Screenplay Review – Unicorn (Guest Review)

Posted on April 17, 2012 | by admin

Carson here.  I’m taking the day off but Roger’s here to pick up the slack, reviewing one of last year’s Nicholl finalists.  Just to give you an update, I’ve been reading 2 Twit-Pitches every night and tweeting about them live on my Twitter account. Writers complain that contests are too closed off and they never know why their script was passed over or not.  Well this is about as open as it gets!  I give you REAL TIME reasons for why I like or dislike a script.  Of course, it’s pretty late at night but still, you can always go back into my feed history if you missed it. Okay, now to Roger.  Take it away, Rog!

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A by-the-book FBI profiler must track down a serial killer with the help of an illiterate 24-year old psychic.
About: This was a 2011 Nicholl winner.
Writer: Matthew Murphy
Details: Nicholl Draft, 101 pages
You know, I generally stay away from scripts that have “serial killer” in the logline. Sure, last week I reviewed Gaslight, which was about Jack the Ripper (kind of), but that had enough fresh ingredients in the logline to keep the word “cliché” from popping into my thought space. 
So, why did you choose to read the lone serial killer Nicholl finalist script, “Unicorn”, Rog?
Because, it is a fucking serial killer script that uses the word “Unicorn” for a title. Unicorn! So many questions ran through my brain. Why is it titled Unicorn? Are there Unicorns in this script? Is the killer a Unicorn, or does the killer just have a horn? Or wait, is it the psychic who has a horn? How do Unicorns factor into this story? Why isn’t it titled something else? 
More questions flooded my cranium. People still write serial killer scripts? Why not? People still tell vampire and zombie yarns. How do you keep a serial killer tale fresh after seeing stuff like Se7en, Zodiac, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and everything else in David Fincher’s misogynist film cycle? After growing up on Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling and all the second-rate imitations, how do you keep from creating an imitation yourself?
When I can watch Medium, Fringe, The X-Files, or any other tv show that uses psychics to solve crimes, why should I read yet another script that treads through the same territory? The answer is, I wasn’t going to. These stories hit a saturation point in my interest meter, so I set Unicorn aside. 
And I actually went about my day, thinking I was gonna read something else. And why shouldn’t I? After all, Eastern Promises 2 was staring at me from my shiny iPad screen. Would there be any more naked Viggo Mortensen fights to look forward to and HEY ROGER, THERE’S A SERIAL KILLER SCRIPT ON YOU COMPUTER THAT WON THE NICHOLL FELLOWSHIP AND IT’S CALLED UNICORN! 
So, I broke my anger management chip in half and opened the goddamn script to quell my curious gray matter. 
Indeed, why is titled Unicorn?
It’s the first name of the psychic character, Skye Huffman. Unicorn Skye Huffman. Or, if you’re her mother Penny, you call her “Yuyu” for short. Before you ask, yes, this is all chalked up to hipster Penny spawning a killer-catching Manic Pixie Dream Gal.
But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Unicorn starts out with your typical Henry-Portrait-of-a-Serial-Killer murder slash rape scenario. A creepy man rapes a duct-taped girl in her apartment, while the body of her fiancé lies freshly slaughtered on the kitchen floor. He seems to time the kill with his orgasm, because he pulls out a scary hunting knife that’s strapped to his leg and uses it to deliver the coup de grace.
Or, so it appears. Because right before the death blow we cut to a pair of green eyes opening in the darkness that seem to be tuned into the victim’s ordeal. 
And that’s the teaser section of this thriller, a bit of nasty business that sets up our mysterious serial killer and our even more mysterious psychic. You know what a teaser is, right? A two to three page sequence that whets the audience’s appetite for more bloodshed to come and more importantly, mysteries to solve. An audience loves a good mystery to solve, and these teasers are important in thriller and horror scripts.
These scenes ground the story in its genre. It makes promises to the audience. The promise of more kills and grisly encounters, and the promise of revealing and hopefully catching the killer. These ingredients are the blood, bones and butter of this particular genre. They let the audience know what kind of ride they’re in for. 
So, who are the other characters?
We meet the broom-up-his-ass Agent Thomas Buck while he’s briefing the Baltimore police department about his theory that there’s a serial killer in operation, targeting couples. The only problem is, there are no bodies. But, since all of the missing women have dark hair and are in their 20s, Buck believes it’s the work of one killer. The disappearances are getting closer and closer together, so it’s time sensitive they catch this guy before there are any more victims.
The scene gets even more intriguing as the green Agent Buck (he’s still in his 20s) gets nervous during his briefing when Detective Roy Weitzman enters the room. He stammers a bit as Weitzman takes a seat in his wrinkled clothes, looking like he should be at an AA Meeting rather than a police station. 
There’s an interesting writer’s rule that says, “If your character cries, your reader won’t.” Now, I don’t remember who first said this, but I know Orson Scott Card teaches it when it comes to fiction. I’m not sure how applicable this is to a cinematic medium, but there is something about seeing a character not cry when they have reason to. It makes the reader express emotion for the character. 
Why am I mentioning this? The focal character in this scene is Buck, so when he gets nervous and shows interest in Weitzman, we’re immediately interested in him, too. This is an example of why point-of-view is important. Every scene should be shown through a character’s particular perspective. Even Christopher Nolan says, “Stylistically, something that runs through my films is the shot that walks into a room behind a character, because to me, that takes me inside the way that the character enters. I think those point-of-view issues are very important.”
Who is this Weitzman cat, and why does he make an FBI Agent like Buck so antsy?
Weitzman just got back from a book tour and the New York Times even compared him to Sherlock Holmes. Turns out he’s caught quite a few killers and the FBI is so turned on by his crime-solvin’ magic that they’ve sent Buck to observe and take note of his methods. Buck worshipped the guy’s work as he was going through the academy, so he’s struck with the idol-worshipping bug. Also turns out that Weitzman’s boss, Captain O’Neill, is friends with Buck’s family, so he’s perhaps a harmless candidate for the gig. 
