As many of you may have heard, I took a year off from Los Angeles to move back to Chicago and reclaim my soul. But I’m moving back in August and as I started looking for places, I realized, like Liam Neeson in Taken, that I had a particular set of skills. I’d lived in LA for 8 years, bounced all over, been to every neighborhood at least once. If there was anyone who could help future LA screenwriting transplants find the right neighborhood to live in, it would be me! So even though this KIND Of article has been written before, it’s never been written Carson-style. So buckle up beanbags. Shit’s about to get square footage.

SANTA MONICA ($$) – Santa Monica is one of the best places to live in Los Angeles because it has one of the most active beaches in LA, one of the best shopping areas in 3rd Street Promenade, and it’s the most centralized beach town in the city. Now you will be taking most of your meetings in the Hollywood/Beverly Hills area, and Santa Monica is about a 30-40 minute drive from there, but it’s a small price to pay for being close to the beach, right!? The only real downside is that Santa Monica is the homeless capital of the United States. I don’t know if this is official or anything but it’s impossible to go anywhere without running into homeless people. And be careful, since LA’s homeless crowd is the best dressed in the nation, they often look like normal people. I once thought I’d made a new best friend only to have him screaming at me five minutes later that I was working for the government. Very embarrassing. Especially since I had just bought him ice cream.

BRENTWOOD ($$) – Brentwood is a really cool place situated just west of UCLA, about 20 minutes from the Santa Monica beach. It’s sectioned off from the university by the notorious parking lot known as the 405 freeway. Very clean and pretty. It has this nice (if humongous) central street with all these nice little shops around it. The crowd here tends to have a young, slightly upscale feel to it. I love going here every once in awhile but my impression of the community is that they’re a little stuck-up. Maybe I’ve just had bad experiences there but I didn’t quite gel with the people. However, if you consider talking to others overrated or you’re stuck-up yourself, Brentwood is perfect for you! (p.s. Conan lives in Brentwood)

VENICE ($$) – Venice is one of the places I’m looking at. It’s another beach town, just south of Santa Monica. It’s less pretentious, and the clientele reflect it. You’ll find a lot more tattoos and piercings here. Venice is also home to the famous Venice Boardwalk. And if you Google that, you’ll get a feel for what you can expect. There’s a community further inland in Venice that’s a little more sophisticated, yet maintains that sort of rebel edge. This is where I’d like to live, unless I have enough dough to live beachside or on Venice’s famous moat-river thing. That will depend on how many of you buy my book. I should start a slogan. “Books for beach!” Someone go trend that on Twitter right now! (I still don’t know what trending means btw). Keep in mind Venice is even FURTHER from the Hollywood/Beverly Hills area (45 min), so meeting transit times might become an issue.

PALMS/WEST L.A. ($) – (about 25 min from Beverly Hills) I lived in Palms for a while. It’s about a 20 minute drive directly east of Venice Beach, and since you’re much further off the water and south of high priced Santa Monica, the property is cheaper. Like a lot of places in LA, you can weave in and out of Palms and find some pretty nice buildings as well as some pretty not-so-nice ones. This is a great starter neighborhood though, because you’re right next to the two major highways in the city (the 405 and the 10), allowing you to get anywhere you want to go.

CULVER CITY ($$) – Culver City is located adjacent to West LA. Much of Culver City used to be the MGM lot, so it’s a really neat little place, tucked into the trees, with a lot of history to it. I like it because it has sort of a Midwest suburban vibe to it, how I grew up. And recently, within the last 10 years, the downtown area has really picked up. The Sony lot is right in the heart of Culver City, so you have lot of young hip people coming from over there. I really like Culver City but since I lived there already, I want to try a new area.

MARINA DEL RAY ($$) – Oh, the stories I could tell you about Marina Del Ray. My first girlfriend in Los Angeles lived on a boat in Marina Del Ray. Wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree. Once, while in the boat, we started shaking, and she said, “Oh, here comes another earthquake.” I looked at her and I said, “Huh?” And she said, “Yeah, there’s a lot of earthquakes in Los Angeles. Sometimes like ten a day.” I said, “That was a boat passing us.” She kind of squinted at me and went, “Ohhhhh.” Anyway, Marina Del Ray is south of Venice and is sort of an unknown spot in Los Angeles. But it’s got some really cool beachfront property that’s reasonably priced. And it’s reallly quiet there. The downside is that you’re on the southern tip of what would be considered “reasonable driving distance” between everything in LA. It will take you an hour to get to Beverly Hills.

