Screenplay Review – Baltimore

Posted on July 10, 2012 | by admin

Genre: Period/Historical

Premise: Only twice in history has a city in the continental United States been attacked by a foreign enemy.  September 11 was one.  This is the other.
About: As most of you know, today’s writer (actually co-writer), Chris Terrio, wrote my most recent Top 25 entry, The Ends Of The Earth.  Obviously, after reading that, I had to check if I had any other scripts of his.  I ended up finding Baltimore, which actually made the 2007 Black List.  I don’t know much about the co-writer, Jesse Lichtenstein, but I think he works primarily as an editor and production designer.
Writers: Chris Terrio and Jesse Lichtenstein
Details: 123 pages (June 07 revision)
This is why I don’t like reading historical scripts.  They make me feel stupid!  And guilty.  I didn’t know anything about the War of 1812.  I mean I’d heard of “The War of 1812” of course, but I always assumed it had to do with Indians or Mexico or something.  The Alamo maybe?  Or did we fight Canada?  Have we ever warred with Canada?
But at the same time it was kinda cool.  An entire American war I didn’t know about?  Neat.  I mean, not neat for the people who died in it of course.  But neat to read about.  But that is the question, isn’t it?  Was Baltimore worth reading about?  
Sam Smith is a Maryland Senator who’s known as the resident worrywart.  I guess during that time, the British would line ships up off the U.S. Coast to block goods from getting through.  Apparently, the U.S. was okay with this.  We sit in on a Cabinet meeting early in the script and everyone’s shrugging their shoulders going, “Oh, it’s just those wily Brits again.  They’ll get bored.”  
Well Sam thinks there’s something more to this ship-blocking scam.  He thinks the Brits are planning an attack – on HIS city, Baltimore.  Which there’s no way he’s going to let happen.  But everyone he tells just rolls their eyes.  The sky is always falling with Sam.  Pay him no mind.
So Sam goes home to do what all of us do when we’re pissed: complain to his wife.  And it’s here where we learn a little more about ole Sammy.  He lost a son to disease a few years back and his only other son is embarrassed to show his face around town because he’s seen as “that crazy senator’s son.”  
Except Sam’s not crazy.  The British do attack, but not where he thought they would.  Why conquer the stomach when you can go for the heart!?  Yup, the British march on Washington D.C.  This move is so unexpected that NOBODY is waiting for them.  Within minutes of entering the city, they’re burning it to ashes.  And there’s nobody to do anything about it.
In fact, the imbeciles in the Cabinet continue to shrug their shoulders and even consider surrendering!  Gosh, our early leaders suck.  But not Sam.  He knows that the British will eventually have to take Baltimore in order to win the key port which will allow the British to properly invade.  So in a series of clever moves, Sam anoints himself as Baltimore’s military commander, before rounding up an army to defend against the British attack.  
But it’s looking bad.  At the time, the British had the most sophisticated and technologically advanced military in history.  And they’d sent their their most badass unit.  Not only that, but Baltimore would be squeezed on two sides – one side by the soldiers and the other by the British ships off the coast.  And the Americans would have to do it with a bunch of farmers with pitchforks and squirrel-shooters.  Well, at least according to this screenplay that is.  :)
I don’t know what it was about this script but it just didn’t click with me.  I know I was really tired when I read it but that shouldn’t matter.  I’ve been on the verge of collapsing while opening a screenplay before it grabbed hold of me so fast I didn’t blink for two hours.  But yeah, these period pieces are tough to read when you’re tired.  No matter how you slice it, you do feel *a little* like you’re reading a history book.
With that said, there was some good stuff here.  I liked the way the writers established Sam as this “clown” from the Cabinet’s point-of-view.  Nobody’s paying him any attention, which gets us all stirred up.  This is our guy!  This is the person taking us through the story.  We don’t want to see him get ignored and laughed at.  So we’re pissed.  And that makes us want to stick around because we can’t wait to see when he’s right.  Never underestimate the power of an audience wanting to see the “I told you so” moment.
The structure was pretty good too.  For an American historical script, there’s little if any of those script-killing scenes with wigged bureaucrats monologuing about morals and liberty and freedom and politics (I’m looking squarely at you, Anthony Hopkins scene in Amistad).  This was all about the invasion, sort of like a Star Wars film via 19th Century America, if that’s possible.
In fact, as if to support this point, one of the stranger things about the script is that it has all these Star Wars lines in it.  For example, the evil British commander says to his frustrated American spies at one point, “Perhaps you think you’re being treated unfairly?” Which is a carbon copy line from The Empire Strikes Back that Darth Vader says to Lando.  There were like half-a-dozen of these.  I don’t know if they were on purpose or by accident but it was weird.
But yeah, the script was always moving.  At first Sam’s trying to convince the Cabinet to prepare a defense.  Then the British storm Washington.  Then Sam builds up an army and prepares for a defense. And then we have the actual battle.  So there’s very little down-time, which I found impressive in this kind of story.
And yet I still felt detached during it.  I rooted for Sam for the reasons I mentioned above, but we get this sort of half-thought-through storyline with him and his son that was sooooo generic.  “I don’t like daddy.  Daddy doesn’t like me.”  Blah blah blah.  Terrio’s obviously come a long way since then as the relationship between Ernest and Lydie in The Ends Of The Earth is one of the most complicated and intriguing I’ve ever read.
I think a lot of writers make this mistake actually.  They think that simply making two people not like each other constitutes a compelling relationship.  Not so.  You have to figure out WHY they don’t like each other and how that contentious relationship evolved and what kinds of events shaped it (there’s usually never just one) and see if you can find irony or uniqueness in that conflict.  I mean when Ernest falls in love with the one person in the world he can’t fall in love with – that’s a compelling relationship.  Having to make the decision to publicly marry her, with all the scorn that would bring – that’s a compelling situation.  “Daddy and I don’t get along” is too generic and therefore not compelling at all.  
So I’m torn here.  I mean yeah, there were little problems in Baltimore.  But overall, there’s more good than bad.  And yet, I just couldn’t get into it.  Therefore, the only thing I can do is give it a “wasn’t for me.”  
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me.
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The “Bully Effect.”  We’ll always sympathize with a character who gets bullied.  So early on, Sam gets laughed at by the entire Cabinet for thinking the British will attack.  Not surprisingly, that’s the moment where we truly bond with him.  If you want the reader to like your character, showing him get bullied, laughed at, or pushed around, is a surprisingly easy way to do it.  