Of course, we learn all this through exposition when O’Neill takes Weitzman in his office to discuss the investigation. But, you know, exposition is always welcome when we want to know the information and it’s not clumsily handled. Because of how Weitzman is set-up, we want to learn more about him. And, the scene is kind of nice because we sense a real history between the detective and his Captain. 
But, the first act would be boring if there wasn’t any tension between Weitzman and Buck. You guessed it, Weitzman doesn’t want to be saddled with the naïve young gun. Not only because he’s used to working solo, but it also seems that Weitzman has a secret to hide concerning his methods. 
O’Neill convinces the detective to take the agent along, because he’s someone who is smart and loyal and can keep his mouth shut. He gives us a nugget of intrigue as well by saying, “We’re getting old, Roy. Someone else needs to know.”
What is Weitzman hiding?
After the obligatory “Let’s Get One Thing Straight” Scene, where Weitzman tells Buck how it’s gonna be if they’re gonna work together, the detective dangles an enticing carrot in front of the young FBI agent. Not only does Buck need to get autopsy reports and the like, he is also saddled with an odd grocery list: plastic-wrapped art supplies, one bottle of Johnnie Walker, a book of Georgia O’Keefe paintings and a bag of M&Ms.
Now, most FBI agents probably wouldn’t take these kind of demands from a police detective, but an encounter with one of the victim’s parents motivates Buck to play nice. He buys everything on the list and the next day Weitzman takes him to an odd farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere that is surrounded by weird metal sculptures and other odd accoutrement. 
Weitzman gives him three rules before they enter: One, Don’t touch anything. Two, Don’t move around. 
Three, he must tell no one what he is about to see.
Inside, they find the fading beauty, Penny, who aims to get drunk with Johnnie Walker. There are also canvasses everywhere of painted figures. 
All with no faces.
Penny calls her daughter downstairs. Skye, or Yuyu, looks like a Renaissance Madonna. She wears paint-stained dungarees and neoprene gloves protect her hands. Buck is instantly smitten. 
What’s the psychic’s story?
She doesn’t read because she’s dyslexic. She doesn’t speak because she has aphasia. All human faces look blank to her (she can’t tell one face from another) because she has prosopagnosia. 
Give her an evidence bag (conveniently stolen from the evidence lockers by Weitzman), take off her gloves and let her make contact with the psychic memories these objects carry. She’s like an antenna, locking onto the killer after touching some strands of hair. 
Since she doesn’t speak or write, she draws what she sees on a sketchpad. We learn this system is pretty damn accurate, as Weitzman has caught a slew of killers by using his psychic bloodhound, Yuyu. 
But, what about the book he wrote, you ask? How did he portray his techniques and use of informants? Well, he tells an angry Buck he cribbed from Hitchock films and CSI. 
At this point, Buck is so angry that he wants to leave his assignment, but he’s haunted by the victims and the picture of the killer that Yuyu sketched. He stays on the hunt and carries us into Act Two. 
What’s the rest of the script like, Rog?
This was an odd bird. I breezed through this thing because the writing was clean and vivid and I really wanted to know how the sucker would end. Hell, in stories like this, where the Narrative Question is: Will our guys catch the killer?, I will keep reading until that question is answered. If it’s a pleasant read, that is. 
And Unicorn is a pleasant read.
There’s a B Story where we follow the killer through his routine, and that helps flesh out the script but I think the story and characters need to be beefed up. Right now, a lot of Act Two is about waiting for the killer to make his next move. In turn, our protagonists are waiting for Yuyu to gather clues through her sensory and psychic connections. There’s a lot of waiting. They become a bit passive. Which gives time for Buck to have a romance with Yuyu, but it’s bogged down by too much stuff I’ve seen before. 
This created a bump in the read for me as I wanted more tension and emotional weight that wasn’t coupled with locked-room protagonists (not entirely passive, they’re just caged) and a predictable plot. Unicorn works as a by-the-numbers thriller and procedural, but it needs a cohesive theme. It needs more heart.
However, there’s a cool twist at the end of Act Two that creates a very tense scene that puts one of our heroes in a very vulnerable position, and it may be the best scene in the whole script. Although, the mechanics of how the Twist work here don’t seem to follow the psychic rules set-up by the writer. I do think this is an easy fix, though, and it has to do with touch and giving this particular character an object to help them “hone in”. 
For some reason, Unicorn reminded me of one of my favorite scripts, Sunflower. That’s another thriller, but it has some dazzling psychological pyrokinetics between the characters that I loved, and I think Unicorn could benefit by having more mind-games. The chess pieces are all here for something cool, I just think they should be moved around a bit more to not only beef up the characters, but to make the script itself edgier and not as predictable. 
[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Two things. Point of View and Putting Your Character Through the Ringer. The rule of thumb for creating drama and tension in a scene is by telling it through the character who has the most to lose in the scene. After I read Unicorn, I kept thinking how cool it would be if this was a story told from the psychic’s perspective. She’s mute. She can’t distinguish between faces. Yet she gets startling visions. That seems like such an interesting character to tell a story though, and I think it would make the execution unique. Jennifer 8 did it. Yuyu is such a vulnerable character, and any scene in which she is endangered would be tense as hell. Speaking of tension, it’s hard for an audience to pull away from a scene when the protagonist is being endangered with no easy ways out. If story can be defined as how a character deals with danger, then it would make sense to put them through the ringer to such an extent where they can’t escape without a few bruises and scars. Audiences love to see a protagonist get hit, physically or emotionally, so don’t be afraid to beat them up. Stories where characters get everything handed to them on a silver platter are boring. Make them earn it.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Screenplay Review – Line Of Sight