IN AND OUT ($4.99 – double double and a fry) – In and Out is the most popular burger joint in LA. It sells just burgers and fries, nothing else. Nothing is frozen and everything is made to order. It’s ridiculously delicious. Now while you’re not technically allowed to live inside an In and Out, you can sit inside for a few hours before an employee notices you. And even once you do get kicked out, they have tables outside that you can sleep under. There are about 50 of these stores throughout the city and the last time I checked, about half are available.

BEVERLY HILLS ($$$) – There’s no doubt that Beverly Hills is prime real estate. The houses are a lot bigger, the lawns are a lot wider. It even makes you ignore the insane amount of concrete that dominates the city (some streets in LA will take you 3 minutes to cross they’re so wide). Having said that, there are a few places on the fringe of Beverly Hills that aren’t too expensive. They’re pretty small, but you can have that coveted Beverly Hills zip code if you really want it. There’s also an area called “Beverly Hills Adjacent” that’s basically like the ghetto of Beverly Hills. However, the ghetto of Beverly Hills is still pretty nice! I lived there once. And what I found is when someone asks you where you live, you can just say “Beverly Hills ashsushaa,” and slur the last part. If you’re lucky, they’ll think you just said Beverly Hills. Oh, and Beverly Hills Adjacent is also the central hub for the Orthodox Jew community. So if you want to live here, you gotta grow a beard and get a top hat.

WESTWOOD ($$) – (25 min or less to Bev Hills) Westwood, or “Tehran East” as I like to call it, is a strange place. There are two types of people you’ll see here – college students from UCLA (where the university is located) and Persians, who make up 60% of Westwood’s population. I just made that number up but it’s reasonably accurate. Westwood is the first town east of Santa Monica, so it’s about a 25 minute drive to the beach, straight down Wilshire Boulevard, which is the biggest street that’s not a highway I’ve ever seen. The area itself is pretty nice. It has an okay downtown area whose highlights include large old-school movie theaters that are great for premiere parties. And if you’ve got a sweet tooth like yours truly, it has two GREAT places to get your fix – Diddy Reese (where the cookies are always fresh) and Stan’s Donuts (which has the most unique donuts in town. They actually bake a reeses peanut butter cup into one of their donuts. Need I say more?).

PACIFIC PALISADES ($$$) – (55 minutes to Beverly Hills) Pacific Palisades is one of the nicest areas in Los Angeles. It’s the main beach area north of Santa Monica. You gotta take this windy twisty road to get there so it’s a bit of a hassle to commute. But this place is like a prettier Beverly Hills (at least in my opinion). It’s hilly and vegetative (is that a word?) and has places on the beach. If you’re drowning in money and don’t need to drive a lot, this place is for you.

THE VALLEY ($) (BURBANK, STUDIO CITY, OTHER TOWNS) – In Los Angeles, you have these hills that split the city in two. On the south side of those hills, you have proper Los Angeles (which I’ve been talking about) and to the north, you have the valley. I’m just gonna come right out and say it. I hate the Valley. I worked there once (in Burbank) and I didn’t like anything about it. The heat gets trapped in the valley so it’s always hotter there. The smog also gets trapped in the valley, so you’re sucking down soot wherever you go. And there’s just this feeling of depression whenever you’re in the valley. Like it never made it out of the 70s. The huge plus side of living in the Valley, of course, is that it’s a lot cheaper. So it’s a good starter place. And if you absolutely have to live in the Valley, I’d recommend Studio City. I can’t say I know much about it but the few times I’ve been there, I liked it better than anywhere else in the valley, probably because it actually has current stores. Plus it’s right across the hill so should you wake up one day and realize you’re actually in the valley, you’re just a 15 minute car drive from freedom.

