months ago.
Then we had characters like Jake (a late boyfriend for Charlie), Charlie’s sister (who has very little to do with anything), Matt’s semi-gf Maddie, and Bunker’s late girlfriend, Christy Turlington. I didn’t care about the specifics of any of these storylines. All I care about are the main characters’ plights. I want to see THOSE characters interacting with one another, not some late “thrown in” character who I barely know or care about.
To me, White Label’s biggest problem might be that there’s TOO MUCH going on. And some of the more important character storylines get lost in the excessiveness of all the subplots and tangents. This script needed someone to come in there and straighten out all the curls. It needed a “simplification comb,” or, to use a music reference, it needed a simpler beat.
Another thing I’m worried about is how similar this is to High Fidelity. It’s music geeks hanging out in a record store talking about music. Clearly, this was an influence for Jay. But there’s a fine line between influence and “the same thing,” and while there are portions of this story that are its own, there are way too many that feel like excerpts from that film.
Moving forward, here’s what I’d recommend to Jay. Streamline the character count (starting with Emma – represent her with a unique record they used to listen to or something, not a physical talking person) and remember that you don’t have to go into every little detail in every little character storyline. The big storylines should take precedence. Drop stuff like Jake and Christy Turlington. We don’t need them. I’d also bring up the story problem earlier. Right now, it’s introduced at the midpoint and that leaves the first half of the script without a story. Introduce their need to save the store at the end of the first act. Also, make “White Label” a bigger part of the story. It sounds like these “white label” records are worth a lot of money. If they went on a search to find one to save the shop (or he had to, say, decide whether to sell the super-valuable white label record he found with Emma that represents their relationship), that’d be more interesting than the cliché “hold a concert to save the shop” climax. Finally, do everything you can to make this NOT feel like High Fidelity. I’m not even sure how you do that, but the more you separate the two, the more this will feel like your own movie as opposed to a homage to the movie you loved.
This script deserves to be read. Jay has some real talent. The only reason I’m not personally recommending it is because it’s not my thing. But do yourself a favor and check it out so you can form your own opinion, especially if you’re a music geek.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I learned this from a recent TV-related article on Vulture, and it stuck with me. If you’re setting your story in the past, try to set it during a transitional time. Transitional times are usually the most exciting and are well-springs for conflict and drama. In this case, we cover a record store during the CD revolution, which is what creates much of the conflict that drives the plot.