Posted on April 16, 2012 | by admin

Rumors of found footage films being dead are greatly exaggerated. The Line of Sight screenplay proves that they’re alive and well!

Genre: Action/Found Footage
Premise: The best soldiers in the world, Delta Force Three-One, are called in to save the highest ranking U.S. official left after all of the major U.S. cities are destroyed by a mysterious attack.
About: This script was purchased last year by WB and finished on the Black List. F. Scott Frazier hit a dream hot streak when he sold three specs last year, Line Of Sight, Autobahn, and a big alien Children of Men type script. Frazier first came to my attention with his breakthrough screenplay, The Numbers Station, which I reviewed a couple of years ago, and is now in production. As for Line of Sight, Ben Affleck is rumored to be playing one of the leads.
Writer: F. Scott Frazier
Details: 116 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 got one word for you: PICTURES!

Yaaaaay!

That’s right. One of the first things you see when you open Line Of Sight is pictures. They’re there to help you imagine all the chaos that’s going on in the script. And believe me, there’s a lot of chaos!!! So what do I think of pictures in scripts? Well, considering I predicted 5 years ago that art would become a much bigger part of screenplays in the future, I’m performing my “I told you so” dance as we speak.

And I’m all over this trend. When the new site launches (I swear – it IS coming), we’ll have artists for you to hire to create concept art for you own scripts. It’s going to be rad!

Back to Line Of Sight. Okay, so here’s the truth. I didn’t really know which characters were which here. A big reason for that was that we got a “bulk introduce.” A bunch of Delta-Force Three-One soldiers were thrown at us all at once – a death-knell for readers remembering characters, as I’ve discussed before.  However, surprisingly, this wasn’t as big of a deal to me as you might expect.

Why?

Because I saw the group as one singular character. Think about it. That’s what Delta Force Three-One is – a group of men who move and think like one. So in that sense, the entire group was a protagonist, and that was good enough to get me emotionally involved. I wouldn’t advise this approach to other screenwriters out there. But it worked in this specific case.

Part of the reason for that was that the event was so huge. America’s just been attacked. It looks like all the major cities have been hit. And here’s this Delta force team in Washington DC, finding out that almost the entire top level of government, including the president, have been killed.

There’s one biggie left though, the speaker of the house, who’s still alive somewhere inside Washington D.C. An obliterated communications network, however, leaves only one operator able to guide our team to the speaker’s location. So they arrive in the city, which they are shocked to see has been blown to bits. It’s a war zone.

We’re seeing all of this found-footage style through the helmet cams of the soldiers. So we’re hopping back and forth between each feed, which is an ingenious way to go about it because one of the issues with found footage is that you’re often limited to one camera. Being able to jump around to each soldier frees things up a bit.

Anyway, they locate the speaker and begin the arduous process of escorting him across town. But they quickly learn that something’s up with the remaining factions of government and not everybody is who they say they are. So oftentimes they’ll run into an official who claims he’s there to help, when really, he’s working for the other side – whatever mysterious side that may be.

So Three-One makes a bold move, deciding to ignore all orders and complete their original mission – get the speaker to the other side of the city. Naturally, the movie wouldn’t be any fun if they didn’t encounter some opposition along the way, and there’s plenty of that. On top of this, they’re trying to figure out what happened here. Who is it that attacked the U.S.? How did they do it? And what’s their ultimate plan? Delta Force Three-One is used to getting orders and following them. They’re not trained to care about the big picture. But in this situation, they’re going to have to figure out the big picture if they plan on surviving.

Line of Sight is probably the most no-brainer purchase of the past year. A found footage angle to a multi-city large-scale military attack. I can see the trailer already. If you put pre-District 9 Neil Blomkamp on this, after he made all those cool Halo mini-movies? He might’ve made one of the greatest summer flicks ever.

Since The Disciple Program, I’ve been talking to more and more people around town, the people who either facilitate deals or purchase scripts. And the more I talk to them, the more I hear the same thing. They want movies. They want something that audiences are going to show up to.

What F. Scott Frazier unabashedly does is he writes movies that people would show up to. And as simple of a concept as that is – 80% of aspiring screenwriters out there DO NOT do this. They write completely unmarketable plain bland ideas.

As a writer, you gotta put your producer hat on every once in awhile. You gotta ask, “Is someone really going to put millions of dollars into this idea to bring it to life?” That simple question can erase years of misguided writing.

I don’t want to scare anybody away or get anyone angry. But this seems to be a reality of the business a lot of writers ignore. They want to stay “true” to their vision. They don’t want to “sell out.” That’s where I disagree with them. Good writers pick high concepts and then build characters and themes inside those concepts that they’re able to explore on a deeper level. Look at District 9. It was a big idea. There were spaceships and aliens and robots. But guess what – the writer was able to use the idea to say something bigger. He used his characters to explore issues of greed and power and fear and hypocrisy. He was able to kill two birds with one stone. Why can’t you?

