Whoa.
Hey everyone. Doing something a little different today. Tom Benedek, the writer of Cocoon, interviewed me for his class last week at Screenwriting Master Class. Since I put so much into the interview and covered a wide range of screenwriting topics, I thought you guys might want to read it. Enjoy!
How did you get started? What has your professional journey been like?
I started out wanting to be one of those filmmakers who does everything – the Robert Rodriquez type – write, direct, edit, produce. So when I first came to LA, I got a job at a postproduction house with the hopes of using it as a place to edit my films. Unfortunately I ended up accidentally destroying a $100,000 piece of machinery and they never let me into an editing bay again. That was the first roadblock to me achieving my dreams, of which there were many more.
How did the Script Shadow blog evolve?
It evolved when I realized how much there was to learn through reading screenplays. I was sitting there thinking, “I wish there was somebody out there when I first started out to tell me how important this was because if there had been, I could’ve saved myself a lot bad scripts and a lot of heartache.” At some point, I realized that I could become that person to other young screenwriters, and that’s how Scriptshadow was born.
Did you study filmmaking?
I did study filmmaking. The problem was I studied it at the single worst filmmaking school in the entire country, Columbia Film School in Chicago. One of my professors was an alcoholic. Over the course of the semester he played Full Metal Jacket 9 times, believing each time that it was the first time he was showing it. Another professor would spend the first 20 minutes of every class telling us how he wished he was anywhere else but here. One of my professors was five years younger than me (I was 23 at the time) and she would break down into hysterics at least once a month. And trying to get a camera to shoot on there was the equivalent of fighting in the Serbian-Bosnian war. It was just not a pleasant experience.
Describe your relationship with managers and agents.
A unique one. In many ways, I do exactly what they do, the difference being that I don’t have a horse in the race. All of us are looking for the best material out there. All of us want to read something that makes us excited and that we can tell other people about. The difference with me is that I might celebrate something that’s not as commercially viable as the agents and managers because the agents and managers have to go out there and sell the script whereas I just have to enjoy it.
Are you dealing with managers as much as agents in seeking material?
I would say moreso with managers than with agents. Agents don’t really develop material. They just try and sell it. Whereas managers are very interested in making scripts better, which is why they like the site, because that’s the kind of stuff I talk about – what needs work in a script.
What is your process for writing notes on scripts you read?
I have a very specific way I approach critiquing a screenplay. When I open a script, the last thing I’m thinking about is all the rules of screenwriting. I’m not sitting there going, “Nuh nuh nuh, it’s already page 15 and you haven’t gotten to your inciting incident yet. You lose.” All I care about is being swept away, being entertained. It’s only after I’m finished with the script that I go back and try to figure out why a script did or did not work. For instance, I might say, “Man, that second act was really slow. Let’s go back and try to figure out why.” And I might find out that the hero wasn’t active enough. He may have been sitting around and waiting for things to happen too much. That’s how I analyze screenplays.
Is it gratifying to see scripts get better through the development process?
Oh definitely. I think it’s one of the most rewarding things about what I do. One thing I’ve learned is that the majority of writers out there, even the good ones and the ones with talent, aren’t always able to navigate the problems in their screenplays. They need the guidance of people who have read thousands of screenplays or made tons of movies. And with the right guidance, even inexperienced writers can write great scripts. That’s what happened with Oscar winners Diablo Cody, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. None of them really understood how to write a screenplay when they wrote those scripts, but they had some great people guiding them, telling them what to get rid of and telling them how to improve what already worked.
Are they getting better most of the time as they are developed?
No, unfortunately not. You’re at the mercy of the writer’s talent as well as how the writer chooses to execute your notes. If someone has bad instincts, or simply instincts that are different from what you intended with a note, they can easily make a script worse rather than better. Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie self admittedly did this for an entire decade before he got back in the game with Valkyrie. Either he didn’t understand the producer’s notes or the notes themselves weren’t very good and he just ended up writing scripts in circles that never ended up being good enough.
Are you reading many spec scripts each week? Or just projects in development?
I read unsold spec scripts, sold spec scripts, as well as projects in development. I mainly try and read spec scripts because those give the best education for the writers that read my site. They get to see a review of the actual material that a writer came up with on their own that sold. That’s a completely different process from a studio developing something in-house.