 

LOS FELIZ AND SILVER LAKE ($$) – (I think 35 min to Beverly Hills?) These are two places I’m thinking of moving to. The crowd here is young and hip and artsy, but, from what I’ve been told, not the pretentious kind of young and hip and artsy. The people are more genuine. It’s kind of a hilly interesting area with some unique houses that date back to a long time ago. It’s just northwest of downtown, so you’re not gonna like this place if you’re a beach person because it’s a good 45 minute drive to the beach, but I’m hoping that the energy and the people here will make up for that because I want to find some cool folks in my second stint in LA!

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES – Up until I left, there was a huge push to make downtown Los Angeles trendy. And they have put a lot of cool lofts up, which is nice because you don’t really have many loft options in LA. But when I went down to look at these places, it was as dead as a door nail and you would walk one block and find yourself in a sketchy part of the city. Also, I’m 95 percent sure they hired actors to walk around with dogs in order to make it look like cool hip people lived there. It has been a year though, so maybe that’s changed.

HOLLYWOOD ($ – $$$) – Oh boy. I have mixed feelings about Hollywood. Here’s the thing. Los Angeles is so messed up and their layout so confusing, that I’m not even sure where Hollywood extends to. But the part of Hollywood I’m familiar with is dirty, grimy, and desperate. Because it’s one of the most popular town names in the world, it’s where all the clueless people live when they first arrive in LA. All these people care about is becoming famous. So there’s a dominant young narcissistic vibe on top of all the dirtiness. However, if Hollywood does extend as far west as I think it does, there are some places at the west end of Hollywood, off Sunset, that are nice. But that area might actually be “West Hollywood.” I don’t know. It’s confusing.

WEST HOLLYWOOD ($$) – West Hollywood is one of the cleanest nicest most centralized areas in LA and, like I said, where most people want to have meetings. So very little driving (except when you’re going to the studios, which are freaking spread out all over Los Angeles). I don’t like it though. It’s just packed so tight, I feel like a sardine whenever I’m there. But it’s right next to the famous Sunset Strip so if you’re a partier, this is a good area to live in. West Hollywood is also the central hub for the gay community in LA. Which may explain why it’s so clean. And last I checked (which admittedly was awhile ago) there were some rent control areas. So you might really luck out with a sweet affordable pad.

ORANGE COUNTY ($ or $$) – I actually really like Orange County, which is South East of Los Angeles and the home to Disneyland. There are a lot of nice little apartments and houses there, many of which are very affordable. And if you don’t like the pretentious LA scene, Orange County is a great alternative because many of the people there don’t even consider themselves Los Angelites. But if you expect to be taking meetings or coming to Los Angeles a lot, I’m gonna save you a lot of time and tell you to steer clear of Orange County. On an average day, it can take you an hour and 45 minutes to get to town. Or longer!

OTHER – Los Angeles also has a bunch of tucked in tiny areas that are really nice. For example, further inland from Marina del Rey is Mar Vista, which is like this secret little perfect community with all these awesome places that only a few people in LA know about. There’s Pasadena, which is really nice but a bit of a hike out east so I’d stay away from there unless you’re only planning to come to LA every couple of weeks. And if all else fails, Los Angeles is a great place to be homeless. The weather is always nice. The thrown away clothes are often designer-quality. And if you fall asleep on the sidewalk, you’ll wake up with seven full burritos from Baja Fresh laying by your side. Yes, homeless people in Los Angeles get fed well! Maybe next article I’ll highlight the best park benches in Los Angeles to sleep on. They have some great ones up at Griffith Park.

So guys, where should I live?? And where do you live now?? Pros? Cons?

A writer who’s been dead for over a hundred years pens today’s screenplay. Well…kinda.