And I’m not saying Line of Sight did that, because I’m not sure it did.  What I’m saying is, if character development floats your boat, there’s no rule that says you can’t develop characters inside of big ideas.

As for the script itself, one of the cool things about found footage is it allows you to see a really big situation through the eyes of a few people. So instead of jumping to Paris to see it get blown up like you would a Roland Emmerich movie, you’re stuck with the person or people who have the camera. You’re experiencing the event through a singular point of view. And in many ways, that’s scarier than seeing the big picture.

As for the script’s faults, I would’ve liked to have seen more moments that showed off what Delta Force Three-One could do. It seemed like the majority of their impressiveness came from pre-established maneuvers that were somewhat boring. And I suppose that’s what it’s really like (It’s not Die Hard where you’re blindly jumping down elevator shafts), but it would’ve been fun to see a little more inventiveness from these guys. Let’s see them improvise a little.

The other thing that bothered me was that it wasn’t clear how this attack was being executed. From my understanding, every major city in the US was hit. And as we find out later (spoiler!), this isn’t another country invading us. It’s an army put together on the fly. So even in the best case scenario of say them having 20,000 soldiers, how the hell are you going to contain 10 of the biggest US cities with 20,000 people? I suppose you could make the argument that the bombs blew up enough of the cities to allow for easy containment. But still, you’re asking to contain maybe 3 million survivors alone in Los Angeles. Are 2000 soldiers really going to be able to do that?

But like I said, this is an exciting idea. It’s totally a movie. It’s something that hasn’t been done before (found footage with a military attack). Screenwriters everywhere can learn a lot about the business by understanding why a script like this sells.

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

What I learned: Roadblock scenes always work! They have built in tension, anticipation and suspense. But the key to making them shine is to add one element that makes things as difficult as possible on your heroes. Line of Sight does this perfectly. Earlier, Delta Three-One killed some soldiers and stole their uniforms in order to impersonate the attacking army. But they did it so quickly, they didn’t realize that their youngest member was putting on the highest ranking uniform. They only realize this AS THEY’RE APPROACHING a roadblock. All of a sudden, the youngest and least capable member of their team will have to convince the invading soldiers to let them pass. This is exactly how to create a great roadblock scene – add an element that makes passing the roadblock look unlikely.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Screenplay Review – Zombie Knights (Amateur Friday)

Posted on April 13, 2012 | by admin

Knights. Zombies. Guaranteed awesomeness or guaranteed awfulness? Read a script from a very UNIQUE screenwriting team and come to your own conclusion.

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: Zombie/Period
Premise: (from writers) A war-battered knight returns from the Crusades to find his homeland terrorized by victims of a lethal fever who rise from the dead, hungry for human flesh. Sir Thomas shepherds survivors to the Castle Bridgenorth, where he leads a war of attrition against an army of the undead – even as he battles his own demons.
About: Zombie Knights was sort of the sleeper logline hit of our mini-logline contest a few weeks ago that produced “Breathwork” and “Soundtrack.” Here was their “why you should read our script” argument in their query letter: “Hollywood, they say, is looking for the same — but different. Our screenplay is an effort put a fresh spin on the tried-and-true zombie flick by setting it in the Middle Ages. We also try to use the format to address greater themes of faith and humanity. And, oh yeah, with lots of killing zombies with axes and swords and maces and stuff.”
Writer: Clint & Taylor Williams
Details: 103 pages

Well this is a first. I can safely say that I’ve never read a script by a father-son writing team before. In fact, this may be the first father-son writing team in the HISTORY OF SCREENWRITING. That’s pretty cool but, man, I’m assuming it would cause some unique challenges. I mean what happens when the son gets grounded and the Nicholl deadline is days away? “No, you can’t go see your friends tonight! But could you clean up the dialogue in the dungeon scene?” Awk-warrrrrd.

As for the age-old complaint that we have YET ANOTHER ZOMBIE SCRIPT, I’ll give it to the Williams’s…es that a middle ages setting does feel different. But I don’t care if it’s set in the Paleolithic ages – bottom line is the script has to deliver. So is Zombie Knights one of those freaking crazy ass sprinting zombies from 28 Days Later or is that half-bodied pathetic one-armed dragging zombie from the pilot of The Walking Dead?

It’s the 11th Century when things like polio and leprosy were commonplace. Catch a couple of those miscues and you could actually BECOME a zombie without being a zombie. Add on to that that you had to hunt your own food and we are talking major suckage.

But what sucks even more is that a terrible plague is spreading through the land. It makes the dead rise up and want to eat your brains. Of course, since it’s a thousand years before George Romero and Wikipedia, nobody knows what this disease is. They do know that if they shoot the diseased through the head with an arrow, though, they die. And that’s good enough for now.

After coming back from a work trip (also known as the Crusades) a group of knights led by rough and tumble Thomas and the clean-cut Clinton, realize that the place they left no longer exists. Everybody’s dying and after they die, they get up and try to eat you. While these strange undead creatures are harmless by themselves, they’re quite dangerous in bulk.

And when the bulks get too bulky, our Crusaders realize they have to flee the city and find safety somewhere else. So they take all the remaining townspeople and take a field trip across the land until they find an abandoned castle. Hey, zombies may be dangerous but they ain’t too good at scaling walls, so it seems like a good place to set up camp.