How does the spec market look from your side?
Well right now it looks great. There’ve been double the amount of sales this year than each of the last two years. So people are out there buying for sure. It isn’t like the 90s of course, but it’s still pretty darn good relatively speaking.
Are the films better than the scripts once they are shot?
Personally, it seems that the scripts themselves are usually better and I think that’s because making a film is so hard. You have to compromise so much in terms of money and time that you usually just don’t have what you need to live up to the script. The exception would be the really big budget movies like Transformers 8 and Pirates Of The Carribean 13 where the scripts are so bad that it’s impossible not to come up with something better.
What are the most important criteria in your evaluation process?
Character and structure. Those are the two things that are butchered time and time again and that’s because it takes a really long time to learn how to create great characters and plot your movie in such a way that it doesn’t drag. There are plenty of other super important things of course, but those two are the biggest in my eyes.
Do you have conversations or contact with other people who you consider great readers?
Yes, all the time. That’s one of the great things about my blog is that it allows me to meet a lot of other people who do what I do – read a lot of scripts. Needless to say, we always end up complaining about the same issues that we see over and over again in screenplays.
Can anyone read/evaluate a script?
Of course! A Scriptshadow reader sent me a review once, timidly disclosing that it was the first time he’d ever read a script. He gave his opinion and bookended it by saying it was probably pointless because he was so inexperienced. But some of the most honest critiques come from people who know nothing about screenplays. They say things like, “That one scene where he killed the guy was so stupid.” It may not have any fancy-schmancy screenwriting terms in it, but this is the kind of thing an average movie goer is going to say. It then becomes my job to go back and ask “Why did he think that scene was stupid?” It may be because it was cliché. It may be because it wasn’t set up well. It may be because both of the characters were boring. But everybody’s opinion is valid. Now can anyone read a script and give thoughtful critical analysis that can help a writer improve his material? No. That takes a lot of skill and experience.
Is style as important as story?
Definitely not. I would say not even close. I always tell people that screenwriting is not a writing competition. It’s a storytelling competition. That said, you do have to have some style to your writing. You can’t write like a robot or the reader’s going to be bored.
Can style make a script work even if the structure and characters end up being shaky?
No way in hell. Actually, I take that back. I’ve read like three scripts (out of thousands) where the style was so fun that even though the story was kind of stupid, I enjoyed them. I reviewed one of them on the site. It was called “Fiasco Heights.” Here’s the log: “A gunman returns to the crime-ridden city of Fiasco Heights and teams with a degenerate gambler/private eye on the run from a syndicate to look for a beautiful femme fatale.” But this is a very rare exception. Style almost never makes up for lack of substance.
Do the scripts you see trend in any direction in terms of areas that seem to work?
Yes. The scripts that tend to do the best on the market are scripts that have a lot of urgency. So if you have a movie about a guy who needs to do something in 72 hours, that’s probably going to have a better chance on the spec market than if you have a movie about a guy who has to do something in 72 years. As scary as it sounds, a movie like The Proposal, which takes place over a single weekend, would have a better chance on the spec market than a script like When Harry Met Sally, which takes place over like 15 years.
Should every writer have a two sentence logline in their head before they start writing a script?
I think it’s helpful and I’ll tell you why. When you write out a logline, you give yourself a focused synopsis that helps you control your story. One of the biggest mistakes I see in a lot of amateur screenplays is stories that wander all over the place. If you come up with a very specific logline that has a clear direction for your main character with clear stakes and clear conflict, then you’ll never be at a loss as to what to write next. When people don’t know what to write next or get lost in their story, it’s almost always because their central idea is muddled and unclear.
Are some reads more alive, spontaneous though flawed in certain ways?
Yes. I actually run into a lot of these types of screenplays where there’s definitely an energy and uniqueness to the story that makes you want to keep reading, but the structure might be all over the place, the plot might be muddled, a few of the characters might be lame. I usually see this with really talented writers who are just starting out. They obviously have an interesting imagination and a unique way they see the world, but they haven’t yet learned how to write a screenplay. What new screenwriters have to realize is that writing in different mediums is like speaking in different languages. And out of every storytelling medium out there (novels, plays, video games, short stories, poems), screenwriting is the hardest. It’s the Chinese language of storytelling. So it just takes a really long time to learn how to speak that language, no matter how talented you are. It took me a long time to realize that but boy is it true.