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: A sci-fi retelling of the The Count Of Monte Cristo.
About: Cristo sold last year to Warner Brothers and later made the lower half of the Black List. Alfonso Cuaron (Children Of Men) is attached to direct. Shorr, the writer, has recently worked on the remake of Ride!, an old John Wayne Western, and Substitution, about a murder plot spearheaded by a substitute teacher. The original writer of “Monte Cristo,” Frenchman Alexandre Dumas, penned an outline of the novel which his frequent ghostwriter then expanded upon. Dumas, of course, is also the creator of The Three Muskateers.
Writer: Ian Shorr (inspired by “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas)
Details: 121 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I don’t know about you, but I really liked the 2003 adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo. I thought it was tres well-directed, even though we haven’t seen much of Kevin Reynolds since. You guys remember Reynolds, right? The infamous director of Waterworld? Oh wait a minute. Kevin Reynolds didn’t direct Waterworld. Kevin Costner did! Because Costner is INSANE. I suppose if I was part of that production, I’d take a decade or two between projects also.

What are we talking about again? Oh yeah, The Count Of Monte Cristo. What I was getting at was that this is one of those stories that resonates no matter what generation you’re in. It’s about injustice, greed, revenge, hope. It cuts to the core of what gets us human beings riled up. So it seems like a no-brainer, in retrospect, that someone would take this story into the future. And that’s where today’s review begins. The future. “The future Carson?” “Yes, Review, it’s time to look all the way to the year…2000.”

Actually, Cristo takes us much further into the future than that, where we meet 13-year-old Coleman. As a homeless orphan, Coleman doesn’t have many options other than to join a gang. So he finds himself bouncing around with the wrong crowd, burglarizing anywhere that has a whiff of money to it.

The leader of the gang, a slimy rat named Pheng, decides to make a much bigger score, though, and rob a house up in the suburbs. And when I say “up,” I literally mean “up.” Floating safely above the scum and lowest common denominators of the city is a suburb…in the air.

Pheng constructs the elaborate heist on one of the homes. But when the team encounters a few unexpected setbacks, Coleman gets left to take the blame. Talk about life on the streets! Or…err…*above* the streets.

To Coleman’s surprise, however, the owner of the estate, a kind man named McCormick, doesn’t press charges. He takes a liking to Coleman and gives him a job, to which Coleman throws every ounce of his soul into.

His exhaustive work ethic contrasts sharply with McCormick’s son, Max, who’s about the same age as Coleman, and works on the theory of privilege – that when you’re born into the good life, everything should be handed to you. As the two boys grow up together, McCormick finds himself gravitating more towards Coleman than his own son, which is not lost on Max.

After years of being neglected for this scrapper, Max has had enough of both his father and Coleman. So he recruits none other than Pheng to off his dad and make it look like Coleman did it. The plan works perfectly and Coleman is sent halfway across the galaxy to a prison planet.

It’s there where he meets the eccentric Gabriel Maldestados. Gabrielle bides time by turning human beings into candle wax. Hey, a man’s gotta have some light to read! Gabrielle takes a liking to Coleman and teaches him everything he knows about conning and fighting and…turning people into candles.

Oh, and let’s not forget that Gabriel also stole a few tens of billions of dollars and stashed it on another planet. So when Coleman escapes and finds the money, he’s able to go back and exact revenge on Max, who has since taken everything Coleman once had.

I thought Cristo was kind of cool. First of all, I love this story. The setup of a man being deceived and then charged for something he didn’t do is basically the ideal recipe to create sympathy for a character. There isn’t a person on earth who isn’t rooting for Coleman after what he went through.

And then there’s the neat twist of the “scrapper” becoming the billionaire. It’s kind of like the nerd who always got bullied showing up to the ten year reunion stronger than everyone. You can’t wait to see everybody’s reaction.

But what was cool about “Cristo” was that this was the first time I was looking at the story through the prism of script analysis. And from that end, I realized how difficult this story was to tell. I mean there is *so much plot* in this tale. We start out as a kid on the streets robbing a floating suburb. We cut to many years later when he’s grown up and working for the people he robbed. Then we’re sent to a prison on another planet. Then we’re traveling around the galaxy on a ship looking for hidden money. Then we come back and finish everything on Earth.

If I were to see this in outline form, I’d be terrified for the writer. I don’t think that’s talked about enough in screenwriting – how the amount of plot can affect your story. Because if you add too much plot, then you’re spending all your time just working through the mechanics of your story. You’re forced into a lot of exposition (“We need to go here before we go here and then we gotta go here!”), and that can bog down the naturalism of the movie. So to navigate that can be tricky.

