Screenwriters everywhere beware. You will not be the same after this review. That’s because this screenplay is…well, I’ll just come out and say it.  It’s puppet noir.

Genre: Puppet Noir
Premise: When a serial killer starts murdering the cast of a once-famous puppet show called The Happytime Gang, two detectives, one a man, one a puppet, try to find the killer before the entire cast is DEAD.
About: The Happytime Murders recently jumped into the Hollywood spotlight when Katherine Heigl came aboard to play one of the leads. There appears to be some confusion over which role Heigl will play though. Reports have her as a detective – yet there are no female detectives in the draft I read. There are, however, some hot and heavy lesbians. So either someone else has been misinformed or they’ve since rewritten one of the leads for a woman. Either way, all this news is just bizarre. I guess it’s only natural that a bizarre script would warrant a bizarre casting choice. Todd Berger, the main writer on the script, most recently penned Kung Fu Panda 2. Learn more about Todd here. He seems like a great guy who worked his butt off to get to this point.
Writer: Todd Berger (story by Todd Berger and Dee Austin Robertson)
Details: 98 pages – 11/24/08 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).

No, you didn’t misread the genre. No, you didn’t misread the premise. You wanna know what’s even scarier than not misreading either of those? Going into what you thought was a normal screenplay and reading this opening line: “Detective Phil Phillips stands on the front porch of a farmhouse. Phil is a small blue puppet with shaggy yellow hair and a tired disposition.”

Say-whuh?

Whereas before I was tired and droopy, after this line I straightened up and was ready to go. It was a lesson I’ve preached a thousand times before but it bears repeating. If you come up with something unique and different (GOOD unique and different – not dumb unique and different – there’s a HUGE difference!), you’re going to catch a reader’s interest. Because readers read the same stories over and over again.

It’s only natural, then, that they’d get excited when something out of the norm shows up. However, sitting up doesn’t mean I’m staying up. Yeah, you’ve got my attention, but now you gotta tell a story that’s going to keep it. Hey, I’m rooting for you Weird Puppet Noir Script. If you’re good, it tells writers everywhere that it’s okay to take chances. But if you bore me, you might find yourself as the cheapest item at the next Carson Reeves Yard Sale.

We’ve already met private detective Phil Phillips, the blue puppet detective with a seriously messed up past. Phil used to be a real policeman, partnered with a human, his best friend, a man named Edwards. But then…DUH DUH DUHHHHH… “the incident” happened. Now they hate each other.

In this half-human half-puppet world, puppets are looked at as second class citizens. Especially lately, as puppet-human tensions have risen to an all-time high. You get the feeling that unless something is done soon, bad shit is going to happen.

But instead of something coming along to ease the tension, something comes along to make it worse. Back in the 80s, there used to be this popular puppet show called “The Happytime Gang.” It featured characters like Mr. Bumblypants and Larry Shenanigans. Well, it turns out a huge syndication deal has been made whereby all of those shows are going to play again. Which means one thing: It’s time for these once-famous puppets to get paaaaaid.

But just as the celebration begins, one of the Happytime cast members is killed! Murdered. In cold…puppet…cloth…bits. It’s time to do something about this, Phil says. But unfortunately Phil doesn’t have the kind of access he needs to investigate the case. Which means he’s forced to team with, you guessed it, his old human partner, Edwards.

As the two start looking into the murder, another Happytime member is killed, then another, then another. After some investigating, our detectives find out that that syndication deal is set up so that the money’s split up between the REMAINING members of The Happytime Gang. Which means the less members there are, the more everyone gets paid.

Obviously, this means one of these puppets is killing off the rest so he can get rich! Or…maybe…wait……um, he’s killing MOST of the Happytime members because if he kills them all, then finding the killer would be pretty easy. So I think he’s killing most of them. Actually, I’m not sure. But who cares. It’s puppet noir. Just roll with it.

So let’s jump straight to the business on this one. Hot lesbians. If everything goes right, that’s what Catherine Heigl is playing. Surely her carefully constructed marketing team is begging her not to do this and there’s still no guarantee that she will. But even though Heigl is – hmm, how shall we put this – one of the bitchiest actresses to come along in a long time, she’s still quite talented. And she’s hot. So I’m all for her playing a hot lesbian in a puppet noir. I mean can you imagine her dressed up in a tight black dress, skimpy near the top, a temptress, a vixen, one of those women that has you making inadvertent cat noises whenever you see them. Rreeoowwww. I wouldn’t mind–

Wait a minute, where were we again? Oh yeah, script analysis!