How many “uncommercial” “non-genre specific” script projects are there in the studio system vs. the more mainstream projects?
I was just reading that leaked e-mail exchange between Scott Rudin, the producer of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and the critic who jumped the review embargo on the film. In it, the critic expressed frustration that the studio system only made 8 good movies a year and they were all crammed into the last two weeks of the year. And he’s right. So that’s my answer. Eight. And the worst part about that stat is that none of them are ever spec scripts. They’re always some sort of adaptation. The good news is that there are plenty of opportunities for uncommercial or non-genre specific projects outside of the studio system.
Can you feel the writer’s passion for their project in the writing?
Definitely. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always mean that the script itself will be good. I just read this sprawling period epic from somebody who had clearly worked on the script for years, and I could feel his love for the subject matter on every page. But the script itself was boring. The subject matter was too confusing, too sprawling and too ambitious. And I told him that. It’s really hard to make movies like that unless you’re already entrenched inside of the studio system with a high level production deal. But the simple answer to your question is yes. And it should be noted that it’s even easier to tell when a writer has no passion for what they’re writing about.
What are your top 10 favorite movies?
This list will change depending on the week but…
Star Wars
Back To The Future
The Fugitive
The Shawshank Redemption
When Harry Met Sally
Rosemary’s Baby
Aliens
Rocky
Good Will Hunting
The Princess Bride
Top 10 favorite scripts?
It’s pretty similar to the movies I listed above. But as far as unproduced material, I have a top 25 list on the right side of my blog that lists all of my favorite screenplays.
Are there great movies that didn’t come from great scripts?
I think it’s a rare but it does happen. I mean I love Terrence Malick’s movies but trying to get through one of his scripts is like trying to read the dictionary. The best movies that come from subpar scripts tend to come from visionary directors, guys like Malick and Aronfsky.
Are there great scripts that just did not work as movies? Why?
Yes, a lot of them. And I actually just learned this lesson to a severe degree this year. Two of my favorite scripts were Everything Must Go and Happy Thank You More Please. Unfortunately, both of them were bad movies, especially Happy Thank You More Please. Now a big reason why “Happy” was so bad was because the budget was so limited and the director was a first timer who was shooting everything like he was in his first week of film school. But I think what I learned in both instances was that movies that are solely based around character development can work really well on the page, but once they get up on screen, they sit there. Movies are visual. So if all you see is the same thing over and over again, your brain starts to get bored. Will Ferrell is sitting down in his backyard for 80 percent of Everything Must Go. That didn’t really bother me when I read it. But once I saw it up on screen, I just wanted to scream, “Go somewhere!” There are other factors involved of course (I’m not sure Ferrell was right for the part) but if there’s too much of a stillness to your movie, if all that’s happening is characters sitting around talking to each other, you might be in trouble when it comes time to film.
How important is great dialogue?
Really important and not really important. I say that because 45 percent of screenwriting is getting the structure right and 45 percent is getting the characters right. Dialogue is just that last 10 percent and it doesn’t matter how good it is if you didn’t nail those first two things. I actually laugh whenever actors say they “rewrote a script” by changing a lot of the dialogue. The only reason you were able to change the dialogue was because a writer did a year of work building up your characters and all the scenes surrounding your characters to a point where they’d be entertaining. Once you’ve done that, dialogue is fairly easy. Having said that, if dialogue is really bad, for example stilted and on the nose, then that can really bring a script down.
Are there great scripts without great dialogue?
It depends on what you mean by “great.” There are certain genres that depend on dialogue and there are genres that don’t. Comedies for example require a real ear for twisted, funny, cute, clever dialogue. Thrillers on the other hand are much more about tension and suspense. The audience doesn’t care if the writer can write a line like, “Oh my blog” in Black Swan. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t still love Black Swan.
What do you want screenwriters to do better, to work on, in general? What is missing
in the scripts you are reading?
Just a clear commitment to your script. One of the biggest problems I see with young writers is that they’re okay with 60 or 65 percent. They don’t push themselves to make every single scene as good as it can possibly be, every single character as good as they can possibly be. They have this mentality of, “well this is good enough”. So I read a lot of average scripts and it’s because the writer isn’t pushing themselves or trying something unique or adding a new spin or trying to make every scene pop. Now some of that has to do with the writer not yet understanding how to do that stuff yet. But no matter what stage you’re at, you should be giving 100 percent effort.