And yet I thought Shorr did a solid job. Despite all the jumping around, I still felt an emotional connection to Coleman, which is the most important thing. It also goes to show what a time-tested story can do for you. If something’s been popular for 150 years, there’s usually a reason for that. The story works. So you trust it.

Still, I’m amazed at how complicated the structure is here. The most interesting part, which is the Count coming back, newly rich, newly powerful, intent on enacting revenge, doesn’t happen until the third act of the screenplay! So you’re squeezing the coolest part of your story all into a single act.

In today’s approach to storytelling, you’d probably want this happening by the end of the first act. So you’d start your character in jail. Maybe have some flashbacks to indicate how he got here. Then you’d have him escaping by page 15, finding the gold soon after, and then arriving back on earth by page 30. You’d then use the bulk of the movie to see this newly powerful mystery man weave his way into Max’s private upscale society in order to finally murder him. This, for example, is how Gangs Of New York is structured.

But that’s not really how they told stories back in the day, which means, once modernized, you have a structure that both hinders as well as sets the script apart. It’s similar, in that sense, to It’s A Wonderful Life, which also would be rewritten today to have George Bailey experiencing his life-changing moment on page 30, not page 90.

I don’t know, I just think structure is fascinating, so I found this one a delight to examine, especially because it still works despite its old-fashioned approach. I also loved the delightfully quacky Gabriel. I liked that the sci-fi update gave the material a fresh feel. And I liked our hero Coleman, who was sympathetic to the core. I’d still probably try to get to the jail segment faster and bring Coleman back to earth sooner, but I admit I have no idea how to do that. I liked Cristo. Solid script!

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

What I learned: One of the easiest ways to get a script sold or get people interested in material is to take a classic story and place it in a different setting. Maybe it’s in a different location. Maybe it’s in a different time. Maybe it’s with a different class of people. These ideas always get producers excited because stories that stand the test of time are much stronger bets than new stories which haven’t withstood anything.

Roger Balfour comes back from the dead again to review a script that I’m reasonably certain was written exclusively for him. Jack The Ripper…and vampires.

Today’s screenplay will make you reevaluate just how bad your kids really are.

Genre: Comedy-Horror
Premise: A young married couple who can’t conceive decide to use in vitro fertilization. They realize something’s off, however, when their son starts acting like Satan.
About: You might remember this writer as he’s the same writer who wrote The Wedding, the comedy I reviewed a couple of weeks ago about a particularly memorable wedding. I liked that script so much that I went searching for anything else by Goldberg and found this. Let’s hope it was worth the search!
Writer: Andrew Goldberg
Details: 107 pages – June 1, 2010 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

A few months ago I reviewed a script called Zombie Baby. It was about the unique challenges a young couple went through while raising a baby…who was a ZOMBIE. Then, last week a script sold called Hell Baby. I’m not sure what that one’s about but I can probably guess. Today I’m reviewing a script called “My Son Is The Fucking Anti-Christ.” It’s about a couple who learns their young son is the spawn of Satan.

As I tried to get to the source of this latest comedy trend, I came to the conclusion that there are just a lot of fucked up parents out there who happen to be writers. I mean clearly, these scripts are written by people who have children and who either think of them as the devil, or wonder what it would be like if they were the devil. Whatever the case, these people need help. But that doesn’t mean their scripts can’t be funny. And since I really liked Zombie Baby, I was expecting to like “Anti-Christ” as well.

We’re in Costa Mesa San Diego, where I hear the weather is just fab, and that’s where we meet Tim Baker, a likable sort of doofus in his 30s. Tim and his wife Julia are in the middle of being told by their doctor that Tim’s sperm suck. They try *really hard* to swim to Julia’s egg but give up a quarter of the way through. Could this be a metaphor for Tim as well? I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m looking for a lot of metaphors in a script titled “My Son Is The Fucking Anti-Christ.”

Anyway, Tim’s bummed that he’s never going to have kids. But after Julia cheers him up, she offers an alternative. Why don’t they go to a sperm bank and get somebody else’s sperm? It’ll cost them a little money but at least they’ll have a child.

