Peter Pan mixed with Lord Of The Flies mixed with…zombies? Sounds like an interesting little screenplay. Let’s find out if guest reviewer Amy Suto liked it…

Since I’m tired of giving you guys vague updates about my book, the site re-launch, and Twit-Pitch, I’m putting together an official schedule (with real dates!) that I plan to post this weekend. I’m like the U.S. Government. I’m posting about a post that I’ll make later. Heh heh. In the meantime, I’m bringing back guest reviewer Amy Suto, (who reviewed Celeste and Jesse Forever a month ago) to take on some zombie madness. Or, errr…are they zombies? I’m confused. You know what, I’ll just let Amy clear it up.

The more I thought about it, with the way the logline contest went a few months ago, the more I wanted to minimize the chance of reading a bad script.  So I’m putting up links to the Top 3 scripts from Saturday’s “Which Should I Read” post and letting you guys take a look at them.  You don’t have to read the whole scripts of course.  Just check out the first 10 pages or so and let me know which script has the best shot at being good.  If this works out, we’ll do it more often!

A man undergoing past-life regression therapy must find out the identity of a nemesis who’s killed him in his past lives… before he’s murdered again in his present life.
******WINNER – “Breathwork”******* 

Script link: Breathwork

When a burgeoning composer hits his head he begins to hear his life’s soundtrack; a soundtrack that is prompting and pushing him back to his ex-fiancee. But will he follow the guidance of the music?

Three friends reunite before a wedding and take a road trip to achieve their childhood goal – finding the millions of lost E.T. Atari cartridges buried in the sands of Alamogordo, NM.
**3rd Place – “Holy Alamogordo”**
 
Script Link: Holy Alamogordo

Wait a minute. A 2011 Black List comedy that’s actually funny? Can it be? Or has Carson once again misjudged the definition of “comedy?”

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Taking place over one day, a group of couples deal with a myriad of issues while attending a wedding together.
About: This was originally sold as a pitch to CBS films in August of last year. The subsequent script finished at the bottom of the 2011 Black List with six votes.
Writer: Andrew Goldberg
Details: 104 pages, September 14, 2011 (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’m ready for the claws to come out. It’s another big comedy script which also happens to be a comedy script that Carson likes. And we all know how those go. Despite some of these scripts being loved by everybody in Hollywood, they seem to be hated by you guys! Which means you’re all wrong! But I do have a streak going with Winter’s Discontent here. Granted it’s a streak of one. But that’s better than the streak I usually have going, which is zero.

Here’s the thing with today’s script though – the idea behind it is pretty genius. An entire movie based around a wedding? I’m not sure that’s ever been done before in a comedy. We’ve seen plenty of movies leading up to weddings. But I’m not sure we’ve had a comedy that’s *just about* the day of the wedding itself. It’s one of those ideas that’s so simple, you wonder why you didn’t come up with it yourself.

Anyway, we start out with Tim and Beth, a married couple in their 30s. Tim is madly in love with his wife but his wife doesn’t seem nearly as enthusiastic. In fact, once at the wedding, when the bride and groom finally say, “I do,” Beth tells Tim, “I don’t,” informing him she’s filing for divorce. A baffled Tim will now spend the rest of the wedding trying to figure out where his marriage went wrong – and why his wife seems to be having so much fun with this mysterious guy he’s never seen before.

Roger and Kate are an interesting ex-couple. They used to go out until Kate found out Roger was having sex with half of America. She subsequently jumped ship and has spent the better part of a year trying to get over him. She’s finally succeeded, finding a guy she really likes, who she’s brought to the wedding. When Roger finds out Kate has officially moved on, he of course ditches his date and focuses exclusively on getting Kate back.

Danny is the class clown/best man. He’s the overweight jokester who’s great for a laugh but not very good with the ladies. He’s shown up here by himself – the way he always rolls – and plans on getting wasted and having a great time with the guys. But when he makes a connection with the wedding singer, a hottie named Larissa, he has to find out if she’s just being nice because this is a wedding or if she really likes him.

Ryan and Caroline have been together for three years and it’s just hit Caroline that he’s never going to propose. When’s the last time you want to go to a wedding? When you learn the guy you’re with never wants to get married. So as she sees all of this love swirling around her, she becomes more and more frustrated, and resolves to do something about it, to Ryan’s horror.