Any other advice?
Write as much as you can, read as many screenplays as you can, and learn as much as you can about screenwriting. The more time you put into those three facets the better you’re going to get.
Would you like to produce films?
On the development end? Definitely. But certainly not on the production end. I can barely schedule my day, much less the days of 250 other people!
What are the most important things you have learned about Hollywood from your work?
That the gatekeepers aren’t these mystical wizards who wave a magic wand over a script to either let it come through or not. It’s much more black and white than that. The people who run Hollywood are people who have jobs, just like you have a job. And they want to keep that job. And the only way they can keep that job is if they find movies that are going to make money. I don’t see enough screenwriters recognizing that fact. They hold onto this delusional ideal that they can write a coming-of-age film about an albino pastor living in 1782 Germany and that somebody out there is actually going to buy that. Think about that for second. If you were a producer with a $2,000,000 discretionary fund tasked with finding 4 or 5 scripts a year to turn into movies that will make the company money so they can KEEP making films, would you bet on your script? I’m not talking in the fun dreamworld scenario where you have nothing on the line by saying “yes.” I’m asking if you were a real producer who had the power to buy a few scripts a year, and you knew that if you screwed up even one of those purchases and bought something that had no chance of being made because it had no financial potential, that you would get fired, would you buy your script? That’s how you have to think of this business, and writers are shooting themselves in the foot by not seeing it that way.
What are the most surprising things you have learned?
How long it takes the average screenwriter to make it. I always assumed that if you were a good screenwriters you would make it in Hollywood in less than a year. But it takes most screenwriters 7 to 10 years to really figure out how to write a good script. I know that’s terrifying but that’s what I’ve found to be true. If you can make it in five or less, you are way ahead of the game.
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: Finding it more difficult to kill himself than he thought it would be, a depressed man offers a cash-strapped woman his life insurance money if she’ll marry him and make sure the suicide succeeds.
About: This spec sold to Lionsgate last year. The writer, Corinne Kingsbury, was actually an actress and had a small part in Old School back in 2003. She’s since moved on to writing. Derick Martini, who directed 2008’s Lymelife, was attached to direct at one point. But at last count, the project was trying to reel in Tom Vaughan (What Happens In Vegas) which, no offense because I know how difficult it is to get movies greenlit and part of the challenge is finding a director the studios are willing to fund a movie with, but I really hope this doesn’t happen. This needs a director with a little darkness in him. Martini was a more appropriate choice.
Writer: Corinne Kingsbury
Details: 110 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).
Wait a minute. WHAT?? This script wasn’t on last year’s Black List?? I guess that’s what happens when you sell your script in January. People kind of forget about it 11 months later. I wonder if the screenplay market will ever become like the movie market where everyone will try to get their script sold in the last two weeks of November, so they can make the December Black List. Oh well, it’s a good thing that the Black List isn’t the only place to learn about great undiscovered screenplays!
Now I can already hear the commenters chirping away about the manufactured setup of this movie (marry me to help me kill myself and I’ll give you my life insurance money) and I can’t argue with you because I admit it’s the weakest part of the screenplay. But if you can get past that, you’ll find a really well-written story with some great characters.
Larry is 29 years old, depressed as all get-up that his girlfriend left him, and has resorted to suicide to make the pain go away. The problem is, he’s not very good at it. While trying to hose carbon monoxide into his car, the trash guys come by and tell him to move so they can get his trash. Later, when he tries to drop a toaster into his bathtub, the plug comes out just a few inches shy of the water. To make matters worse, Larry writes these really lame suicide poems to his ex-girlfriend right before the deed, usually analogies to really geeky movies, like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. In the end, he comes to the realization that he needs help. No, not like psychiatric help. Help offing himself.
Penelope Fletcher is 24 years old and smoking hot. But she’s also smoking poor due to her obsession with expensive footwear. Her credit debt has eventually caught up with her and if she doesn’t come up with $13,000 soon, she’s going to jail.
Every day at work, Penelope and her best friend Amy watch as Larry stumbles around outside, drooling while staring in at Penelope. It’s creepy but they know he’s harmless so it’s more of an annoyance than anything. But after one staring session too many, Penelope goes out and tries to scare Larry off. It turns out that Larry has overheard about her money problems and thinks he has a solution.