Like most men, Tim isn’t keen on having a baby that isn’t technically his. But in the end, Julia talks him into it, and the next thing Tim knows, he’s browsing through a donor brochure.

Now when you go to a sperm bank there are the top level sperm, the stuff from astrophysicists and world-class lawyers, and then there’s the “B” level sperm, which basically amounts to the guy who stumbles off the street and needs a few extra bucks for his next crack high.

Unfortunately, the couple can only afford the “crack high” group, and since Tim doesn’t want his son to have four nipples, he’s ready to walk out. But at the last second, they find a seemingly perfect donor, someone they assume that the sperm bank mixed into the B group by accident. So Julia gets impregnated by our frozen mystery man and nine months later they have a baby, Zander.

Zander grows up as a normal cheery fun cute boy. But when he reaches six, strange things start happening around him. For example, his schoolteacher zombie-walks into the middle of the street where she meets the face of a bus at 40 miles per hour.

The death is a little suspicious, but nobody thinks much of it until the funeral. It’s there, in front of a large audience, where the priest launches into a graphic eulogy which includes how much he wants to bang the dead corpse of our deceased teacher. And oh yeah, a nefarious-looking Zander watches on with a smile.

Afterwards, the priest approaches Tim and Julia and insists that he was possessed by Satan’s son during the speech, and oh yeah, Satan’s son is Zander!

Naturally, Tim thinks the priest is crazy. We all know these church workers have weird relationships with little boys. But after recruiting his semi-retarded best friend, Gary, Tim finds enough evidence to support the priest’s theory.

It’s not easy learning that your beautiful little six-year old boy dreams of burning all human being in an eternal fire, so Tim isn’t sure what to do. It’s not like you can bribe the spawn of Satan with a Tickle-Me Elmo. It also doesn’t help that the wifey doesn’t believe anything Tim says. But when Zander decides to escalate the destruction, Tim will need to figure out a way to not only save his family, but save the world.

As I tackle other questions in the movie world like, “I thought that the Twilight movies were over. Why is there another one coming out?” and “Did they clone Audrey Hepburn and put her in that Mirror Mirror movie?” I asked myself a simple question in regards to “Anti-Christ.” Why so lowest common denominator?

I mean I’m not gonna say that The Wedding was high-brow or anything. But the humor had some sophistication to it. Here in “Anti-Christ,” we get 16 different semen jokes within the first five pages. I get that everybody has a different sense of humor and different things make different people laugh, but as soon as I read all those jokes, one thing popped out at me – desperation.

When writers are just throwing out one bodily function joke out after another, it gives the impression that they have so little confidence in their idea and their story, that they’re trying to distract you with as many dumb jokes as possible. If they can keep that string going for 90 pages then maybe, just maybe, you won’t realize that there’s no movie here.

As you can probably guess, I’m not a fan of this approach.

And there’s a lot to cover up. For starters, the story just isn’t very imaginative. For example, in a scene that’s supposed to represent Zander becoming more dangerous, Tim looks for something underneath the bed and Zander starts jumping on it playfully. At first. Then he starts to jump harder and harder, until the bed collapses and injures Tim. I suppose you could shoot this in a way where it *might* be funny, but to me it just felt lazy. Aren’t their more creative concept-related ways to have your devil-child injure someone?

And the story itself just felt really small. Tim learns that that sperm bank they visited is sitting on top of a dungeon of some sort and that’s where our big climax happens. Therefore, when the finale comes, all I could imagine was a bunch of people battling each other inside a tiny 10 by 12 foot room. Like the rest of the script, it just felt too small.

And then there were a bunch of little miscellaneous missteps. For example, one of the key characters is a demon hunter, and he isn’t even called upon until the last act! So you have this major character coming in super late. We have no time to get to know him, so we never really accept him, so everything he does feels like a cheat. It was almost like…why even bother?

There were a few funny moments in the script. I really loved when they went back to their original obstetrician to get some information about Zander, and it turns out he’s gone insane, cut out his tongue, and is now housed in an insane asylum. So they go visit him and ask him a bunch of questions, which he answers, but of course he can’t speak because he doesn’t have a tongue. So the whole time he’s just conversing in awkward noises. Our characters, then, basically play a game of charades to figure out what he’s saying. That was the one scene where I genuinely laughed out loud.