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Screenplay Review – Invertigo

Posted on July 9, 2012 | by admin

Genre: Sci-Fi

Premise: A unique meteorite crashes into earth, causing a slow and steady destabilization of the planet’s gravity.  
About: Today’s script was co-written by Ehren Kruger, one of the alpha dogs of the Hollywood screenwriting industry.  When you bring Kruger in to work on something, you’re usually paying upwards of a million bucks.  Kruger has written such movies as The Ring and a couple of the Transformers flicks.  He also wrote one of my Top 25 scripts, The Keep. Co-Writer Bradley Camp has worked mainly as a producer, collaborating closely with Andrew Niccol on his films S1mone and Lord Of War.  The Invertigo spec sold to Sony a couple of months ago.  
Writer: Ehren Kruger and Bradley Camp
Details: 129 pages (Nov. 1 2009 draft)
I don’t know if Roland Emmerich is directing this, but if not, he will be soon.  Mark my words.  Invertigo’s opening act reads like an Emmerich wet dream.  We have a meteorite splitting up in the atmosphere, pieces shooting off in all different direction. We see the fragments land in a bunch of different countries.  We have the dopey but good-natured scientist character baffled by the development and demanding to talk to somebody about it (but nobody will listen!).  
And then, of course, we have the anti-gravity.  Now here’s the thing – I’ve run up against this anti-gravity idea before in screenplays.  It’s one of those ideas where you can instantly see the movie.  I mean people floating around in New York City!?  That’s probably going to make a studio some money.  But basing an entire movie around that image?  Is that going to be enough?  I mean, how many times can you show things floating in the air before an audience goes, “Okay, what else ya got??”
Kruger and Camp believe they have the answer.  And you know what?  They just might.  These two come up with some pretty nifty ways to keep a one-trick-pony entertaining.  
So like I said, our main character is 40 year old scientist, Tom Riley.  Tom is an astro-somethingist whose specialty is tracking meteorites.  In fact, Tom’s been tracking one particular meteorite that’s been zipping through the universe for 11 billion years.  
Well, Tom yanks his daughters out of bed on the morning this meteorite is supposed to dissolve into the earth’s atmosphere, but is shocked when it actually splits up into five pieces!  That wasn’t part of the plan and leaves Tom baffled.  
These tiny baseball-sized fragments land all over the world (Japan, the Amazon, Central Park) and it would appear that – just like any other meteorite that’s landed on earth – that that would be all she wrote.  But apparently Mother Universe had another chapter in mind.  Soon after one of the fragments crashes into a Central Park lake, the surrounding area becomes…unstable.  First leaves start floating.  Then water goblets.  Then people!
The police freak out, contain the area, and the military are notified.  It becomes clear that they’ve never dealt with something like this before, so they contact the one man who seems to know something about this meteorite – Tom Riley.  
Tom informs them that not only is the anti-gravity bubble growing, but it’s feeding off the power in the city.  They need to SHUT THE CITY DOWN to stop this thing.  Well THAT suggestion doesn’t go over well.  The army would rather do things the American way – blow some shit up – which Tom points out again will only make it stronger (didn’t any of these guys see The Fifth Element???).  
In the meantime, the army locates renegade physicist Rodrigo Del Toro, who had to go on the run after building a mini hadron collider that nearly blew up MIT.  To their (and our) surprise, however, Rodrigo seems more interested in cracking end-of-the-world jokes than he does stopping shit from floating.
After bombing the meteorite does exactly what Tom said it would (make it worse), they realize that a last ditch effort is using Rodrigo’s mini-collider to go in there and zap Ground Zero into non-existence.  But it’s going to be tough.  Not only is the anti-gravity bubble spreading, but it’s intensifying as well.  If you’re out on the street, you’re getting zapped up into the sky.  As are cars and buildings and sidewalks and everything.  New York is literally being pulled into the sky.  Can our guys Collider-kill that motherf%cker before Earth itself becomes a victim of this gravity monster?  