He tells her he needs somebody around to make sure his suicide attempt is successful and is willing to put her on his life insurance policy for 250 grand if she’ll do it. Penelope is game but the two find out that in order for her to be on the policy, they need to be married, and more specifically married for at least 31 days. So the two head over to the courthouse, do the deed, and then basically wait for 31 days to expire.
When Penelope finds out that Larry has to pass some health exam to validate the insurance, she forces him to get off his ass and start exercising – not easy for Larry since a typical day for him involves the marijuana merry-go-round. But pretty soon, Penelope finds herself helping Larry in other ways as well – getting his apartment cleaned up, getting him a better wardrobe. In a couple of weeks, Larry actually starts looking like a presentable person.
Of course because they’re spending so much time together, they become close. But like a lot of this script, it doesn’t go exactly how you think it’s going to go. There’s an unpredictability to this story because of Kingsbury’s unique sense of humor and knack for finding the less traveled path. So will Larry end up killing himself at the end? Or will he and Penelope create the single most unlikely pairing in relationship history?
I really liked this. Yes, there’s the issue with the formulaic setup that’s going to send people running. Maybe even back to “The Call Up,” gasp. But I’d implore you to stick with it. Why? Because the characters are pretty damn awesome, that’s why.
I thought Larry’s failed attempts at killing himself were hilarious, reminiscent of a certain cult classic, Better Off Dead, and so I immediately liked him. And Kingsbury somehow made the impossible possible – she made a smoking hot chick who could have anything she wants, sympathetic. So before we get to the clunky conceit of the concept, we get to know and like both these characters enough so that we sort of don’t care.
The thing that really puts this above so many romantic comedies I read though is that it doesn’t go for the predictable lame fairytale approach. It’s not so much that I hate that type of romantic comedy, so much as I know exactly what’s going to happen every step of the way so they bore me to hell.
31 Days Of Larry is a dark script. It’s about a guy trying to commit suicide. And as forced as the marriage thing is, you don’t see many romantic comedies where one half of the couple is trying to end their life. Darkness elevates comedy in such a way that it feels real. We’re not pretending to live in a world that doesn’t exist. Bad things happen on this spinning rock and to see a romantic comedy recognize that is refreshing.
Not only that, but it just offers up choices we’ve never seen before. I mean the female lead here is waiting for the male lead to kill himself so she can get her money. That brings up the kind of conversations that you DO NOT SEE in rom-coms. NEW conversations. DIFFERENT conversations. In a world where we know the exact dialogue exchange that’s coming up 15 minutes before our couple does, how refreshing is that? It’s something I’ve preached on the site and will continue to preach. You have to find a different angle into a familiar story. Because pretty much all the stories have been told. They just haven’t been told from your unique point of view.
And I just love when stories place their romantic leads on completely opposite ends of the spectrum to the point where you think there’s no chance in hell they’ll get together. I love when writers explore that challenge because when I was introduced to these two people, I thought, “How in the hell is this writer going to convince us that these two would ever end up together?” And most writers fail (they eventually start forcing things so that the relationship feels unnatural) but in this specific universe that Kingsbury created, she somehow did it. I believed that these two fell for each other.
There’s really very little that I didn’t like here. It was only that forced set up. If Kingsbury can find a way to smooth that out, this script will be bulletproof. I hope somebody figures that out and yanks this thing out of development hell.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I know this is going to sound nuts, but when I see a slugline with “I/E.” at the beginning (as I saw in “31 Days Of Larry,”) I know I’m usually dealing with a good writer. “I./E.” is short for “INT./EXT.” which is short for “INTERIOR/EXTERIOR.” Why? Because I know it takes most writers five or six scripts before they encounter a situation where they need to be both inside and outside on a location and know how to actually represent that. And then it takes even longer to learn about the abbreviated version (I./E.). So it’s just a very advanced location indicator.
Genre: Drama
Premise: (from Black List) In the early 1980s, a town suffers through the aftermath of a brutal murder of a high school girl and a teacher.