There are plenty of other wedding favorites, like the weirdo uncle who’s constantly saying inappropriate things and staring at young girls. There’s the girl who showed up without a date and has to deal with the all the questions about her ex-boyfriend. And there’s the 17-year-old who’s looking to get deflowered.

I don’t really know what to say about this script other than it’s really good! It’s sort of like “Can’t Hardly Wait” but in wedding form. I love the contained time frame idea. It makes the story so immediate. Everything needs to happen RIGHT NOW so you know all of these unresolved relationships need to get resolved TONIGHT. And that keeps each relationship moving along at a brisk clip. Whenever we cut to someone, they’re usually in the throes of an important moment – something you don’t always get when the time frame for the story is spread out over weeks or months.

And that’s really the key to making these movies work. When you don’t have an overriding concept – in other words, a main character with a goal (find the Ark, prove the one-armed man killed my wife, get to Paradise Falls), the focus shifts over to the unresolved relationships. These will be the engines that carry the story forward.

It’s so important that you understand this because a lot of beginners don’t realize without a big character goal, the story can go south quickly. But if you create a bunch of interesting characters who have big problems, then every time we cut back to them, there’s going to be something interesting going on. We want to know how that conflict is going to get resolved. And that’s another key word here – conflict. Because these relationships are unresolved, there’s always conflict. And conflict is the heart of drama and drama is the key to entertaining.

In other words, if all of these people are happy, you don’t have a movie. So when we cut back to Kate and Roger, we’re wondering, is he going to convince her to be with him again? Or with Tim – Is he going to get his wife back? Or with Caroline – Is she finally going to confront Ryan about their relationship? Or with Jeremy, the 17-year-old – Is he finally going to get laid?!

I’ve read versions of these stories where the writers have no unresolved issues to play with. They then try to fill that void with “funny” dialogue – observations about people at the wedding, or crass sex jokes. The scenes feel desperate, though, because they’re just filling time. When you’ve built real problems and issues that need to be resolved, you don’t need to worry about writing funny dialogue. The dialogue ends up writing itself.

And then there are just a bunch of nice touches to the story. I love this idea that we never see the bride and groom. We only see their backs or flashes of them – never their faces. For once, this is about the people *at* the wedding as opposed to the people getting married. That was really clever.

And easily my favorite character was the creepy uncle. We’ve all seen this guy at our own weddings and boy he is on fire here. He wears sunglasses the whole night so nobody can see his eyes. He laughs at the most inappropriate moments. He calls Danny “Rashad” for some reason and thinks he’s a cop. He’s hilarious.

And the relationships were all well-handled. I particularly liked the Danny and Larissa storyline. I loved how he was built up as the underdog – the loner. And when the wedding singer starts flirting with him, he (and the rest of the guys) have to figure out if she’s just doing it because that’s her job or if she’s doing it because she really likes him. We love Danny so much that we’re on the edge of our seats trying to find out the answer to this question ourselves!

You know, this script came REALLY close to getting an impressive, simply because I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. But much like “Can’t Hardly Wait,” there was just something indefinable missing – an x-factor to really take it over the top. Maybe it was the lack of that big unforgettable character (although the uncle comes close – he was more of a sideshow). Maybe it was the lack of surprises. I’m not sure. But there’s *something* missing here. Still, this was a really good script.

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

What I learned: A goal and a ticking time bomb aren’t as important in stories which take place over a short period of time. The whole point of the character goal is to push the story along. But if the timeframe is contained (24 or 48 hours), the story tends to push itself along. You saw the same thing in movies like “Dazed and Confused” and “Can’t Hardly Wait,” which take place over one day. Likewise, a ticking time bomb doesn’t need to be a dominant part of the plot because the point of a ticking time bomb is to create urgency. If your story takes place inside of a day, the urgency is inherent. That’s not to say you *shouldn’t* use these tools in these situations. Just that they’re not as big of a factor in the story’s success.

Guess what everyone – YOU get to choose the Amateur Friday script I review on March 30th. Take a look at the ten loglines below and vote in the comments section. I’ll be watching IP addresses and if anyone tries to secretly vote for their own logline multiple times, they’ll be disqualified. So no cheating! As for the science behind choosing these ten? There was none. I pretty much picked them randomly. I think it’s important for everyone to see the full breadth of loglines I’m sent, both good and bad. Enjoy!