I’d say just from a reading standpoint I was entertained by Invertigo.  The characters were all pretty stock, but the story itself was fun.  My biggest worry was that they wouldn’t be able to sustain the idea over a full movie, but there were some solid choices made to stave off that pitfall.
For example, I like how the gravity problem kept escalating.  It wasn’t just like everybody flew up into the air in Act 1 and we just kept repeating that image.  Every 15 pages or so, something happened to intensify the gravity, which created new unique challenges.  
So at first, it’s just a matter of holding onto things so you don’t float away.  But pretty soon, that won’t suffice  The pull is too strong.  So the group has to walk in the sewers upside-down (so they’re actually walking on the ceilings) in order to get to the center of the city to unleash the collider. 
There were also some cool set-pieces.  A favorite was having to walk across a New York City bridge that a floating Staten Island Ferry had plunged into, forcing them to actually traverse through the awkwardly positioned boat to get to the other side of the bridge.  There was a great scene of them getting stuck inside a subway with a never-ending field of rats.  There was also a great scene where a fighter jet had to navigate through a New York City skyline with people and cars and busses all around it.  
So I feel like Kruger and Camp really sat down and thought this premise through.  They clearly wanted to exploit the idea as much as possible.  Of course, there were some missteps. The script often felt like an episode of Sciency McScience.  There’s so much science talk here that at times I thought the target demographic of the film was electrons.  I’d say I understood about 1/3 of what everyone was talking about.
There’re also some lame characters.  Rodrigo, the MIT dude, is just…no.  He’s annoying.  Unlikable.  Sits around mumbling jokes all day.  But the most baffling thing about him is that the government sent one of their top units out to get him, and then when they brought him back, NOBODY ASKED HIM WHAT TO DO!  Rodrigo even says later, “Why hasn’t anybody asked me anything?”  And I knew why: writer convenience.  If someone would’ve asked, we would’ve had to move further into the story than the writer’s would’ve liked.  So they just, conveniently, made sure no one asked, even though it made no sense.
Then there was Annoying Firefighter Single Mom and her angry 17 year old son.  There’s some backstory about how his dad died a hero firefighter, but he still hates him because by being a hero to others, he left him without a father  But then, of course, in the end, the kid decides to risk his own life (and be a hero too!) to help Tom and Rodrigo reach Central Park.  
I don’t know.  Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in these character arcs that we can’t see the bullshit through the horns.  Yeah, the character arcs, but it’s so cheesy you’d have been better off not arcing him at all.  It’s a tough line to walk because you wanna try and develop characters in these big films.  But you can’t be too obvious about it or you’re going to find yourself in the middle of an Eye-Rolling parade.  
Anyway, this was pretty good.  The spectacle factor made up for a lot of the script’s shortcomings.  I could see this becoming a fun movie.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned:  Most of the amateur Disaster Genre scripts I read have predictable set pieces that we’ve seen a million times before.  If you want your disaster script to stand out, you’re going to need three VERY UNIQUE set pieces.  Or else, why would someone want to spend 200 million dollars to make your film?  So they can give people exactly what they’ve seen before?  I don’t think 2012 was a good movie, but driving a car through a city where the world behind you is dissolving into nothing…I’d never seen that before.  So make sure the set-piece scenes in your disaster script (or ANY big budget script you’re writing) are unique.  If there’s any area where you can show off your creativity in screenwriting, this is it.   
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Screenplay Review – Doxide (Amateur Friday)