Plotwise, the script is clever as hell. The set-up – A once-famous puppet show going into syndication with all the puppets getting rich off it, resulting in motivation for murder – was really well done. I mean you can go a million different directions in a movie with puppets. I thought this direction was perfect.

We’ve also got GSU here. We have a goal (find the killer) we have stakes (lives are at stake) and we have urgency (the longer it is before they find him, the more puppets die).

But there was just something…missing. Maybe it was our lead, Phil, who I didn’t give a flying puppet about. I didn’t relate to him in any way (yes, I’m complaining about not relating to a puppet – work with me). He’s a big downer actually. But I guess that’s par for the course with the noir genre. That’s how these detectives act. They’re always drinking and droning on about how depressing and miserable their lives are. Which is fine. But it’s hard for me to get onboard with a character like that. And I’m actually confused as to why this genre used to be so popular in the first place. A guy whining on in voice over about how shitty everything is while keeping a permanent buzz? People in the 40s must have been really bored.

Anyway, I don’t think the writers did a very good job of conveying Phil OR Edwards for that matter. For example, we learn early on that Edwards is one of the top cops in taking down puppets, who he seems to hate. But as soon as we learn that, he helps a puppet out when no one’s looking. So does he like puppets? Does he not like puppets? Does he only secretly like puppets? Did he just feel sorry for this one puppet? I didn’t know so I never got a good feel for the guy.

And Phil – I couldn’t tell you anything about him even though he’s the main character, other than he has a goofy “incident” from his past that got him kicked off the force. I think every aspect of him (the drinking, the voice over, the incident from his past) was deliberately steeped in cliché for humorous effect. I suppose that might be funny to lovers of the genre. To me, though, it just made our hero cliché.

Then there was the whole racism allegory, which the writers never fully committed to, so it left you wondering what the point of it was in the first place, other than it was an obvious thing to do. If you’re going to make your script an allegory, then make sure the thing you’re allegory-izing is part of the plot. The racism stuff had nothing to do with the main plot (puppets being killed for monetary reasons).

This is a hard script to judge. I love how wacky it is. I love the plot setup. Structurally, everything is in place. I LOVE when writers take chances so I have to give it to these two for coming up with this in the first place. By all measurements, this is a well-written professional screenplay. And yet, the combination of a main character I didn’t care about, my dislike of the genre (not their fault), and execution that felt a little too on-the-nose, leaves me feeling let down. For that reason, it barely misses a “worth the read.”

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[x] wasn’t for me (but an interesting read nonetheless!)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I can’t stress this enough. The people who I see moving up the ladder the fastest are people who go out there and do it themselves. I know we’re writers. I know we’re all lazy. But people look at you differently when you’re out there doing shit. I bumped into a girl, Cathy, on Twitter the other day, a writer who told me she was editing her latest film. Immediately in the back of my mind, I noted her as someone to watch out for. Because she was making a damn film! Instead of waiting around for things to happen! This is the approach writer Todd Berger took to get to this point. He wrote and directed short after short after short, finally getting enough attention to nab some big writing jobs. Most recently, he wrote Kung Fu Panda 2, and is up for some other huge Hollywood projects. We even have a long-time Scriptshadow reader who just wrote an award-winning short. I see her in a completely different way now. Simply because she didn’t wait for that Willy Wonka golden ticket but went out there and made her own ticket. Go out there and do it yourself. Hell, connect with some people right here on Scriptshadow. Write a short and shoot it. Stop waiting!

Writer of one of my Top 25 favorite screenplays takes a few moments to share his experiences with Scriptshadow Nation.

Brian Duffield shot onto the scene with his Black List script, “Your Bridesmaid Is A Bitch,” about a young man who must endure a wedding weekend around his ex-girlfriend, who he’s still trying to get over.  Since then, he’s sold two screenplays, “Worst Honeymoon Ever” and “Jane Got A Gun.” I think you guys will enjoy this interview because, as you’ll find out, Brian broke in purely on talent, not because he was best friends with Steven Spielberg or something. Follow Brian on Twitter @BrianDuffield or check out his blog.

How did you get into screenwriting? Was it completely independent of what you were doing before or had you done other types of writing as well? 