About: This script finished Number 2 on this year’s Black List. Drew Barrymore has been attached to direct. It’s unclear to me if she became involved before the script made the list or after. People might think this is a strange marriage between director and subject matter, but let’s remember that Drew Barrymore had a really dark childhood, and this movie is set during the decade when she had that experience. So she may be using this film to exorcise some demons. Embodying the spirit of the Black List, this is writers’ Hutton and O’Keefe’s breakthrough screenplay.
Writers: Chris Hutton & Eddie O’Keefe
Details: 108 pages – June 29, 2011 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).
I have to say I was surprised when I put word out that I might give this script an “impressive” and got back a few e-mails telling me I was crazy. I can understand why someone might not like this. It’s different and doesn’t tell its story in a traditional way. But I think it’s hard to argue that the writing here is impeccable. Maybe an entire week of amateur screenplays lowered the bar for me. I don’t know. But when I read this, it moved me. I *felt* this story. That happens so rarely these days, that when it does, I celebrate it.
“Streetlights” is told by a narrator, Charlie Chambers, who’s remembering the summer of 1983 in Colfax, Illinois, when he was 15 years old. It was during that summer that the most beautiful girl in town, 17 year old Chrissy Monroe, was found murdered with one of her high school teachers.
Charlie, who works at the school newspaper, wants to do a story on the piece and his teacher gives him the go-ahead. What he finds is a town rocked by the murder and desperately looking for a suspect. All signs point to Casper Tatum, a rebellious troublemaker who’s had some scrape-ups with the law in the past. But some are eyeing Chrissy’s boyfriend Ben, who may have found out that his girlfriend was seeing a teacher and took matters into his own hands.
In the meantime, we meet Becky Monroe, Chrissy’s little sister. Because of Chrissy’s immense popularity, Becky has always been overlooked. But with her sister now dead, and Becky’s own beauty emerging, she is quickly becoming an alternative darker version of her sister.
So it’s no doubt a shock when the main suspect for killing Chrissy, Casper, falls in love with Becky from afar. The reclusive Becky fends Casper off for awhile, but he eventually grows on her, and probably because her parents hate him so much, she soon finds herself in a relationship with him.
During this time, Ben has taken a liking to Becky as well. And when she shuns him only to go out with this loser Casper? Well, let’s just say that Ben doesn’t take the news in stride.
Our narrator, Charlie, who has secretly liked Becky ever since they shared a kiss in grade school, watches all of this unfold from afar, but eventually finds himself pulled into the fray, just before the most shocking thing that could’ve happened does.
Streetlights is one of those stories where it isn’t easy to explain why it works. There’s a lot going on here. Multiple protagonists. An ongoing commentary that spans the entire screenplay. So I’ll leave it to one of my readers to sum it up. “It’s just a well-told story,” he e-mailed me. And I agree. There are a lot of rules broken here. There are a lot of layers to this story. There are a lot of characters and risky shifts in tone. But somehow it’s all beautifully managed.
What really stood out to me were the tone and the voice. The script almost plays out like a song from your youth. You know how when you hear a tune from when you were 15 and you’re just immediately transported back to that year? That’s what this felt like. And the voice was so unique. It was like a combination of American Beauty (the suburban vibe) Donnie Darko (the 80s vibe) and Election (the humor vibe).
As far as structurally, this script is a rule-breaker’s manifesto. Voice over during the entire story. No true main character. And not a whiff of my precious GSU! So why do we still care? Simple. The MYSTERY component.
“Who killed Chrissy Monroe?” That’s the question driving the plot – much like we want to know who kills Lester Burnham in American Beauty. There’s another mystery component as well, but to get into it would spoil the script’s great ending.
The lesson here is, putting us in the middle of a suburban neighborhood with people bumping up against and getting to know each other in a vacuum is boring. But once you add the murder of a precious girl, where everyone’s a suspect? Now you have yourself a movie.
And since we’d just talked about the importance of the first 10 pages last week, I should say that this script, despite its deliberate pacing, offers up a great first 10 pages. When we meet 17 year old Chrissy, we see her slip out of her seemingly perfect household and jump into a car with her thirty-something teacher. I wasn’t upset about this choice, but I was kinda like, okay, we have another story about an inappropriate relationship. Average City.
Then a second later a man jumps in the back and puts a gun to the teacher’s head and says drive. He forces them into the woods, tells them to strip, and then shoots them dead. The moment that man jumped in the back of that car with a gun, I knew I was reading a good script, because it was unexpected. And when writers do unexpected things as opposed to boring predictable things, it usually means you’re in good hands.