Posted on July 6, 2012 | by admin

NEW 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: Sci-Fi/Period/Crime
Premise: A mafia hitman is hired by the government to hunt down a group of extraterrestrials on the New York City waterfront.
About: On Saturday I posted 20 logline submissions for the Scriptshadow community, allowing you, the readers, to determine who I would review for the next two Amateur Fridays.  Doxide emerged as one of the top contenders immediately, which is why I’m reviewing it today.    
Writer: Tim Miller
Details: 116 pages
I’m always looking for unique ideas.  When you’re in the reading business, almost everything you get is something you’ve seen before.  The idea behind Saturday’s post was to give you guys a behind-the-scenes look at that.  Most of the ideas I’m sent either sound derivative, boring, or both.  I’m not saying that Doxide is the chupacabra of movie ideas.  But you can see, with its unique mash-up of mafia and aliens, how it would stand out amongst a group of other loglines. 
This is the thing that so many writers seem to forget.  They believe that as long as they love their subject matter and their characters, that that’ll be enough to make someone want to read their script.  That’s simply not the case.  You need to figure out how to stand out at the idea stage so that when you pitch it, people will want to read the thing.
Okay, so on to Doxide.  Did it live up to its premise?  Well, that’s hard to say because its premise is so darn weird.  
The year is 1962 and 42 year old Carlo Fibonacci is a hit man who works for the highly regarded Carpaccio family.  In fact, Don Carpaccio just had Carlo take care of one of his enemies down by the docks.  Guy was a thorn in the Don’s side.  Now? Fuggetaboutit. 
But not for long.  Because some strange things are going on down on the waterfront.  Seems there’re some pesky new foreigners (Russians maybe) making a play for territory.  Oh, and motoring into the ocean in the middle of the night to pick up fallen meteorites.  Not the M.O. of your garden variety crime syndicate.  
But before this activity hits Don’s radar, he’s approached by a pair of FBI agents. They want to hire Carlo to take down these foreigners.  Oh, and shooting them in the heart isn’t good enough.  They want Carlo to decapitate their heads – Highlander-style.  Talk about odd requests.  But money’s money so Carlo takes the job.  And he soon learns why these foreigners are so valuable.  When you shoot them, the mother%uckers heal!  Yup.  Self-healing foreigners.  
After killing a couple of them, Carlo finally meets their leader, who explains what they’re doing here.  They’re aliens.  And they’ve come because humanity is on the verge of destroying itself.  They’re basically teachers, recruiting humans and teaching them how to settle disputes peacefully, so that they might go out and spread the message before, you know, a nuclear war breaks out or something.  
When Carlo realizes this, he has a change of heart and doesn’t want to decapitate anyone anymore.  He saw the horrors of war first hand, so getting rid of them sounds pretty groovy.  But The Dom doesn’t share Carlo’s Woodstockian enlightenment.  He realizes that aliens are worth monnn-ayyyy!  So he tricks Carlo into bringing one back and puts her on the open market.  The other aliens aren’t a fan of the e-bay listing and decide to fight back.  So…which side is Carlo going to play for? 
Man this is a tough one to break down.  My initial thoughts are that there’s a war going on in this screenplay, and not the one between the mafia and the aliens.  It’s one between these two subject matters.  I’m just not sure they ever meshed well together.  Miller plays the mafia side of the story so seriously, that the sci-fi side feels like a round peg trying to fit into a square hole.  