I was a big pop culture geek growing up in Pennsylvania, and when I was nine my family moved to middle-of-nowhere Ireland. I remember our tiny school had some movie novelizations and, since we lived nowhere near a movie theatre, those more or less became my movie substitute. I think when I was around fourteen or fifteen I knew I wanted to be a writer and had the massive revelation that scripts were much shorter than novels, plus they would be turned into movies. That sounded pretty awesome to me, and I haven’t grown out of it yet. I really don’t have anything to fall back on besides prostitution, so fingers crossed I don’t have to grow out of it anytime soon.

When you first started, was it easier than you expected or more difficult? What was the most difficult thing about the craft for you in those early days?

I don’t ever remember writing screenplays being “difficult,” but it took years and years before it seemed like something that could potentially be a real career instead of something I dreamed of doing but didn’t actually think could happen, like going to Mars or working at Jurassic Park.

The most difficult thing about starting to write screenplays is that I just had no idea how to do it. I think it’s safe to say I was the only person I knew who wanted to be a screenwriter until I went to college. I didn’t have any screenwriting books, but I remember when people started uploading classic scripts onto html and txt back in the day. It was better than Christmas. By the time I got to college I had a lot of unique writing habits that came out of teaching myself what I thought a screenplay should be like.

I was also obsessed with Jeff Goldsmith’s Q+A’s with screenwriters that he’d put on iTunes – I’m not sure when he started putting those out, but I honestly found those more educational and helpful than college. He’s not even paying me to say that. I think a big part of that was just hearing the voices and stories of real screenwriters. It made the career less of a fantasy and more of a possibility.

After how many scripts did you start to feel like you had a grip on screenwriting? Was it “Your Bridesmaid Is A Bitch,” or was it a script before that? What would you say was that “ah-ha” moment that got you over the hump?

I’m still not sure I feel like I have a grip on screenwriting. I feel like I’m getting better at it in general but I’m constantly terrified everything I write is garbage. I think the first time I felt really proud of something I wrote was in college when I wrote a man-in-suit monster movie about mankind’s need for a god, and I think the reason that one clicked for me was because I realized pretty early on that no one else would probably think to tackle these questions I had about faith with dudes in giant monster suits beating the crap out of each other. That was a pretty big moment for me, because I think I finally understood that even if what I had to say was completely idiotic, there probably weren’t too many other writers out there that would say it like I would.
I think YBIAB was something like my tenth script. It was the first one people paid attention to and I haven’t really shown the earlier scripts to anyone in LA. They served their purpose and I’m proud of them but I’m more interested in what I’m going to write next than rewriting some lousy script I wrote when I was 18.

Many writers want to know if they should write something personal to them and not worry about its marketability, or write something marketable, even if their heart and soul isn’t as into it. Which one of those was “Your Bridesmaid Is A Bitch,” and what’s your opinion on the matter? 

For my specs, I don’t really see any reason why personal and marketable can’t go hand in hand. I just read this amazing quote by Jonatham Lethem which went “every book is an inadvertent journal” and I think that (should be) exactly true for screenwriting as well. I also just really wanted to be cool and drop a quote in this interview.

I think there’s a lot of really good screenwriters who reveal nothing about themselves in their movies, and I think you can tell instantly who that may or may not be when reading their script. Personally, I’d always like to err on the exposing too much side of things, because as a viewer/reader those are the movies I latch on to the most. I think some of the greatest blockbusters of all time are also some of the most personal movies ever made. There’s no reason why you can’t do both. I know a lot of people say they hate “Hollywood” movies, but I think what they mean is they hate bad Hollywood movies, in the same way they’d probably hate bad indie movies. The difference being bad indie movies generally never get seen by anyone.

I can source every script I’ve ever written to a particular feeling I was struggling with or issue I was trying to sort out in brain. And when you make those personal problems a character’s problem, just take all the stakes they’d be going through as far as they possibly could go. For “YBIAB,” I think it came out of a) a string of really terrible relationships, b) everyone getting married around me and c) perpetually being afraid to see an ex at a wedding. I don’t really see how I write scripts to be any less biographical than how Taylor Swift writes songs about all the boys she’s angry at, except sometimes I add explosions and dinosaurs. Which Taylor Swift should really do as well.

How did all of this lead to you finding your manager and agent? Were you sending out naked query letters? Did you build up contacts, one of which finally got a script of yours to someone important? How did that happen?