Where I think these writers became geniuses though was in the third act (spoilers ahead). This entire story is told from the point of view of an uninvolved third person, Charlie. Something that’s kind of sad because we know he has a thing for Becky and realize he’s never going to get a chance with her.
So when the relationship between Becky and Casper ends, and Becky and Charlie start hanging out together, it takes you by such surprise, that it’s way more powerful than any script-long relationship between the two of them would’ve been.
It’s kind of like seeing your team down by 20 in the fourth quarter, only to watch them win the game on a last second hail-mary. Sure it would’ve been great to see them blow the team out from the first snap. But that’ll never feel as good as snatching victory from defeat. I’m not going to get into the details of what happens next, but it’s what elevates this screenplay beyond your average Saturday night read, and into a very deserving #2 slot on the Black List.
So why no Top 25? Hmmm, I don’t know. I need to sit on it for awhile. It might creep its way in there at some point. I think it’s because of the main character issue. There really isn’t a protagonist in this, and while it all worked out in the end, there were portions of the screenplay where I felt too removed from the story. I didn’t have anybody to identify with, anybody to guide me. So it felt kind of lonely. It’s hard to describe but that’s the best I can do. Either way, this was a VERY solid screenplay and well worth your time.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Atmosphere. These guys reminded me how important atmosphere is in a screenplay. Sometimes we get so focused on the facts of the story that we forget to bring the story to life. Things like the crackle of a record player as the needle hits the record. Children playing on a Slip-n-Slide on a sunny day. The way friends are described (“They are the kind of friends you only have at fifteen and never again. Blood brothers.”). Becky carefully retracing her barefoot steps in the snow when leaving Charlie’s house. These guys really fill their universe out. You never want to go overboard with this stuff. But if you want your script to breathe – to have life – it’s something you need to pay attention to.
Genre: Contained Thriller
Logline (5th Place): Posted out to a remote nuclear waste dump site in the Australian Outback to secretly assess the mental state of the ex-addict Aboriginal worker who mans the plant, an anxious young female psychiatrist is forced into a fight for survival when they find a mysterious stranger stranded in the desert.
About: Welcome to the first annual “First Ten Pages Week.” What I did was have readers send in loglines then vote on their favorites. The top five loglines, then, would get their first 10 pages read. With any of this week’s reviews, if the comments are positive enough, I’ll review them in full on a future Amateur Friday.
Writers: Adam Gyngell and Fred Fernandez-Armesto
Some people expressed surprise by the fact that this logline made the top five, and I can understand their skepticism. Although the idea clearly has potential, it sure takes a long time to explain it. It seems like we’re getting some unnecessary pieces of information here. The trick with loglines is to give the reader every single piece of relevant information to your story in as few words as possible. This logline could clearly benefit from a Dianne Cameron intervention.
The first 10 pages of Deep Burial begin with a scientist killing himself for mysterious reasons. Afterwards, we meet the seemingly unaffiliated Robinson, a mixed race Aboriginal who’s taking care of a nuclear waste dump facility out in the middle of the Australian desert. Soon after, a young woman named Abby shows up. She’s been sent by the corporation to make sure the place is running smoothly. She’s surprised to learn that Robinson has been here all by himself for a couple of years now. She also learns that he doesn’t take kindly to visitors.
Deep Burial starts off strong and not so strong. We watch as a scientist sets up a camera, tells his family he loves them, then shoots himself. That’s a compelling way to open a movie. But I don’t like that the scientist is described as thin, receding hairline, with birdlike features. In other words, he looks exactly like the prototypical scientist. What were we just talking about yesterday? BE DIFFERENT! Don’t go with the first, most obvious, choice!
Generic choices within the first ten pages indicate that I’m going to be reading an entire screenplay full of generic choices. So now I’m grumpy. Why can’t this scientist be well-built? Why can’t he be handsome? Why can’t he be Spanish? Why can’t it be a woman instead of a man? Anything but the prototypical version of a scientist we’ve seen so many times before.
This is also the third script this week that’s had a mistake on the very first page. “The Scientist’s stares straight into the camera.” There should be no “apostrophe s” there. And why is “Scientist” capitalized? If the word “the” is in front of it, “scientist” shouldn’t be capitalized.