In order to fit in, then, the alien angle becomes so serious that it’s almost like they’re not even aliens.  They’re people.  They only have one power – and that’s to heal.  So these guys are essentially humans.  And maybe that was Miller’s intent.  The aliens are metaphors for…something.  I don’t know.  But their inclusion felt so workmanlike that I didn’t get that spark I felt from the logline.  Maybe I wanted them to be more fantastical.  Maybe I wanted their plan to be more interesting.  I’m not sure.  But for a premise this catchy, the story itself was pretty by-the-book.  
Structurally, there was one mistake that stood out – the stakes.  There were no personal stakes for Carlo to do the job.  He had nothing invested – nothing tied in – to taking these aliens down.  If he failed, his life would pretty much be the same.  So there was a detachment in his pursuit that kept me at arm’s length.
On a more basic screenwriting level, the naming here drove me crazy!  Two of the main characters are named “Castor” and “Carlo.”  This is screenwriting 101 here.  Those names are practically identical to each other so I was constantly having to go back and check who was who.  Also in the mix we have Clio and Calliope.  It’s a freaking “C” party, with “C” standing for “Confusing.”  And I don’t know if it’s just me, but do every one of these mafia scripts have to use the “Mafia Name Index” for their characters?  Frankie Jr, Giuseppe, Tony, Vito, Little Dom, Paulie.  Or maybe that’s just how it really is?  In real life that’s how they’re all named?  Still, it was annoying because it felt so unoriginal.
When it comes down to it, and I look at this screenplay beyond the analysis, it all feels too…serious.  It’s just so heavy.  It’s almost like the screenplay is someone’s ribcage and an elephant’s sitting on top of it. It can’t breathe.  And that’s not to say I wanted something goofy here, but it’s dangerous having a mono-drama script.  If there’s only one emotion the entire time (heaviness), it’s like riding a roller-coaster that only goes straight.  Where are the drops?  Where are the loops?  You need different emotions to keep an audience invested.  And I didn’t see any of that here.  
So sadly, I have to give today’s amateur script a “wasn’t for me.” :(
Script link: Doxide (p.s. If you want to get the Amateur Friday scripts early, e-mail me with subject line: “EARLY”)
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned:  Whether you have a high concept idea or a low-concept idea, try to include the major conflict of your story in the logline.  I read so many loglines where no conflict is mentioned.  Which is boring.  For example, here’s the logline that got me excited to read Doxide:  “A mafia hitman is hired by the government to hunt down a group of extraterrestrials on the New York City waterfront.”  The key phrase here is “hunt down.”  There’s the conflict.  A lesser writer might’ve written a logline like this: “A mafia family becomes aware of a group of extraterrestrials on the New York City waterfront.”  You see how there’s no conflict mentioned, and how it’s therefore less interesting?  
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Twit-Pitch Review – Douche Patrol

Posted on July 5, 2012 | by admin

Genre: Comedy
Premise: (Original Twit-Pitch Logline) Two partners in the newly created Douche Patrol try to expose a plot to douchify the masses through a reality TV show.
About: For those recently joining Scriptshadow, I held a contest a few months back called “Twit-Pitch,” where anyone could pitch me their screenplay on Twitter, as long as it was contained within a single tweet.  I picked my 100 favorite loglines and read the first 10 pages of each (which I live-reviewed on Twitter), and then from those, picked the Top 20, which I’ll read the entire screenplay for.  This is one of the finalists.
Writer: William A. Lawrence
Details: 103 pages

We’re back with another Twit-Pitch contestant.  There are 20 finalists and as of now I have…….18 left to read. I’m so cruising.  And I’m not going to lie – there’s a bit of planning involved in reviewing these scripts.  I’m saving the ones I think are going to be best for last.  That’s not to say I’m expecting the scripts I review early to suck.  They just have little things that concern me here and there, like today’s script, Douche Patrol.