The space between getting a manager, an agent, and selling YBIAB was probably about two weeks long. It was October and I was working at a clothing factory in Vernon, CA and I wasn’t actively sending the script out anywhere. I had worked a string of typical crappy assistant jobs and had reached my breaking point, so I was just trying to regroup and work with people that smiled and shit like that and I didn’t really care that I was “outside” of Hollywood at the time.

I had finished YBIAB the previous December and shown it to some of the industry people I knew and nothing had come of it. I had given it to some pals of mine out here and one of them, a Mr. Matt Downing, gave it to a friend of his he played basketball with who worked at Circle of Confusion. I’m not really sure what the time gap was between Matt giving it to Zach (Cox, now my manager) and Zach reaching out to me. But eventually I met with Zach, Noah Rosen and David Engle at Circle of Confusion and they said they wanted to manage me and try to sell the script. And I thought that sounded cool since I was working at a clothing factory in Vernon, and they then sold it a week or two later. I got my agents (Devra Lieb and Bayard Maybank at Gersh) around the time it sold. I got really lucky because my managers and agents are about as far from being douche bags as possible.

You’ve had a few sales now and a few scripts on the Black List. In your experience, what’s the determining factor that leads to a script sale? What should other writers be focusing on? 

I feel like every week my opinion on this changes. Look, a lot of amazing scripts never sell and a lot of horrible ones do. It’s just the nature of Hollywood. At this point, I try to just write the best script I can and as soon as I turn it in, I try to pour all my energy into the next one. Possibly because I’m a neurotic pessimist, I just assume none of my scripts will sell. If I had to tell other writers going through the spec market how to handle it, I’d just say to ignore it as much as possible.

You work in comedy, which is the most competitive genre on the spec market. In your opinion, what’s the most important thing about making a comedy script work? 

For me, probably the fact that I’ve never thought of myself as a comedy writer. I think my last spec, “Jane Got A Gun,” is relatively unfunny. For “YBIAB” I never sat down and thought “time to write a rom-com” and I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever write another straight forward rom-com again. I kind of viewed YBIAB as a horror film because at the time it was literally one of the scariest ideas I’ve ever had. I also thought of it like a war film, because whenever I had been cheated on in the past it felt like I was suddenly plunged into a battle with some other dude who had spent all this time building his defenses and arsenal, while I was just flailing about. Noah, the lead character, never realizes he’s in a romance or a comedy, and I think that’s the key. He really just wants to survive this wedding. He’s not looking for love and he’s not trying to make anyone laugh. I’m not really sure I ever thought any particular scene had to be funny. I remember watching “The 25th Hour” a night or two after getting dumped and when Ed Norton has his big “Fuck You New York!” scene, it really affected me because I felt the exact same way, just about a girl. I wanted to include that in YBIAB not because it was funny but because it’s the farthest thing from funny to Noah and those feelings felt honest to me.

I think, in short, break-ups are the funniest thing ever in hindsight and the least funny thing ever when you’re in the middle of them.

I’ve never been too married to genre conventions. Some of my favorite movies are absolutely hilarious but you’d never find them in the comedy section, and vice versa. I think it changes from project to project. I know I tune out when characters act like they’re in a comedy and they’re begging for you to laugh at them, so I try to avoid that as often as possible.

Comedies and romantic comedies usually require a likable main character. How conscious are you of creating a “likable” hero or do you not pay attention to that stuff? Are there any instances in “Bridesmaid” you can point to where you’d say, “I deliberately wrote this scene so that you’d like my main character?”

I don’t necessarily agree that characters need to be likable, I think they just need to be watchable.

With YBIAB though I thought it was important that the reader is rooting for Noah. A dick being upset over getting cheated on isn’t very watchable. Before he gets to the wedding, I wanted to show that even though he was hurting, he was still doing the best he could. He loved his family, had friends that cared for him and most of all, he didn’t want to be depressed and hung up on this girl anymore. He was doing everything he could to be better and be a better person. He wasn’t lounging around being depressed – he was out in the world, he was working out, he was going on dates, he even moved to a new city – but he was just stuck. I think that feeling of being stuck is pretty relatable. Or at least I hope it is and I’m not the only weirdo that’s felt like that before.

I wanted to establish all of this because I knew how easy it would be for him to just become a whiny little bitch boy, and I knew how easy it would be to lose the entire female audience if this depressed asshole kept calling this girl who left him for a better man a bitch.