A man undergoing past-life regression therapy must find out the identity of a nemesis who’s killed him in his past lives… before he’s murdered again in his present life.
******WINNER – “Breathwork”*******

A Moment In Fire – (Action/Crime)
Ambivalent of his wife’s fidelity and drowning in debt, a man is offered a new chance at life by an exuberant gentleman claiming to be the devil.

Conditioned – Psychological Thriller
Chasen Artist, suffering from retrograde amnesia, is visited by a stranger who offers to help. As Chasen moves towards to uncover the past, he learns about the stranger’s motive and the cynical truth behind his condition.

Three friends reunite before a wedding and take a road trip to achieve their childhood goal – finding the millions of lost E.T. Atari cartridges buried in the sands of Alamogordo, NM.
**3rd Place – “Holy Alamogordo”**

Zombie Knights – Action/horror
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.

Hail Mary – Action/Revenge
A reformed hitwoman must return to the world of bullets and bloodshed she left behind to take on the organization she helped build, in order to avenge the death of her younger sister.

When a burgeoning composer hits his head he begins to hear his life’s soundtrack; a soundtrack that is prompting and pushing him back to his ex-fiancee. But will he follow the guidance of the music?

On The Edge Of A Cliff’ – Thriller
Having been kidnapped by a psychotic South African arms dealer, a resilient young traveller integrates himself with the gang’s hierarchy in order to escape, but finds himself seduced by the criminal world.

This Is Me Leaving – Dark Comedy
After landing an innocent woman in the hospital, a suicidal twenty-something winds up on a state-wide road trip delivering unique gifts to relative strangers in order to make amends.

Sunshine – Comedy/Drama
A devoutly religious sixteen-year-old psychopath must hunt down and kill her biological mother… Who is even more dangerous than her.

Today’s amateur screenplay teaches us that Grandma may not be as cute and cuddly as you think she is.

Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias name and/or title). Also, it’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so that your submission stays near the top of the pile.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: Before he can break up a well-connected ring of terminally ill senior citizen suicide bomber killers for hire, an FBI agent must confront the sweet little old lady sent to kill him.
Writer: Patrick J. Power
Details: 100 pages

I have a soft spot for people who’ve been trying to get their scripts read on the site forever. Especially people who have been so supportive of Scriptshadow. I feel like they deserve to be rewarded. Which is why I chose today’s script. Patrick has been very persistent (yet polite) in his attempts to get his script read so I felt like he deserved a shot.

But before we get to that, I want to point out why I never would’ve read it otherwise. The premise feels goofy to me – one of those premises where you’re not sure if it’s a thriller or a comedy. And while that’s fine if it turns out to be a comedy, it’s not fine if it turns out to be a thriller. Old people suicide bombers? I don’t know. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. Am I off base with that?

But hey, once I pop open a script, I’m MORE than ready to be proven wrong. Every script deserves a fair shot and believe me, I wanted nothing more than to love this.

Paul Lucas is a San Diego FBI agent hanging out at the federal building, preparing to watch a Colombian drug lord walk free. Then, while the lawyer makes an official statement for his client, a large blast blows both of them to pieces. When the FBI takes a later look at the security footage, they see a little old lady named Juliet Ivy standing next to the duo. Hmmmm. I knew old people were gassy but this is too much.

After 15 more characters are introduced inside roughly 7 pages, Paul decides to take a closer look at the little old lady. He heads over to her son’s home and learns that Juliet had cancer and belonged to an upscale hospice known as “The Healthful Healing Medical Center.” Paul speeds over there and meets the suspicious manager, who confirms that Juliet had a one million dollar life insurance policy. Paul rightly wonders how an 85-year-old woman secures a one million dollar life insurance policy.

Off in another part of the city, someone on a gondola blows up another few people and when they look into it, they find that that too was done by a senior citizen. As if allowing these people behind the wheel wasn’t enough! So now Paul realizes they’re dealing with organized attacks. But where are these attacks being ordered from and why??