Things are nice and safe for awhile, but the zombie hordes outside the castle keep getting bigger, making a trip to the grocery store that much more difficult. Naturally, supplies get low and they realize that if they don’t find a way out of this undead mess, they’re going to starve to death. So the group comes up with the idea to dig a tunnel underneath the castle, Great Escape style. But will they be able to pull Operation Dirty Fingernails off in time? Click the script link below and find out for yourself.

Okay, Zombie Knights. A neat idea. Some solid writing. But a lot of beginner problems. Beginning with the very first scene.

Why are we opening a movie with knights being welcomed back from battle? I understand that it introduces the characters. I understand that it sets up how important these characters are. But it’s not a SCENE. A scene has decisions to be made. It has choices for your heroes. It has a PROBLEM that needs to be solved. That’s when a scene is exciting/interesting. And if there’s any scene that needs to be exciting and/or interesting, it’s your first one. Cause that’s the scene that’s either going to draw your reader in or not.

I would start this movie off with the crusaders in battle, beating ass and taking Old English names, and then at the end of the battle, after everyone’s been slaughtered, one by one, the dead bodies start getting up. What the f*ck is going on??? They have to defeat each of them a second time! This is off the top of my head and you’d probably need another 10 drafts to come up with a cool original version of it, but THAT’S a scene. THAT’S something happening. People galloping in on horses isn’t a scene. And it definitely isn’t an opening scene.

This opening is then clouded by the death-knell – a dozen characters being introduced all at the same time. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Why God why?? The bulk-introduce is a well-known script-killer. You’re practically begging the reader to forget every character in your script by doing this.

Anyway, this is followed by a strange montage sequence of our knights fighting a bunch of battles over the years. However it wasn’t clear that time was actually passing (there was no mention of any “MONTAGE” anywhere, which was the source of the confusion) so we had this sort of comical scenario where our heroes would fight a HUGE battle, go have lunch in the forest, go fight another HUGE battle, go have dinner in the forest, go fight another HUGE battle, go have breakfast in the forest. It was funny. It was like they defeated 8 huge armies in two days. A simple “MONTAGE” slug would’ve helped this.

Then, when they get to the castle, we run into a problem I’m always warning you guys about. The “sit still and wait” problem that occurs when you place your characters in a static location. It’s just not interesting to watch people hang out and wait. Waiting is boring. Audiences want characters who are ACTIVE. That’s why the “stuck in places” movies that work are the ones where the characters are desperately trying to get out (i.e. Aliens).

The next problem is that there’s no urgency at all. I think the characters actually have months to hang out in this castle. That’s not a movie. And it’s definitely not a zombie movie, where we have to feel the urgency of the zombie threat getting closer. If I were the Williams’s…es, I would make this a 1 week deal. They get to the castle, the zombies start scratching at those rocks, and bit by bit they’re able to dig pieces of that wall off. They’re getting closer and closer to getting in. So our guys build the tunnel and you play those two angles against each other. Our guys have to finish the tunnel before the zombies break through that wall.

Because if you don’t have urgency in a movie like this, you don’t have a movie.

Also in this kind of movie, you need conflict. You need people disagreeing with each other about how shit needs to be done. That way the characters aren’t just fighting zombies, they’re fighting each other. Drogo, a character who joins the group before they get to the castle, should be this character. He needs to be the dissenter. He needs to be the one who wants to do things differently. And it can’t be polite either. It needs to be some heavy ass conflict where you’re wondering if these guys are going to kill each other before the zombies kill them.

Like I said, this was well-written, but it needs some stronger storytelling. Goals, urgency, conflict, that sort of stuff, before this zombie script can play with the big boys.

Script link: Zombie Knights

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

What I learned: Tell a story with your scene! That opening scene really bothered me because there was no story being told. It was just introducing characters. You have to entertain the audience, remember. Look at the opening scene in Aliens. We’re in some frozen ship. We’re not really clear what’s going on. Some sort of lazer thing starts cutting through the door. There’s mystery here. There’s anticipation. Something INTERESTING is happening. And this approach shouldn’t just be used for your opening scene. ALWAYS try to tell a story in your scene.

What I learned 2: The bulk-introduce. Guys, stay away from the bulk-introduce if at all possible. Because if we start mixing up your characters right away because they’re lost amongst a dozen introductions? We’ll be confused during every aspect of your story because we’re going to keep saying, “Who’s this character again? What’s their relationship to the story?” And that’s a script-killer.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Screenwriter Interview – Simon Beaufoy

Posted on April 12, 2012 | by admin

This is a very exciting moment for me because I’m interviewing my first OSCAR WINNER. Simon Beaufoy wrote 2008’s Academy Award winning Slumdog Millionaire. He also wrote The Full Monty and 127 Hours. But the reason I wanted to interview Simon was because of his new film, “Salmon Fishing In The Yemen,” which is a script I read a long time ago and loved! It’s one of those movies all screenwriters should seek out because it’s just really well written. – My relationship with Simon is funny. I think he both loves me and hates me. Loves me for my review of “Salmon Fishing” and hates me for my review of “127 Hours.” But even after that unflattering review, he still agreed to an interview! I love me some Simon Beaufoy!

SS: Simon, thank you for stopping by our community here on Scriptshadow. Now I chatted with you once a long time back and you mentioned you’d visited the site. Have you since recovered from this visit? Don’t tell me you actually came back in the meantime.