What’s your approach to structure? Are you a traditionalist or do you not think about 3 acts when you’re writing? Some people like to be as specific as breaking down their screenplay into 20 or so “beats.” What’s your method? 

I’m staunchly against Blake Snyder type beat sheets and ordering out pages for scenes. I used to write outlines and found that once I got into the script writing I would want to break from the guideline 100% of the time. For me, those outlines really restricted my creative freedom and from letting the characters lead. I know that sounds douchey, but I think a lot of the fun in writing specs for me is just letting them evolve and change.
I think the best argument I have for this is the fact that my last spec, “Jane Got A Gun,” started out as a modern day reluctant road trip movie between two guys. And now it’s a western with a female lead. I realized while I was working on my thoughts or beats for the project that the story I was trying to tell was much more interesting from the woman’s point of view, and once I knew that I tried to figure out what setting her character would be the most affective and interesting in. If I had blocked myself into a rigid outline I never would have felt I had the freedom to go as far off track as I did. The most outlining I wound up doing on that script was a series of post-it notes on my wall so I could keep track of everyone I had shot.

For studios/assignments outlines and structures like that are vital, because it’s so much more of a team effort than specs. With my specs, I never show anyone anything until I’ve done a draft that I’m proud of. It gives me the freedom to be a moron and it’s both the most frustrating and exciting part of writing for me.

I was a script reader for a few years and I found that I never gave a crap about people’s structure, I just cared when a) something was terrible and b) something was boring. At the end of the day, that’s really all anyone cares about. Just figure out what works best for you.

Did you ever enter screenwriting contests? If so, how did your scripts do? What’s your opinion on entering contests overall?

I submitted a couple times when I was in college. I think I got some honorable mentions or quarter final shout outs a few times. The best thing that happened through those is that it helped convince me that I wasn’t the worst writer of all time. I don’t see anything wrong with submitting to them, as long as if you don’t put too much stock in their opinion of what you write.

I’m sure with your recent success, you’re taking a lot of meetings around town. For future writers, what should they be prepared for in these meetings? What is it they should be looking to get out of them? 

Be prepared for everything. I’ve made some really close friends out of general meetings, and I’ve had some bizarre generals where I’m 99% sure they hate everything I’ve written. Sometimes people have really cool ideas to pitch you and sometimes they’re really horrible and you have to fake enthusiasm. When I started out a year ago I was terrified all day every day because it’s like going to a dateapalooza (I’ve never been, I’m just guessing, I swear) and I’m typically pretty shy. But for the most part, they’re meeting you because they liked what you wrote, and they’re looking to start a relationship with you. I think going on generals has forced me to come out of my shell a lot more, which probably isn’t a bad thing.

If you could go back in time and do it over again, what would you have changed as a screenwriter to accelerate your success? 

I honestly have no idea. I’m sure there are some things I could have done differently, or done better, but I’m thankful that it happened at all so I’m not going to nitpick too much. If present me could time travel back to crying-in-the-shower-because-I-kept-get-cheated-on past me and tell him that it was all just research for the first script I would sell, I would probably do that.

Today’s screenplay tackles that age-old screenwriting question: How does an alien spy save planet earth?

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: Behind the scenes of a modern day earth, the leaders of the world learn that a faraway civilization is planning to wipe them out. So they send in a spy – one of the aliens who came to warn them – to extract information about the attack in order to defend against it.
About: This script sold at the end of last year in a minor bidding war that Sony won, paying $300,000. Nice! The writer, Daniel Kunka, has one produced credit to his name, the John Cena vehicle, 12 rounds, a 2009 film about a detective who must complete 12 challenges to save his kidnapped girlfriend.
Writer: Daniel Kunka
Details: 119 pages – March 3, 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).

Hey, it may not be the bidding wars of the 90s, but grabbing $300,000 for a spec script is pretty darn sweet (correction – a commenter points out that this sold for much more than 300k.  300k is the amount Neal Moritz, the producer on the deal, personally paid in addition to the studio, to close the deal). And WHY did this particular spec script sell? Especially when it’s “just another alien invasion movie” (as some people have pointed out)?