Eventually, Paul finds out that it all goes back to that Healthful Healing place. So he finds an old retired FBI agent, Norman, who has cancer (I think – he might’ve been faking – I’m still not sure) and sends him in undercover to find out exactly what’s going on.

The focus of the story then shifts over to Norman, who realizes that one of the women at the center, Mary Margaret, has been there for a long time. In a place where people go to die, this stands out as a red flag. Indeed, Mary Margaret turns out to be the leader of this crime syndicate, sending old people out there to blow pre-determined targets up. I have to admit that I never figured out what her scheme was, but it seemed very important to Mary Margaret. And I suppose that’s all that matters.

Patrick and I have an interesting relationship. He used to write me all the time with these nice e-mails pointing out plot synopsis mistakes I’d made in my reviews. If I said that the aunt slept with Larry, he would send me an e-mail explaining that, no, it was actually the ex-wife that slept with Larry. Over time, however, he became less cordial, and just started sending messages like: “Not Don. Joe!”

I bring this up because I’m sure I screwed up at least some of the synopsis here. But in my defense, there were like 35 characters in this script. Which is actually a great place to start. I’m kind of shocked. For someone I know reads the site all the time, why would they make the one mistake I rail against the most – insane character counts. ESPECIALLY on Amateur Friday! Instead of going on a thousand word rant about this issue like I usually do, I’ll just say that the insane character count made it impossible for me to keep track of everyone and everything that was going on.

But that issue pales in comparison to my main critique of the screenplay. And this is the part of my job I hate the most because it’s the most painful critique you can give a writer: The concept here simply doesn’t work.

It’s too goofy. You’re talking about old people suicide bombers. There isn’t a story you can wrap around that idea that doesn’t feel silly. I could never get past that while reading the script.

But even if the concept were squared away, there were still too many wonky choices in this screenplay. For example, you have Norman, who jumps into the script at the midpoint. We’ve barely met the guy, yet all of a sudden he’s thrust into, basically, the protagonist role of the story. That’s just a strange thing to ask the reader to roll with. You’re following one hero. Then midway through the story, you say, “Let’s go follow this other guy instead.”

And then you have the strange choice of giving Paul terminal cancer. That was the official point where I realized the train had gone off the tracks. You have a story based on a bunch of old people who have terminal cancer, then you also give your main younger character terminal cancer as well?? It’s just such a bizarre coincidental choice that calls into question the entire story.

Finally, I’m not sure what that climax had to do with anything. There were a few mentions of this boat called “Code Blue” over the course of the script. Since that was also the title of the movie, I tabbed it as important. But it didn’t play into the story until this final scene when, for some reason, everybody went out on the Code Blue for a big showdown. I just didn’t understand what was going on. And I’m still not sure what Mary and her group were ultimately trying to achieve.

I know how obsessed Patrick is with attention to detail so I’m sure he could lay out for me, in a specific line by line breakdown, all of the places in the script where this stuff was explained. But when you’re reading a script, it doesn’t work like that. Once you start losing confidence in the story, it becomes harder and harder to stay invested in it. I didn’t believe in the concept. The never-ending character count had me forgetting who was who. And the switch to a different story and different main character halfway in had me scrambling to muster up the energy just to finish the script, much less make sense of it.

I know how long Patrick’s been trying to get me to read this, so it sucks I didn’t fall in love with it. But I do think a good lesson can come of it. This script needs to be retired and Patrick needs to move on to a snazzier concept, something more believable, less silly, and that readers can really sink their teeth into. All of the problems in this screenplay come back to a writer trying to make a concept work that can’t work. I would love to see Patrick tackle something that has a chance from the beginning. And I’d also love to hear your thoughts about this premise. Am I right? Does it feel like a bad joke? Or am I way off base and this concept actually has potential? Believe me, I’d be more than happy to be proven wrong because I HATE telling writers to scrap an idea they’ve labored months over and start something else.

Script link: Code Blue

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

What I learned: I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. The number one way to kill your chances of getting a script read is a bad premise. I hear writers say it all the time: “Nobody will read my script.” Trust me, if you have a great premise, PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ YOUR SCRIPT!!! I GUARANTEE IT! I WILL BE ONE OF THEM! If you’re not getting that excited response when you send your idea out, take a second look at the idea itself. It’s probably the reason.