SB: I remember there was an outbreak of brickbats (what ARE brickbats, really?) on your site round the time 127 Hours was about to be released. I love the passion of the contributors to the site even if I am sometimes dumbfounded by the certainty of opinion of people who haven’t even seen a film or read the script, but still feel they have a valid point of view….A forum for screenwriters can only be a dangerous thing for a species who live in the dark and eat only bananas and chocolate. But dangerous is usually good.

SS: Let’s jump right into your newest film, Salmon Fishing. As you already know, I loved this script. So let me ask you this. Was it a difficult script to write? And if so, what was the most difficult thing about it?

SB: Thanks for loving the script. You’re a generous soul. People assume that because the entire novel was made up of emails, interviews, diary entries and news reports (an epistolary novel) that finding a structure was the most difficult part of adapting it. But actually, the most difficult part of this particular adaptation was cracking the problem that this was essentially a love triangle with one of the three people in the triangle absent. Film doesn’t like absence much- whereas in novels, that’s fine. I had to do some radical things to the original novel to address this complication.

SS: When you sat down to write it – or really when you sit down to write any script – what is the single most important thing that you need to get right? What story element gets all of your focus and why?

SB: The single most difficult element to get right when I sit down to write is the strength of the coffee. Everything else is secondary. I rarely get it right and it puzzles me endlessly. Same coffee, same amount of water, different taste each day. Why? It definitely tastes better in a white cup, but still, something is going on that I can’t get to the bottom of.

Tone is most hard to keep uniform throughout a script. Especially when adapting a novel. The tone is one of the few things I promise to keep the same as the original material- character being the other, though the two tend to be interwoven anyway. Everything else is up for grabs, usually. There’s no intrinsic merit in a ‘faithful adaptation’ as far as I can see. The very reasons why a novel might be incredibly successful as a novel are often the very opposite of what might make it a good film. There’s no intrinsic merit in a ‘faithful adaptation’ as far as I can see. There is merit in turning a wonderful idea with wonderful characters into a wonderful film.

SS: Let me ask you this because it’s a problem I’ve personally dealt with and I know other screenwriters who love these kinds of movies deal with. When you write something like Raiders or Pirates, movies with big concepts where the characters are always on the move trying to achieve things, it’s fairly easy to keep the story moving (as the concept practically moves it along for you). But it’s different when you write a character piece with a lot more talking and a lot more character development. What’s the key, in your opinion, to making these movies move along quickly? How do you prevent them from becoming slow and boring?

SB: I’ve never written one of those huge movies, so I’m not even sure I understand the problem you are suggesting. I am self-taught, mostly by the Landmine School of Education. I’ve never read a How To book on screenwriting. I work instinctively, from the first principle of my process (and life) that plot comes from character, not the other way round. So interesting people do interesting things. If the story is boring, you’re at the wrong party. Sometimes I’ve found my narrative slowing up and I usually find the answer is that the main character has become passive, has stopped doing and is being done to. With some notable exceptions (can’t actually think of any right now….help!) passive main characters don’t work in films. It’s like driving with the parking brake on.

SS: For me, the thing that always sticks out the most in your movies are your characters. Can you give us your process for character-building? What is the key to writing a great character in your opinion? 

SB: Authenticity. Is the story of a man spending his life tracking down a beautiful woman in a city of twenty million indians- via a gameshow- true? No. Do you believe it? Weirdly, yes. That’s authenticity.

SS: Now it’s been over a year since I read the script, but if I remember correctly, Fred, the main character, is a rather prickly sort. When you write characters that are in danger of coming off as unsympathetic to the audience, are you conscious of that? And if so, what do you do to endear them to the audience more so that they root for them? 

SB: Fred is not at all likeable for a good deal of the script. That’s the point, really. But we see the possibility of a kind, funny person trapped inside a dull shell, too scared to be the person he could be. And we want him to succeed. Many years ago, Alfred Uhry read a treatment of mine for another film and had only one question: “do we like him?” I answered with all sorts of clever stuff about how he was a complicated, layered person at a crossroads in his life, blah blah and he just repeated the question: “do we like him?” It took a long time to really understand the simple and perfect beauty of that question. It really is that simple and that complicated. Do we like Fred? He’s spectrum autistic, rude, humourless, apparently passionless. But in a moment of weakness (as far as he’s concerned) he reveals his care and love for Harriet by making her a duck sandwich. And in that moment, ridiculously, we like him. After that, anything’s possible.

SS: Another thing I’ve noticed about your work is that your movies tend to have strong themes. Since theme is such an elusive term in the craft of screenwriting (it seems like everyone I talk to has a different take on it), could you give us your personal definition of it and how you use it to craft your stories?

SB: Theme….what a strange question.

SS: I’m a very strange person.

SB: Of course the work has themes. Every film that is more than an anecdote has themes: it’s what underpins everything that aspires to being more than the newspaper that wraps up the takeaway fish and chips. How can you inspire, worry, uplift, depress, piss off people without themes? It is part of the architecture that keeps the building up.

SS: As long as I’m picking your brain about all these tough screenwriting issues, I’d be dumb not to bring up the Second Act Black Hole – This is, of course, the last 30 or so pages of the second act where most screenplays go to die. How do you tackle the Black Hole? What do you focus on to keep the script moving until you get to that 3rd act?

SB: Thanks for flagging up a previously unknown ailment. I’m sure I’ll forever after have Second Act Black Hole syndrome now. I’d no idea they existed. Until now. There are slow bits. I end up cutting them. Or actually, I usually amalgamate them into another scene. It’s a good game to see if you can squeeze two scenes into one. It usually works and usually makes the remaining scene much juicier.