Well, that’s the thing. It’s not just another alien invasion movie. We’re not talking Battle: Los Angeles here, where the only thing alien is the plot. This is an alien invasion movie about a spy who flies to another planet to save earth. Now I can’t definitively say that that’s why it sold, but I can tell you it’s THESE KIND OF UNIQUE ANGLES that set your script apart from every other spec out there. Go ahead, write your alien invasion flick. But just know that there are hundreds if not thousands of writers doing the same thing. So if you can find an angle that’s different, like Agent Ox, you may find yourself jumping up a few tax brackets.

That said, all that scribbling still has to dance. Just because the outfit’s original doesn’t mean you should wear it to the club. So does Agent Ox tear it up? Or fall on its ass?

Agent Ox is ambitious. It starts out by telling us everything we know is a lie. Remember that purported alien crash back in Roswell in the 40s? It turns out that really WAS an alien crash. Or, more specifically, an FUI’ing “Oxialitian,” who’d come to earth to warn us that in about 70 years, his people were going to come here and rape the earth of all of its energy, killing us all in the process.

As time went by, more Oxialitians (who look similar to humans in most respects) came, giving the leaders of the world secrets about their technology, enabling them to build an entire series of underground weaponry, the kind of stuff that makes nuclear missiles look like IEDs. The bulk of this technology was used for an immense super-cannon that would be placed on the far side of the moon, awaiting the arrival of the Oxialitians.

Since you don’t want to tell the entire human race that there’s a good chance they’ll be wiped out (I find that sort of thing never goes well), this development was all done on the sly. Only people in the highest positions of government knew about it.

And still, that isn’t enough. They need intel. They need someone on the inside. So a 20-something Oxialitian named Tim is asked to participate in the most ambitious mission in earth’s history. Go to the Oxialitian’s planet, secretly infiltrate their government, and keep Earth abreast of any new developments in their plan.

And that’s what the main storyline’s about. It’s the present day (on Earth at least) and Tim is living on this alien planet (which is about 100 years more advanced than ours), working for their government and quietly sending back intel to earth.

None of this is easy of course. Tim ends up falling for and living with another Oxialitian while there. And, as you would expect, the government begins to suspect that one of their own is a spy – although not necessarily Tim. This is terrible timing, as the Oxialitians decide to move on Earth sooner than expected. So Tim needs to be able to get that intel back to Earth ASAP but because everyone’s being watched so closely, it will be near impossible. As the attack nears and Tim keeps moving higher on the suspect list, he will have to pull off a miracle to save mankind.

This script was so unlike anything I’d read before that I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I mean it’s just kind of “out there,” and yet it’s all handled with just enough skill to keep you reading. Or at least keep sci-fi geeks like myself reading.

What’s funny is that I don’t like the spy genre. We just established this last week. But the second you put an alien spin on it, I’m interested. And actually, even though this takes place in a completely imaginary universe, it nailed every single structural component that previous abomination of a spy spec (Wencesles Square) did not. We have a goal (Find out when/where the attack will take place). We have stakes (if he screws up, the earth is destroyed) and we have urgency (there’s only a few days left before they attack). So from a structural standpoint, Agent Ox got everything right.

Where it starts to get a little wobbly though is in the characters and their relationships. This is EXTREMELY common in the sci-fi scripts I read, as writers interested in science fiction generally aren’t interested in the human component. So you get these murky characters, murky character flaws, and relationships that don’t have a lot going on in them.

Exhibition A – Tim. I knew nothing about him. Here this guy is, going off to this alien planet to be a spy, and I never got a sense of what he thought of this. I’m not even sure why he goes. He just seems to do it because people want him to. What’s his motivation?

And what’s his flaw? What’s holding him back in life? What is it from his past that he’s trying to resolve? What are his dreams/aspirations? His life goals? These are the things that tell us who characters are, that expand them beyond a two-dimensional piece of paper. Yet none of them were addressed save for maybe the backstory, which leaned on the cliché “father was a drunk” crutch that invariably indicates the writer either doesn’t know how to create an interesting backstory or is too lazy to come up with something original.

And if you have a murky character, it’s almost impossible to create a compelling relationship. The whole reason relationships are interesting is because they challenge who a character is, what they believe in, what they want, what their flaws are. If we don’t know any of these things, then you’re stuck doing something murky and generic with the relationship. The extent of Tim’s relationship with his girlfriend is that she’s a little concerned because he’s been distant lately. That’s not enough to carry an entire movie. Say what you will about Avatar but the relationship there was actually about something. He was ignorant. He didn’t care about anything beyond himself. She had to teach him how to appreciate and care about his surroundings.