Douche Patrol has one of those loglines that makes you laugh but also makes you wonder, “Is this an entire film?”  I mean can you extend a premise like this out for a full 100 minutes? That’s what I was worried about, even though I laughed my ass off during those first 10.  Well, let’s hope William pulls it off.  He’s been the epitome of an anti-douchebag to me on Twitter, so I’m rooting for him.

Late 20s Ryan Connor has a problem with douchebags.  His parents were killed by one.  Which is why he’s the star cop in a new police division specifically built to take down douchebags.  If you’re driving a lime green Honda Civic, blasting obnoxious music, reclined 70% back, talking on your phone?  The Douche Patrol is going to get you.

Ryan’s partner is the alcoholic overly shy Jenna Snow.  Jenna believes just as much in taking douches down as Ryan.  She’s just not as vocal about it.  In fact, Jenna has such a problem voicing her opinion on anything, she’s turned heavily to the drink and secretly goes to public speaking courses at night.

After a routine takedown of a douchebag, Ryan and Jenna are led to a sex bomb MILF named Marlene Cardrow (think Sharon Stone).  Marlene seems to be associated with a lot of douchebags, and they want to know why.  But Marlene is cool as a cucumber.  It turns out she’s a casting director for reality TV shows.  It’s her job to go out there and look for douchebags to put on these shows.

That’s good enough for Ryan, who’s instantly smitten by Marlene, but Jenna’s not swayed.  Something more is going on here.  It takes her awhile to convince Ryan, but she finally does, and this leads them to realize Marlene is working for a huge reality TV show producer who’s using reality TV to douchify the masses so that he can get them to buy all the stupid douchey things that douchebags buy.  It will take everything in Ryan and Jenna’s arsenal to eliminate this producer’s douchiness and stop the douchefying before it’s too late!

I’ll be frank with you – I’m still not sure what constitutes being a douchebag.  I think about this often actually.  Isn’t the saying that if you don’t see the big deal about something, then maybe you ARE that something?  So maybe I’m a douchebag.  I don’t know.  I mean I definitely don’t own a lime green Honda Civic.  So I’m probably not a major douchebag.  But still.

All right, we’re getting off track here.  Which is douchey.  Douche Patrol is pretty much what I was afraid it was going to be.  It’s a funny idea for about 25 pages, and then when story and character development need to kick in, it loses steam.

That’s not for lack of trying on William’s part.  He does his best to add a story here.  But the thing with really broad premises is that it’s difficult to add depth to them.  Broad and depth just don’t mesh.  That’s why broad usually works best in a half hour format (Seinfeld, Family Guy, etc.) where it doesn’t have to come up with some big elaborate storyline to keep you involved.

I mean take Jenna for instance.  William worked really hard to create a developed character here, but it just didn’t fit.  Jenna is an alcoholic??  In a movie about douche patrolling?  That doesn’t work.  Indeed, her storyline (where she sneaks off after work and downs bottles of whiskey) feels as awkward as cleaning up a used douche.  In a drama, sure.  But not in a kooky broad comedy.

Speaking of Jenna, if I were William, I would turn her into a guy.  I know making her a girl is unique – but different doesn’t always mean better.  In addition to that, the whole thing where she’s quiet doesn’t play.  Scripts don’t work well with silent characters because we just end up forgetting they’re there.  And again, in a movie as broad as this, you want the sidekick to be fun, not mute.  Turning Jenna into a guy and making him a lot funnier is definitely the way to go here.  Jenna, as she stands, is the worst part of the screenplay.

The plot also had problems.  Once we arrest Lime Green Honda Civic Dude, Ryan seems hellbent on finding and questioning Marlene.  But it’s never clear exactly why.  She’s been seen in a picture with him, but I don’t know why that constitutes concentrating an entire investigation on her.  Also, because the reasoning for questioning her is so murky, I’m never sure what he’s asking her for or about.  I get that in general it’s about her hanging around douches, but again, that’s not enough.