But outside of that, this just didn’t feel very well formulated. It could be an early draft of course, so we need to take that into consideration. But, in my opinion, this is an example of Goldberg’s early work, and he’s since become a much better writer, which is why The Wedding shows so much more maturity.

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

What I learned: Something that isn’t talked about very often in screenwriting is conveying the size and scope of things in your script. If you undersell a key description, it could have confusing ramifications throughout the rest of the story. I was just reading this script that took place on an island and a portion of the island was separated off to withhold some dangerous creatures. But the writer never told us if the sectioned off area was as big as Manhattan or as small as a city block. So I never got a concrete idea of how big the threat actually was. A Manhattan-sized section could hold hundreds of thousands of creatures. A city block-sized section, on the other hand, might hold hundreds of creatures. That was my problem with this whole underground dungeon area in “Anti-Christ.” I had no idea how big it was so I kept imagining a tiny little dungeon room. Therefore the big climax battle in the end felt small and limited in scope. So you can see how one mis-represented description can have huge ramifications throughout the entire story.

A couple of weeks ago, you guys got to choose from ten loglines to determine which script should be reviewed for Amateur Friday. Today’s script finished in second place!

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: Romantic Comedy
Premise: When a burgeoning composer hits his head, he begins to hear his life’s soundtrack; a soundtrack that is prompting and pushing him back to his ex-fiance. But will he follow the guidance of the music?
About: Last week I held a mini-competition for 10 amateur Friday submissions and let you guys pick your favorite loglines. Soundtrack finished second, but when the first 10 pages of the Top 3 vote-getters were posted, Soundtrack received the best response of the bunch. Don’t worry, I’m not shafting the winner, Breathwork. I’ll be reviewing that next Friday (and I must say, it should be an interesting discussion – e-mail me if you want it). In the meantime, keep sending in those Amateur Friday entries (follow the submission process above!). With this new “Choose From 10” format I’m instituting, more of you have a chance to get your scripts seen by the world!
Writer: Nathan Shane Miller
Details: 104 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I want to say a couple of things before I start reviewing today’s script. First, my latest obsession is figuring out what makes a script “impressive” as opposed to “worth the read.” What is that special ingredient that lifts it up into that rare air?

A big part of it, I realized, was connection. You, as the reader, have to connect with the story and the characters on a personal level. If you don’t, no matter how well that story is executed, there’s going to be a divide between screenplay and reader. So the question is, how do you do that?

What I realized gave you the best chance was creating characters with depth, who are sympathetic, who are empathetic, who are relatable, and who are identifiable. If there’s something in ourselves that we see in the character, we will want to follow that character, and by association that character’s story.

But achieving that is tricky to do. You have to build a history into your character. You have to put them in situations that are relatable to others, yet still have those situations feel original and fresh. How in the world do you make something relatable yet different? I’m not sure I’ve figured that out yet. But the point of this long winded rant is that you need to be focusing on the story of your characters as opposed to the story of your story. Because your characters are what we’re going to connect with the most.

So how does Soundtrack make out in all of this? Grab your fiddle, strum a tune, and find out.

30 year old sorta-successful composer Ian is having a tough go of it. He’s got the biggest potential job of his life coming up, and he still hasn’t figured out the theme song for the main female character in the movie!

A big part of that is that he still hasn’t gotten over his ex-fiance, which is strange, because he doesn’t seem to like her all that much and he already has a new girlfriend, Tracy, who, while a little materialistic, is super supportive of his career. In fact, she’s the one who got him the meeting with the big producer who’s going to change his life.

But a few days before the meeting, Ian slips and bumps his head on the kitchen floor, and when he wakes up, well, I think you know what happens next. He starts hearing the soundtrack of his life!

No doubt, this is the best part of the screenplay. Nathan has taken the Blake Snyder “fun and games” adage and really gone to town with it. For example, when the not so nice Tracy approaches, Ian hears the “Imperial March,” Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars.