So that was disappointing.

Still, because the structure was so solid and the stakes were so high, it kept you reading. There were also some cool inventive sci-fi things that were worth nerding out over. Watching this huge alien ring suck the cover off an alien planet was both awesome and terrifying. And I loved the idea of aliens cleaning themselves on a molecular level. A device literally turns you into trillions of molecules so it can clean your insides. I’d never read anything like that before. And I liked how Kunka worked that into a key plot point as well.

So could this be a good movie? That’s tough to say. The great thing about an original idea is that it gets industry attention. The bad thing about an original idea is that those same industry people are afraid to pull the trigger. Anything that hasn’t been done before is a gamble and an earth spy on an alien planet hasn’t been done before. So we’ll have to see what happens. I didn’t love Agent Ox, but I liked it enough to recommend to other sci-fi geeks.

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

What I learned: One of the most compelling situations you can create in a movie is giving your hero two WRONG CHOICES. Think about it. Give a character an easy choice and there’s no drama. But give them two “wrong” choices and now things get interesting. (Spoiler) Late in the script, Tim’s girlfriend is misidentified as the traitor, which means she’ll be killed. So Tim has a choice – tell the truth, that he’s the real traitor, saving his girlfriend, or let his girlfriend die in order to save earth. No matter which one he chooses, the consequences are staggering. (note: They would’ve been a LOT more staggering though, had the relationship and characters, particularly the girlfriend, been better established – Just having a tough choice in theory isn’t good enough. We have to care about the people involved).

Guest reviewer Andrew Page gets a chance to review a screenplay about one of his idols, Jimi Hendrix.

Hello all. As I work tirelessly around the clock to bring you some fun Scriptshadow changes in the coming months, I’ll be depending on longtime Scriptshadow readers to fill in with the occasional guest review. Today, I want everyone to welcome Andrew Page, who’ll be reviewing a genre I avoid like the plague, the biopic! All you biopic fans rejoice, cause you know these don’t come along often. I’ll be back tomorrow with a strange sci-fi spec.

Today’s screenplay probably won’t win the Nicholl anytime soon, but it might just win your death from laughing so hard.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: An angry bitter 30-something finds a loophole in the National Spelling Bee rules which allows him to join the competition.
About: Bad Words made the 2011 Black List, finishing near the middle of the pack. This is Andrew Dodge’s breakthrough screenplay.
Writer: Andrew C. Dodge
Details: 106 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).

The Bad Trilogy. First, there was Bad Santa. Then…there was Bad Teacher. And now, the trilogy is complete with…………BAD WORDS! The baddest of all the baddery. And boy is this one bad. You thought Billy Bob Thorton was bad. You ain’t seen nothing yet. Buster.

I have no idea what your reaction is going to be to this script. Nobody agreed with me on He’s Fucking Perfect except for the funny people. This is way more extreme than that. It’s low-brow. It’s vulgar. It’s cruel. It’s anti-human. It’s basically one man telling everyone else to fuck off for 90 minutes. Oh, while spelling words in the meantime. If you are cynical, or if you’re one of those really nice people who secretly laughs at the less fortunate, you’ll love this.

Guy Duncan is a bitter dude. He’s one of those guys who thinks the world is after him – that everybody wants to take him down. So his plan is to take everybody down first. And right now, he’s set his sights on the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee. You see Guy found this loophole in the rules that states as long as you haven’t graduated 8th grade yet, you’re eligible for the Bee. And Guy never graduated 8th grade. He’s even got the documentation to prove it (how you get documentation to prove you *didn’t* graduate from somewhere is beyond me).

Try as they may, try as they might, the Bee organizers can’t find a way to legally keep Guy out of the competition. But they figure he won’t last long anyway so what’s the harm? I mean, he didn’t even graduate 8th grade. How good can he be?

V-E-R-Y G-O-O-D. Great even. Amazing.

One of the funnier earlier moments is watching the kids go through their time tested routines when given a word (“Could you give the country of origin please?” “Could you use the word in a sentence please?”) taking hours upon hours to get to the actual spelling of the word. Then Guy marches up, and before the judge can even finish the word, Guy spells it and trudges back to his chair.

The organizers quickly realize – they might be in trouble.