If I were William, I’d establish that they’ve been looking for a MYSTERIOUS SUPER DOUCHEBAG (possibly the producer) for a long time.  But as of now, he’s just a mystery man to them.  There are no leads. When they find Marlene, there’s some suspicious backstory on her that alludes to her maybe knowing this Super Douche, and that’s why they go after her.  There are fragments of this approach in the script, but they’re too vague.  They need to be clear.  Remember, this is the plot point that’s driving your entire investigation.  It can’t be confusing.

This is where a lot of comedy scripts end up.  They have funny moments, but not enough story.  Coming up with a comedy interesting enough (and with high enough stakes) to last an entire 100 minutes is one of those challenges that screenwriters get paid the big bucks for.  Make us care beyond the gimmick and you’re golden.

Script Link: Douche Patrol  
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I Learned: Make sure the tone of your characters and story match.  If you’re writing a broad comedy, you can’t have one of the characters be a hardcore alcoholic.  Their flaw should be funnier (more broad!).  Maybe Jenna’s weakness is that she’s always gone out with douchebags, and is inherently attracted to them.  She’s a reformed douchebag dater.  So she’s constantly at war with herself when she’s arresting these guys.  
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Screenplay Review – Challenger

Posted on July 4, 2012 | by admin

Genre: Historical (1986)
Premise: An unorthodox scientist is brought in to investigate why the 1986 shuttle, Challenger, exploded after take-off.
About: The writer of today’s script, Nicole Perlman, is writing Marvel’s “Guardians Of The Galaxy” script.  Perlman is making Variety look good as she was listed a couple of year’s ago on their “Ten Writers To Watch” list.  I believe Perlman wrote Challenger while still in college.  The script finished on 2005’s inaugural Black List. There have since been two drafts (in 2008 and 2012) which I couldn’t get my hands on.  I hear they address some of the questions I bring up in today’s review though. :)
Writer: Nicole Perlman
Details: 114 pages (March 20, 2005 draft)

On any other week, Challenger would probably be getting a more adoring write-up.  Unfortunately, it’s coming on the heels of recent Top 25’er, The Ends Of The Earth.  Maybe if the lead character was having sex with his grandmother, it might’ve had a better chance.  But it turns out this is just your basic straightforward investigation flick.

Okay, maybe not that straightforward.  The lead is 69 years old.  And he’s dying of 2 very rare forms of cancer.  And he was directly involved in The Manhattan Project.  Some would even say he was the guy who gave birth to the atom bomb.  So I guess Challenger wasn’t that basic at all.  But was it good?  That’s all that matters, right?

The aforementioned Dr. Richard Feynman is a physics professor at Caltech.  Feynman is very much a scientist.  He hasn’t combed his hair in 20 years.  And the things that get him giggly aren’t Seinfeld re-runs, but rather mathematical equations that would stump even Will Hunting.

What makes Feynman different, though, is that he’s fun and easygoing.  He likes cracking jokes, never taking anything too seriously, and flirting with girls a third his age.  Even though there’s a cancer eating away at his stomach that will soon end his life, the man seems pretty upbeat.

That upbeat life is going swimmingly until, like the rest of the nation, he watches the Challenger space shuttle explode on TV.  It was a big deal at the time because nothing bad had ever happened with the space shuttle.  It was seen, in many ways, as flawless.  But flawless space vehicles don’t go kaboom on their way up to space, do they?

An independent committee is immediately put together to find out what went wrong.  But the deck is stacked.  Everyone on the committee has close ties to NASA.  Most of their jobs depend on them.  So are they really going to blame the organization if they find out they did something wrong?

They have to look at least SOMEWHAT impartial. So they bring Feynman in.  At first Feynman doesn’t want to be involved (refusal of the call!), but when whispers surface that there may be a cover-up, he’s all in.  You see, Feynman’s life up to that point had been defined by his involvement with the atom bomb.  He’s indirectly linked to a lot of deaths.  He believes that if he can find out what went wrong here, maybe he can change that legacy.  Maybe he can be remembered for saving lives instead of ending them.

As cute and cuddly a story as that is, the NASA brass could give two shits.  They have an institution to protect.  And they’re not going to let some renegade scientist come in and embarrass them.  At the top of that list is former Secretary of State William P. Rogers. Rogers sees Feynman as the enemy, the one person who could screw this up.  And he’s all over him from day one.