Luckily, things quickly get better. I absolutely love the image of a man in a hazmat suit whacking a golf ball in the middle of the desert. That’s a great image that I’ve never seen before. In addition, it tells me a lot about this character. Clearly, this guy is a little off, and that makes him intriguing. I want to learn more.
We then jump to a helicopter, where we meet Abby, and now I’m starting to see some skill on display here. I love the way the exposition is handled. As the pilot gives Abby a rundown of who this guy is, it feels like the exact sort of conversation that would happen in this circumstance. So the fact that it’s all exposition explaining Robinson’s past doesn’t really register with us. It’s sort of a “resume moment” coming from a third party. The only thing about the scene that doesn’t work is that Abby’s surprised Robinson is out here alone. I’m pretty sure she would’ve been briefed about this before coming out.
When Robinson is finally introduced to us, I get the best description, and therefore the best sense of a character, of any of the characters introduced this week (italics are mine):
Leaning against the door, a mixed-race Aboriginal Man. Sallow, grey skin, dark bags under the eyes.
Abby’s visibly surprised. She didn’t expect him to be…
This is ROBINSON: late-30s, but he wears the years heavy. Three day beard on his face. Sinewy. Weathered. He’s taken a few hits, but he rolls with the punches.
That’s a character I can imagine. I especially love the line, “but he wears the years heavy.” I do have an issue with the last sentence, but I’ll save that for the “What I Learned” section.
Unfortunately, the arrow starts pointing down when Robinson starts talking. Up until this point, we’ve been presented with the notion that this guy is nuts, he’s crazy, he’s off his rocker. I’ve been anticipating this moment for the last six pages. However, when he opens his mouth, it turns out he’s just a bitter old curmudgeon. There’s nothing very interesting about him to be honest. And I’m annoyed by him fairly quickly. His vocabulary seems to revolve around different ways of saying, “Get out of my way.”
This leads to a bigger issue, however. And it’s something I see a lot. You’re always looking to create conflict in your screenplay. That’s what makes a story dramatic. But you have to do so INVISIBLY. You can’t force it. There may be more to Robinson we learn later. But right now, I find it odd that he doesn’t seem to have any reason to hate this person and yet he does. I mean I could imagine him being distant. But his reactions are way over-the-top whenever Abby tries to say anything. So the conflict feels forced and therefore false.
On the plus side, I like that the goal is established right away. Abby is here to inspect the place and make sure everything’s working efficiently for the company. If it isn’t, the company is going to shut the place down. Since Robinson needs this place, that means we now have stakes and a ticking time bomb. So right away, within our first 10 pages, we’ve established our characters as well as the goals for those characters. That’s a good sign.
So overall, this is a mixed bag. The writing is clear. The writers understand how to set up characters and a story. There’s a lot of intrigue (remote nuclear waste dump has all sorts of possibilities). But there are a couple of cliché choices and our star character comes off as underwhelming. You can’t build up this crazy character then leave us with Average Angry Dude.
Go back and do a character biography on Robinson. Where did he grow up? What is his relationship with his parents? What kind of person was he at school? Did he have friends? Was he a loner? Has this man ever been married? What was he doing in the five years of his life previous to this job? What was he doing five days ago before your story started? The answers to these questions are going to filter into your character’s actions/personality/dialogue/etc. The more questions you ask, the more rounded your character will be. The golf stuff was a good start. But you need a lot more.
Would I keep reading? – Yes. Right now I’m on the fence about this script but as you guys know, I love these types of stories. Remote area. Just a few characters. Lots of potential for conflict. Lots of potential for secrets, twists, surprises. If I were to start a production company tomorrow, this is the kind of movie I would probably make first. Even if the script wasn’t perfect, I’d have confidence that I could develop it with the writers.
Script link (First Ten Pages): Deep Burial
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t double up on your character description. Here’s the description of Robinson again: “This is ROBINSON: late-30s, but he wears the years heavy. Three day beard on his face. Sinewy. Weathered. He’s taken a few hits, but he rolls with the punches.” That last sentence is redundant. “But he wears the years heavy,” combined with “three-day-old beard” implies that he’s taken a few hits and keeps going. Yes, we want to describe our main character as best we can. But it’s annoying when the writer repeats information, especially if it’s information from one sentence ago.