And that seems to be Guy’s focus – causing trouble. Except we’re not sure why. I mean, this guy has a huge chip on his shoulder for SOME reason. But we’re never given a C-L-U-E as to what it is.

Eventually, Guy meets Chaitanya, a weird clueless 12 year old Indian boy who’s a favorite in the competition but who’s so hopelessly awkward, he has no friends. He also has no social awareness whatsoever, so when he asks Guy if he wants to hang out and Guy tells him to fuck off, it doesn’t faze him. He just shrugs his shoulders, stands there for awhile, then changes the subject, asking him what his favorite color is or something.

At a certain point Guy realizes there’s no getting rid of Chaitanya, so he just starts hanging out with him. Chaitanya plays games by himself while Guy drinks all of Chaitanya’s booze from his mini-fridge. Little by little, though, Guy realizes that Chaitanya’s not too different from him. They’re both outsiders, misfits in their own way, so Guy, although he’d never admit it, actually starts to like the kid.

As you can probably guess (and if you can’t, you’ve never seen a movie before), Guy and Chaitanya end up battling it out for the final prize. What you won’t guess is how it goes down, as their spell-off transforms into one of the weirder showdowns ever.

I’ll give Bad Words this. The Spelling Bee is the perfect subject matter for a comedy. I don’t know why it hasn’t been done before. I mean – and I say this with all the love and respect in the world – these kids are so dorky! And dorkiness is comedy gold. Chaitanya is comedy gold. Who hasn’t met a kid just like him before?

But the thing that’s going to determine your love (or hate) for this script is if you like angry humor. If you like grown men sitting down next to fat 12 year old children and saying, “Christ. Would it kill you to lose some weight? I barely have any room here,” you’re going to love this. And I admit – I hate to say it – but I laughed. At that and a lot more of these transactions.

The thing is, a couple of months back, we reviewed an amateur script titled “Mrs. Satan,” where the main character, a girl, was kind of a bitch. And the argument in the comments section was that she wasn’t likable enough for us to root for. The writer pointed out that movies like Bad Santa had asshole main characters that worked. Why couldn’t he do the same?

Eventually someone made a great point. He said, the reason Bad Santa worked was because of the irony. Santa isn’t supposed to be bad. That’s what makes it so funny. Same thing with Bad Teacher. A teacher isn’t supposed to be a bitch. She’s supposed to be helpful!

The irony in Bad Words isn’t as obvious, but there is some irony in a grown man competing in a children’s competition. So even though the guy’s a big jerk, the irony of the situation has you giggling despite yourself.

What you also want to take away from Bad Words is that most beginner writers come up with funny ideas, yet by page 20, they run out of story. They’ve used up all their funny “grown man in a spelling bee” jokes. So what are you left with? The way to extend any idea out to feature length is via relationships.

So Dodge wisely brings in Chaitanya and that friendship is what moves the story through its second act. If you’re not building compelling relationships, you don’t have a second act. Exploring those and resolving those is what writing screenplays is all about.

Now was that enough to save Bad Words? Well, I’m not sure. It still felt a little thin to me. Maybe that single relationship wasn’t enough. Maybe Dodge needed another one. He tried to create one with Guy and his assistant/journalist, Jenny, but that character was so weak, I’d forget about her the second she wasn’t in a scene. I’m not sure her inclusion even makes sense.

I wouldn’t have minded a more extensive exploration of Chaitnaya and his father, as there seemed to be some real meat to that relationship there. However, maybe Dodge didn’t want to go that deep.

But you know what? As it stands, Bad Words is still pretty good. I mean, I laughed out loud at least a dozen times, which is a very good sign for a comedy. You rarely laugh if you don’t care about what’s going on. So I’m going to give this a “worth the read.” It ain’t going to change the world, but it might entertain it a little.

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

What I learned: Be careful about shrouding your character’s main motivation in mystery. Audiences become frustrated when they don’t know why their hero is doing what he’s doing. For example here, we have no idea why Guy wants to win this contest. You can make the argument that this causes curiosity, which entices the reader to keep reading. But most of the time, it just causes frustration. We want to know: “Why the hell is he doing this???” I mean, isn’t that what movies are about? People going after things that are important to them? If we don’t know why they’re going after them in the first place, we’re missing a key component to enjoying the movie. I’m not saying this approach NEVER works. I’m sure a few of you can point out examples where it does. I’m just saying be careful if you use it because it’s really hard to pull off.