While the rest of the committee plays along with NASA’s farce of an investigation, Feynman breaks rules wherever he goes.  For example, the rocket technicians have mysteriously all gone on vacation the day Feynman’s supposed to interview them.  No problem.  He finds them and interviews them anyway.  Or when the committee is inexplicably not allowed to look at the wreckage, he pretends to be one of the seniors on a Kennedy Space Center tour to get his hands on the shuttle.

The investigation eventually leads him to something called an “O-ring,” which is supposed to keep the rocket fuel from leaking.  However, it looks like the rings were faulty, that fuel DID leak, and that’s what caused the crash.  The question is, why did it happen?  And why wasn’t it prevented?  What Feynman will find is that a lot of people inside NASA knew about the faulty O-rings but went ahead with the launch anyway.  Now it’s a matter of naming those people, even if puts America’s entire space program in jeopardy.

Scriptshadow pick for Feynman

Initial thoughts on this one?  A good script!  Especially if it was, indeed, written by someone in college.  Whenever you have scripts like this one, you gotta have a great lead character – since the lead character is everything.  A dying unorthodox sex-obsessed Manhattan-Project vet scientist?  I’d say that’s a pretty darn interesting character.

The mystery itself is pretty interesting as well.  There’s something about big powerful entities that are guilty of something trying to protect themselves that audiences love to watch.  We want to see that entity go down. It’s why we were so obsessed with Watergate, with Penn State, with Maddof.  We want people who think they’re above the law to be held accountable!  Throw a likable underdog in there as the one who’s trying to expose them, and it’s hard to fuck that story up.

But therein lies the one major issue with Challenger.  I’m not sure there’s a big enough conspiracy here.  I mean there was a conspiracy, but it was kind of tame.  There was pressure for NASA to launch the shuttle.  A bunch of engineers said it was too cold.  NASA ignored them and launched anyway.  The o-rings busted as a result and the shuttle exploded.

I don’t know.  I guess that’s bad.  But it lacks the true nefarious evil decision that makes a conspiracy pop.  I mean I still don’t know who made the ultimate decision to launch the shuttle.  It’s just “NASA.”  Even our villain in the movie, Rogers, had nothing to do with it.  So in the end, I’m left wondering who I’m supposed to hate.  Who I’m supposed to be happy went down.  It’d be like writing The Shawshank Redemption without the warden character.  At the end, the police decide there was a problem with “the prison” in general.  How satisfying would that have been?

Not only that, but Challenger’s ending kind of…sorry but I have to do it…disintegrates.  After Feynman threatens to expose his findings to the media, Rogers convinces him that if he does, the president won’t find out what really happened. So he says if he keeps quiet, he’ll attach Feynman’s findings in a brief to the president.  Feynman then agrees to this!

Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute.  First, if Feynman exposes his findings to the media, and every newspaper in the country prints them…THE PRESIDENT WON’T FIND OUT???  That makes no sense whatsoever.  But what really chapped my ass was that, Feynman, who we’ve established as an untrusting loner who does things his own way, agrees to this!!!

What???

This was a huge fault in the script (you never want your characters acting out of character – especially during crucial plot points) and when Rogers, of course, rewrote Feynman’s findings to make NASA look good, I was on Rogers side.  I thought, “Good.  If you were stupid enough to agree to that, you deserve to get screwed.”  Not exactly the feeling you want your reader to have during the climax of the story.

So I think that ending needs to be cleaned up if this movie’s ever to be made.  BUT, having said that, I do think there’s something here.  The main character is a great one (until the late moment).  The story is naturally dramatic with tons of conflict.  And if we can establish a BIG VILLAIN who we get to see go down, the ending will live up to everything the rest of the story sets up.  So with that said, I think this is worth reading.

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

What I learned:  This script is a great reminder of the power of obstacles.  When you set your hero off to achieve his goal, you want to put as many obstacles in front of him as possible.  Those obstacles create conflict, which in turn creates drama, which in turn creates entertainment.  NASA engineers refuse to talk to Feynman.  The rest of the committee refuses to help Feynman.  Feynman’s not allowed to look at the wreckage.  Rogers is constantly trying to kick him off the investigation.  His findings are stolen from his hotel.  That’s the great thing about setting up a big clear goal, is that you get to throw a ton of obstacles in your hero’s way.

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