SS: You’ve been in the business for almost 20 years now. Can you give us a couple of the most important lessons you’ve learned about screenwriting in that time? Your big “Ah-Ha!” moments?

SB: There’s only one that I really stick to now that I feel I’ve discovered it (the hard way). Your main character needs to be active, not passive, needs to be driving the story. Film is a kinetic medium- it’s not called the movies for nothing. Keep your central character moving, discovering, learning.

SS: You’ve obviously worked closely with Danny Boyle on a number of projects. What are some of the things you’ve learned from him that have made you a better writer? 

SB: I learned 9) from Danny. I’d suspected as much for a long time. But there’s no way you can have a passive character with Danny. He doesn’t understand the word. His film making embodies the potential of the camera to move around subjects, time, characteristics, places.

SS: What would you tell all the screenwriters out there who are trying to break in? What’s the one piece of advice you’d want them to know? 

SB: See 9. And add the need for authenticity. It’s only my opinion, but without authenticity, I switch off. I know I’m at a movie. I want to be IN the movie.

SS: Okay so you gotta tell me. What’s it like winning an Oscar and walking up on that stage? Was it the coolest thing ever? Can you please give me a play by play of what was going on in your head as it happened?!

SB: I can’t remember a thing about it. Only the bar backstage afterwards. Utterly silent and empty and stocked with everything in the world- as far as my blasted brain could process- including a barman who calmly said, “congratulations, sir, what can I get you?” I had a Martini and sat there entirely on my own for five minutes, thinking, “what the hell just happened?”

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Screenplay Review – Nathan Decker (Guest Review)

Posted on April 11, 2012 | by admin

Oh man, I’m Twit-Pitched out. Last night it all hit me and I just crashed, leaving a ton of work on the table, which I get to make up for today. Yahoo! Luckily, I have my trusted readers to pick me up when I’m down. Today’s review comes courtesy of longtime Scriptshadow reader and former reviewer Christian Savage, who takes on one of Scriptshadow’s favorite writers, Dan Fogelman. It’s another day at the office for Dan, selling ONCE AGAIN, a 2 million dollar spec. God do I want to be this guy.