When someone he doesn’t like approaches his door, he hears the Jaws theme. When he’s late for work, he hears an adrenaline fueled action theme. But easily my favorite moment was when he goes to see the doctor, who happens to be Asian, and inadvertently hears really racist stereotypical Asian music – not easy to explain when the doctor, in order to help him, wants to know *exactly* what he’s hearing at this moment.

But while this may be funny for us, it’s not funny for Ian, who must now pitch his idea to a producer with the soundtrack of his life pumping through his eardrums. Naturally, the pitch ends in disaster (he should have read Mike Le’s pitching interview!) but the producer decides to give him one more chance. Come up with the female lead’s theme by the end of the week and he’s hired.

However, no matter how much Ian brainstorms, he can’t figure it out. Eventually, he realizes that the only person capable of giving him the feeling he needs to complete the theme is his ex-fiance, Kaitlyn. Since Ian backed out of the wedding, though, Kaitlyn isn’t exactly rearranging her schedule to help him. In the end, Ian will need to reconcile the mistakes he made with Kaitlyn to save his career.

The reason I didn’t pick up Soundtrack earlier was simple. I’ve seen these kinds of premises before, and they almost always play out the same way. Great opening. But as soon as the charm of the concept wears out, the story collapses. In other words, after that “fun and games” section, the writer sort of realizes, “Oh shit. I have to actually write a movie now.” And while Miller lasts longer than others, Soundtrack definitely suffers from the same issue. I mean, I don’t even think there were any music cues for the last 45 pages. It was almost like the story lost confidence in itself.

But what about the characters?? Isn’t that how we started this review?

Well, let’s start with the main relationship. I thought it was pretty sloppily handled. For the majority of the script, I had no idea what the specifics of Ian and Kaitlyn’s relationship were. I didn’t know if they’d gone out for 10 weeks or 10 years. I didn’t know who broke up with whom. Heck, I didn’t even know they’d been engaged until halfway through the script. The whole relationship was so vague that I spent more time trying to figure it out than I did simply enjoying their scenes.

This lack of clarity extended to Ian’s motivation in the relationship as well. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand what he wanted out of the relationship. Did he want Kaitlyn back? Did he not want her back? Did he like her? Did he not like her? I never once got a read on his feelings, and a big part of that was how unclear their backstory was.

This vagueness was a problem in other parts of the screenplay as well. For example, I had no idea that his current girlfriend was a bad person until the musical cue of the Imperial March started playing. I was baffled. “Why is the Imperial March playing while his kick-ass girlfriend is around (who got him a great opportunity with this big producer!)?” It just didn’t make sense. Eventually I realized the girlfriend was materialistic and bad for him, but I certainly didn’t know that early on.

The moment where I officially checked out of the story though was when Ian went to Kaitlyn’s parents’ house. I had no idea why they were at the house. One second they were talking at Kaitlyn’s and the next she was like, you need to apologize to my parents! Then we spend 20-some pages at their house out of nowhere. I just didn’t know where the story was going anymore. I still wasn’t even sure if Ian liked Kaitlyn so there were absolutely no stakes to getting her parents to accept his apology.

Overall, Soundtrack was an odd duck. It started out strong. The soundtrack gimmick was great. I thought Nathan’s writing was good. He moved things along at a brisk pace. Then it hit the midpoint and started to lose steam, and by the end, I didn’t really know what we were focusing on anymore. But Miller shouldn’t be too down about this. I see good writers get stuck in this genre all the time. Maybe picking a concept with a little more meat next time will help.

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

What I learned: Like I said, this happens a lot with these high-concept ideas. The script starts out strong because the hook is fun. But when it’s time for the script to depend on the story and not the hook, it isn’t prepared to do so and falls apart. To avoid this, make sure the basics are in place. Your character goal should be strong. Your character goal should be clear (I’m still not sure what he was trying to do with Kaitlyn so it definitely wasn’t clear in this case). And make sure the central relationship is compelling enough to last an entire movie. Again, the main relationship was so muddled/undefined that when it was time for the script to rest on it, it wasn’t prepared to do so. Get those basics in place and your script has a much better chance at working.