Genre: Dramedy
Premise: Disgraced Senator and presidential hopeful, Nathan Decker, returns to his hometown after stepping down from office in the wake of a sex scandal, but can he find a way to reconnect with his family and salvage his reputation?
About: Dan has another huge payday, with rumors that both Tom Cruise and Ben Affleck are interested in playing the title role.  I don’t think anyone’s signed on the dotted line yet, but we should see a major star attach themselves soon.  This is too fun of a role not to sign up for. 
Writer: Dan Fogelman
Details: 125 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plots 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).
Okay, I have to admit it. I kind of love Dan Fogelman. If I were a Hollywood producer looking for a solid family comedy, he’s the first person I’d ask to write it. He has to be one of the more dependable screenwriters working today. Every time I crack open a Fogelman script, I know exactly what I’m getting. Some people might think this predictability is a bad thing. But, it’s not. He learned what kind of story best showcases his strengths, and he has stuck to that formula for much of his career. And that formula has made him a lot of money, not to mention the most important thing: His scripts get turned into movies that do well at the box office. So, what are the qualities that define a Dan Fogelman script? I think we can find some answers in Nathan Decker, one of his latest spec sales.
When we first meet Nathan Decker, he’s a 40-something Pennsylvania senator, on the fast track to becoming a great man. Maybe even president of the United States. His winning smile gleams from the cover of Time magazine. Random people walk up to him on the street and request autographs. Wives across the land would leave their families for him. But, Nathan’s more than a shallow celebrity politician. He has genuine ideals and substance. He reaches out to people facing hard times, and turns down corporations wanting to buy his loyalty. He also helps pass a $4 trillion infrastructure bill, in both houses of a polarized Congress. For any other man, that would be the greatest accomplishment of his life. For Nathan Decker, it’s Thursday. He’s absolutely perfect, which is why it’s inevitable something awful must happen to him.
All is not well, with the most popular man in the country. When Nathan comes home at night, it becomes clear there are some people who aren’t that impressed with him: his family. He’s expected to eat dinner alone. His cold meal is left on the kitchen counter, with a terse note providing heating instructions. No “I love you’s” written anywhere. When he tries to talk to his wife, Tracy, about his potential run for president, she’d rather lie in bed and finish reading her book. His 14-year-old daughter, Zoey, isn’t much better. She hides in her bedroom with her shady girlfriends and tries to pretend her father doesn’t exist. The Nathan Decker love parade ends at his own doorstep.
The surprising thing is that this isn’t a case of a well-oiled political machine not knowing how to be there for his family. Nathan makes a strong effort to engage in the lives of his wife and daughter. But, they’re burned out on his schmoozing, his enchanting public persona. It’s all too much. During a tear-stained confession, Tracy tells him she doesn’t love him anymore. And on top of that, she can’t stand the selfish person their daughter has become. All she wants to do right now is get away from both of them. At this point, Nathan can’t deny it any longer. His marriage is a shambles. For the first time in his life, he has failed at something.
So, Nathan does what any heartbroken man would do. He gets drunk at a seedy bar and meets an attractive young woman in the ladies’ restroom. It’s not as bad as it sounds, but Nathan soon learns the media will take anything they can the wrong way. As you can guess, Nathan experiences a moment of weakness. He takes his new friend, Debbie, back to her motel room, where he proceeds to have the best sex he’s had in 10 years. But, in situations like this, happiness always seems to have consequences. The bartender tips off the paparazzi that Nathan’s putting the moves on someone who isn’t his wife. The incriminating photos get released nationwide and, within 48 hours, Nathan is a talkshow punchline. So, he resigns from his position in the Senate.
With his life in ruins, Nathan receives a call from his overbearing father, Bill, a former Speaker of the House, who suggests he come back to his hometown for a fresh start. Nathan agrees and takes his daughter, Zoey, with him to Doylestown, the place where he grew up. But it turns out nothing’s an easy fix. Zoey’s distraught over her parents’ looming divorce, and Bill’s furious that his son’s scandalous behavior has tarnished the family legacy. The only bright spot in Nathan’s life is his new job as a history teacher at the local high school. This is where he meets Joan Flaherty, another teacher, who helps him step out from his father’s shadow, and find his own way in the world.
Okay, let’s talk about why this script sold for $2 million. First and foremost, Nathan Decker is a character that A-list actors want to play. He’s active, talented, and likable. He also faces a problem that’s easy to relate to: public humiliation. Quite simply, this is the kind of character that could make any actor look good. Considering both Tom Cruise and Ben Affleck have looked at the script, it’s obvious there’s something memorable here. The best thing any writer can do is create characters that are irresistible. Once you’ve done this, you’re so much closer to having a script that everyone wants. Fogelman knows this; even his supporting players are treated with care. The cast is kept small, but nicely textured. You won’t see 15 characters introduced in the first three pages. But you will find a handful of well-drawn people, each of whom has a distinct voice. Not once did I confuse one person for another. That’s a classic sign of a writer who knows what he’s doing.
I also want to point out Fogelman’s mastery of structure and pacing. Nathan Decker is almost nothing but setups and pay offs. Just about every plot point and character quirk has a reason for existing, and there are no loose ends. If something is introduced in act I, you can bet you’ll see it again in act III. For example, before they meet each other in person, Joan sends a letter to Nathan’s government office, complaining about a dangerous intersection in desperate need of a traffic light. So, of course, in the third act, Nathan recklessly enters that same intersection and gets in a car accident. Another instance is when Bill expresses his disappointment in Nathan, by giving everyone in the room a huge serving of ice cream, except for Nathan. It struck me as a fatherly punishment, a reminder that, in Bill’s house, Nathan is still a child. But then later, when Bill finally forgives his son, he doesn’t give a sentimental speech about it. He just hands Nathan a big serving of ice cream and walks away. The moment is simple, visual, and effective. Other smart choices like this are sprinkled throughout, and they really enhanced the overall quality of the script.
As mentioned before, the pacing was truly a revelation. Fogelman has a great sense of when to speed things up or slow them down, depending on the story’s needs. There was almost no conflict in the first 15 pages, and that was okay because it was important to see Nathan at the top of the food chain. The better the man, the more powerful the tragedy when he falls. On the other hand, take notice of how fast Nathan met his one night stand. It happened about half a page after his marriage was over. And when Nathan and Debbie started talking in the bar, they got to know each other for eight pages, before they went back to the motel together. Fogelman knew the audience would need that extra time to accept Nathan falling for another woman, so they’d sympathize with him when things went badly. And it was great when Nathan resigned from the Senate, less than two pages after the one night stand. No detours, just straight to the good stuff. So, the lesson here is that each scene has it’s own rhythm. Some scenes are more effective if they linger just a bit, and then others work best by skipping the foreplay altogether. I loved that about this script.
There were a couple scenes that bothered me, though, and both of them were recycled from another Fogelman movie. At the climax, all three of Nathan’s women – the wife, the fling, and the teacher/love interest – show up at the big family dinner. It felt a little too reminiscent of the famous scene from Crazy, Stupid, Love, when all the separate love stories crashed together in the protag’s backyard. It didn’t work as well this time around, because there was no delicious pay off. There were no surprise connections between the characters. No revelations that made you reassess what you thought you knew about these people. So, the dinner scene here felt like a wasted opportunity. Also, Fogelman seems to have a weakness for ending scripts with a corny “Here’s What I Learned” speech. He did it in Crazy, Stupid, Love, and does it again here. The saving grace for Nathan is that he was a politician speaking at a city council meeting. So, the situation naturally allowed some leniency. But, if I never see another big finale speech in a Fogelman script, I’d be okay with that.
Otherwise, I thought this was a shining example of a mainstream comedy drama that could play well in the marketplace. It’s a crowd-pleaser that feels warm and light, like a loaf of bread baking in the morning. Can’t wait to see it on the big screen.
[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] Wasn’t for me
[ ] Worth the read
[X] Impressive
[ ] Genius
What I learned: If you want to sell scripts in Hollywood, a good way to do it is to find your niche and master it. Fogelman has had a lucrative career mainly from writing family comedies, and he rarely strays outside of his wheelhouse. That’s not to say you shouldn’t stretch beyond your comfort zone as a writer. But if you can come up with a mainstream story template that plays to your strengths, then you can create a brand name for yourself. It’s possible to develop an identifiable voice, by sticking to a special set of qualities that studios can associate with your work. If you become known as the go-to person for comedies or thrillers or whatever, then you could be one of the first writers that get called for an assignment. After all, isn’t it the brand names that have the longest careers in this business?
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment