This week has been extremely busy for me, so much so that I didn’t have time to read a script last night. Instead, I offer you a giant helping of Scriptshadow Quick Hits, a dose of the projects that have been making noise around town the last couple of months. Would love to hear your thoughts on them in the comments section. Here we go!

Neil Blomkamp/Robocop – Last month, it was revealed that Neil Blomkamp would be directing a Robocop movie. I find this interesting because it continues a trend of rebooting life-support franchises, such as Shane Black’s Predator and Tim Miller’s Terminator, as opposed to greenlighting fresh original ideas. The reason this particular choice is so troubling is that Blomkamp was one of the last directors creating big-budget original content in Hollywood. And now we’ve lost him to the dark side. However, an argument can be made that Blomkamp dug his own grave. Neither of his last two films, Elysium and Chappie, wowed at the box office. If you’re a studio looking at those numbers, you say, “Here’s one of the biggest talents we’ve had in years, and even he can’t hook audiences with original material.” Hence, studios have one more round of ammunition in their gun they can shoot at anyone claiming the industry needs to take more chances. This is what’s so frustrating about the desire for originality. We say we want it. But when it’s presented to us, we don’t show up. Then again, we’re not going to show up for a piece of trash. It’s a two-way street. I think if you’re going to write something original, it needs to be amazing. It can’t be “as good” as The Force Awakens. It can’t be “as good” as Ocean’s 8. It’s gotta be better. A LOT better. Not only because box office for original material is anemic. But because the only way we’re going to get more trips to the buffet is if we cook better food.

Bad Education – I remember reading this script only because it was on the Black List. It sounded jaw-droppingly boring. Yet it turned out to be one of my favorite scripts of 2017. The script is about a principal who funnels public school money into his own personal bank account. There is virtually nothing buzzy about this idea. There’s no strong hook. It’s not a social issue people care about. It’s not an indie film promoting one of Hollywood’s many agendas. It’s just a story. A good story. A great story! Anyway, after I finished it, I thought, “Great script. Will never get made.” How wrong I was. They somehow got buzzy director Cory Finley (Thoroughbreds) attached, and A-list star Hugh Jackman to play the lead. This is such a coup for good writing. And it’s a reminder that if you write something great, regardless of subject matter, it’s going to garner interest. Mike Makowsky’s career is really picking up, by the way. He’s also the writer of the much buzzed about “I Think We’re Alone Now,” starring Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning.

KING – Holy Time Machine, Batman! How cool is this news. You have the director of Back to the Future. You have the writer of Braveheart. And then you have… THE ROCK! All coming together to tell the story about King Kamehameha, the founder and first ruler of the Kingdom Hawaii. This! Wow! What a package! I have to admit that I didn’t know Randall Wallace was still writing scripts. And that there’s a 50% chance this movie will never get made because actors aren’t allowed to play any ethnicity other than their own these days (The Rock isn’t Hawaiian) and there’s already backlash. But if this movie gets made – and I hope it does – it’s going to be a trip back into the 1998 filmmaking handbook and whether the movie ends up being good or bad, it will definitely be interesting. Can’t wait for this one!

The Lottery – If you’ve been reading the site regularly, you know I’ve been on this kick of FINDING OLD IP. Hollywood loves old IP. And this deal is one that likely has everyone in town stoning themselves for not snagging the rights themselves. The Lottery, the most famous short story of all time, is being adapted into a feature film for the first time. The well-known tale follows a small town that participates in an annual “lottery” which we assume, at first, results in a prize, only to learn by the end that the winner (spoiler!) gets gleefully stoned to death by the town members. There is a screenwriting lesson to be learned here. A pitch becomes turbo-charged if it has a successful doppelgänger in an adjacent medium. It’s said that this project was greenlit specifically due to the success of The Handmaid’s Tale. Had you pitched this as a television show, people would’ve said, “We already have The Handmaid’s Tale.” But you pitch it as a feature and all of a sudden it sounds fresh.

After – I love this story. And hate it. And absolutely love it. No, I don’t understand it, But I love it. So here’s the deal. I’m someone who follows writing in all formats. I don’t care how one succeeds. If you can capture a large audience with your words alone, you’re a superstar. “After” is the first project making me reconsider that belief. “After” is a book (or a series of books) written by a young author, Anna Todd, about a “good girl” who goes off to college and meets a “bad boy,” throwing everything she knows about life into disarray. Major plotlines involve the “bad boy” kissing our protagonist, so that she thinks he likes her, only for him to act “blase” the next time they meet. Yes, let me repeat that. That is one of the major plotlines in the book. Todd started writing the story on the digital self-publication app, Wattpad, aiming for a chapter a day. This is where shit gets crazy. Her chapters have been read over 1.5 billion times on the site. Naturally, Hollywood came calling, and now “After” is being turned into a feature film. There are a couple of things to take away from this. One, write what you know. Clearly, Todd was exploring her life (going to college at the time) through her writing. Two, there seems to be this obsessive desire for material from a large portion of the female demographic centering on virginal “good” women who get mixed up with reckless “bad” boys. From Twilight to 50 Shades of Gray. If you’re looking purely for eyeballs and dollar bills, and you can write this stuff, you definitely want to write it. It’s tres lucrative. Oh, and one more lesson. JUST WRITE! I love that Todd used Wattpad to keep herself accountable. She made sure she wrote every day. That’s awesome.

Superfecundation – There is a group of people – it’s a small group, but it’s a group – who believe that the romantic comedy is primed for a comeback. They’re basing this off of a few barely overperforming Netflix rom-coms and Crazy Rich Asians having the biggest rom-com opening in years. So maybe Screen Gems picking up the spec script, “Superfecundation,” isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Superfecundation is written by Nicholl semi-finalist Savion Einstein, and follows a woman who learns that she’s pregnant with twins from two different fathers, a rare but real-life occurrence. Let’s hope the film gets a better reception than this comment, which appeared underneath Deadline’s article on the sale: “It’s cloying premises like this that have killed the rom com.” Ouch. What’s cool about this sale is that this is the script Einstein semi-finaled in the Nicholl with. So all you Nicholl semifinalists, don’t give up hope on that script sale!

Superhero Heist Movie – Okay, so you know how I keep telling you guys to FIND A NEW WAY INTO THE SUPERHERO GENRE instead of complaining how unfair it is to compete against billion dollar half-century old IP? That’s what filmmakers Chris Baugh and Brendan Mullin did, pitching their own superhero idea to Legendary. Their movie revolves around a group of criminals who stage a heist on a superhero’s lair, then must escape with their lives when everything goes wrong. I don’t know if they’re aware that they’re stealing from a superhero or not. Either direction could be fun. But note how these guys have found a unique way to give us a superhero movie. Not only that, but they’ve figured out a way to make it contained (keeping the price down). That’s how you do it, guys. You find ways around the roadblocks that Hollywood puts up. I have no idea who Chris Baugh and Brendan Mullin are (they made a movie called “Bad Day for the Cut”), but I’ll be keeping an eye out for this one.

Foundation – Apple is making a TV series based on famous sci-fi author Isaac Asimov’s most successful series of books: Foundation. The series comes from Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds) and David Goyer (Batman Begins). The most shocking thing about this pickup is that the books were written in the 1950s. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that old sci-fi doesn’t travel well. And with this book (the first in the series), I can tell you that it ain’t good. Borderline unreadable. To me, this signifies just how hard it is for Hollywood to find product right now. There are too many outlets, too many writers competing for good ideas, and that forces giant corporations like Apple to take risks on properties that weren’t meant to be produced in 2018. But this is good news for screenwriters. It’s a seller’s market right now in TV, more so than at any point in history. If you’ve got something good and you get it in front of a lot of eyeballs, I guarantee you someone’s going to say yes.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A woman goes on a vacation with her much younger boyfriend’s family.
About: Melissa Stack is a lawyer turned screenwriter, which is funny when you think about it, since most parents of screenwriters wish their children would’ve become lawyers. In one of the most notorious Black List entries of all time, Stack’s breakthrough screenplay, “I Want To _____ Your Sister,” became a lightning rod for debate, with many calling the title desperate and gimmicky. The success inspired a slew of similarly titled scripts over the years, until the trend finally died out. While “Sister” still hasn’t been made (last I heard it had been moved from its Wall Street setting to college), Stack did get that all important major Hollywood credit with 2014’s The Other Woman. I say “all important” because after you get that credit is when you start getting PAAAAAAAA-IIIID. Family Vacation was purchased by Fox. And taking matters into her own hands, Stack will be making the script her directing debut.
Writer: Melissa Stack
Details: 120 pages

Aniston for Mia??

You may be looking at this genre and thinking, “Romantic Comedy? Did I just get transported back to 1991?” Ah yes, tis true. I’m reviewing a romantic comedy. But alas! Don’t be dismissive. Word on Sunset Boulevard is that after the success of Crazy Rich Asians and Set It Up on Netflix, that the romantic comedy is alive again. Granted, it’s not a living breathing bipedal animal. It’s a tiny organism floating helplessly in an endless sea. But the point is… it’s alive! It’s ALLLIIIVE!!!

Which means that if you’ve written a romantic comedy, maybe, just maybe, people will take a look at it. And that’s way better than the situation two years ago, where if you even mentioned the words “romantic” and “comedy” in a Hollywood office, you were branded on the forehand with the letters “RC” and never allowed to speak of screenwriting again. It’s a rough town, I tell you.

Mia is 39 years old, single, and loving life. Well, okay, she’s not “loving” loving life. There’s a romantic void there, a void she’s been filling with Ben, her hot younger (31) neighbor. If forced to define their relationship, Mia might call it friends with benefits and a side of feelings. But the relationship gets scheduled for an upgrade when Ben asks Mia to join him on his family vacation so he’s “not bored.”

Mia, not really sure what this means, accepts the invitation. She’s quickly introduced to Ben’s oversharing parents, former marine Gus, a man who proudly refuses to defecate during vacation, and Linda, who covertly drugs her husband with valium whenever she needs something from him. The four of them hop in the car and head to their destination – a giant ranch in Utah.

Once at the ranch, they meet up with Ben’s brother Sam and his “11 out of 10” wife, Heidi, as well as numerous other vacationers staying at the ranch. The group participates in a series of activities that include cliff diving and fishing, all while Mia and Ben attempt to stay sane. This isn’t easy, as is demonstrated by Gus having an accidental shit explosion during his cliff dive due to the excessive buildup from refusing to defecate, and then Mia ignorantly jumping in right after him.

Eventually, Mia starts to question why she’s on this trip and what she wants from a guy she never expected anything from more than sex. But when Ben starts throwing words like “marriage,” “babies,” and “love” around, Mia realizes that she’s not getting off this ranch without making a choice that will determine the rest of her life.

Family Vacation is an okay script with a couple of big weaknesses. The first is the hook. This is pitched as a woman going on an awkward family trip with her much younger boyfriend. That sounds like a fun movie to me. We typically see the reverse of this – older guy, younger girl – so by flipping that cliche on its head, this already had a fresh feel. The problem is, Ben isn’t that young. She’s 39 and he’s 31. Therefore, once they’re on the trip, there aren’t any situations to exploit their age difference. They’re all fully grown adults. This would’ve been funnier if Ben was 24 or 25 and the parents were only 50, ten years older than Mia. Now that would’ve been awkward.

The bigger issue, however, is the lack of conflict between Mia and the parents. If we go back to the blueprint for this type of comedy – Meet The Parents – you’ll notice that the reason that script works so well is because the main character, Greg Focker, was so desperately trying to win the approval of his fiancé’s father, Jack. But Jack hated him. That conflict and need to change Jack’s mind is what drove the whole film.

In Family Vacation, the parents like Mia immediately. So there’s zero conflict. Nobody to win over. As a result, there isn’t a lot of conflict to exploit. And let me be clear – conflict is the lifeblood of comedy. It’s where all the laughs come from. The pushing and the pulling, the disagreements, the back and forth. It’s hard to make things funny when everyone’s happy and agreeable. And when you don’t have conflict, you’re forced to come up with nonstop hijinx, like a dad shitting in a lake and our heroine jumping in afterwards. I’m not saying that isn’t funny. But you can’t sustain a hijinx-only approach for very long.

To the script’s credit, things get a little more interesting when Mia and Ben begin to struggle with what they want out of their relationship. The problem was this only highlighted the fact that neither character had a strong motivation to begin with. I never knew what Mia wanted out of this relationship and I didn’t know what Ben wanted either. Contrast this with Greg in Meet The Parents. The only thing in the world he wanted was Pam. Pam was his life. He was willing to die for her. Which is why winning over her father was so important to him. That’s the power of a strong motivation.

That’s not to say you can’t explore not knowing what you want in a script. I actually think indecision is a universal flaw that lots of people relate to. But if you’re going to do that, you need to make it clear, in big bold letters, that that’s your heroine’s fatal flaw. She’s always been indecisive. And once again, she’s being indecisive with this guy. That way, we understand what the endgame for the character is and can play along. Mia’s either going to learn to be decisive or she isn’t.

I’m going to make a wild guess here and assume that the writer, Melissa Stack, is basing this script on her own experience. It reads like someone did something and thought, “This could be a movie.” And it can. But when you’re writing about real-life experiences, you have to change things to make the story better. To me, the hook here is the girlfriend joining the much younger boyfriend on a family vacation. But you have to exaggerate that for a movie. So if Stack’s boyfriend was really 8 years younger, you shouldn’t be afraid to double that.

I like Stack’s writing. Her dialogue is fun. And sometimes her hijinx are funny (Heidi getting bit by a snake in the vagina and Mia being forced to suck the poison out was a highlight). But the lack of a genuine hook here combined with barely any conflict left this one feeling light.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Set your scenes up in a distractive environment. The opening scene of Family Vacation is Mia and her three best friends chatting. Stack could’ve placed this scene in a restaurant or a coffee shop. But she instead placed it at a kid’s birthday party. This allowed for kids to be running around, popping their head in, “I have to pee,” and generally giving the scene a more chaotic unpredictable feel. So if you’ve got a stale scene, consider placing it in a more distractive environment.

Genre: Sci-Fi/Thriller
Premise: In a future where people are enhancing their lives with smart technology implants, a successful criminal defense attorney has her body hijacked by an anonymous hacker and struggles to prevent him from using her to commit a series of proxy murders.
About: Today’s script finished in the top 20 of last year’s “Hit List,” the list of the best spec scripts of the year. The writer, Mark Townend, adapted Anthony Bourdain’s novel, BONE IN THE THROAT, which was later produced (although it didn’t do well). I’ve reviewed another script of Townend’s – the high concept, Contingency Protocol – about the government using time travel to hide high-profile witnesses in the past. Warner Brothers picked up this script with an eye on It Girl, Margot Robbie, to star.
Writer: Mark Townend
Details: 109 pages

Margot Robbie for everything.

To be clear, I knew nothing about this script when I opened it other than the genre and that it made The Hit List. There’s nothing I love more than going into sci-fi scripts cold then getting bowled over by a brilliant hook point.

For this reason, I had NO IDEA I’d be reading something that was so similar to the movie I just reviewed last Monday, Upgrade. Yet again we have a dude in someone’s head who can control them. The only difference is that this is a real person and in Upgrade it was a computer.

This should serve as a reminder that it’s REALLY DIFFICULT to come up with original ideas, especially when you’re dealing with science fiction. If a sci-fi idea comes to you easily, there are probably loads of other writers working on something similar. Hold that sci-fi idea of yours to a higher standard and really try to come up with something fresh. A one-of-a-kind idea is a huge advantage in this space.

But hey, Augmented might still kick ass. Or, it might control someone else who kicks ass. Or, it might control us so that we kick ass. Oh, let’s just start the review.

In the near future, 40 year old defense lawyer Olivia Holloway is preparing for one of the biggest closing statements of her life – defending the heir to a giant corporation who’s been accused of killing a young woman.

We quickly learn that in the near future, everyone is augmented with an operating system called “GLAZE.” A chip is built behind your eye that allows you to have a virtual HUD in your field of vision at all times. For this reason, we’re more focused on answering our e-mails and chatting with our friends than we are interacting with the people right in front of us.

There is no one more guilty of this than Olivia, who barely even notices her husband, Brandon, and only addresses her two children to tell them, ironically, to turn off their GLAZEs. She then slyly uses her own GLAZE to target the volume of her kids and turn it down to zero. A cruel action I’m sure every parent who’s reading this review right now wishes to God they had access to.

At trial, Olivia stands to give her closing statement when the unthinkable happens. She can’t move. It’s like she’s having a stroke. Then a voice comes through her ears. A man known as “Judge” tells her he’s now controlling her body. And if she doesn’t tell the entire courtroom that her client is guilty of murder, he will pick up a pen and stab her with it. So she obliges.

Judge then forces Olivia to hurry out of the courtroom and do everything he says – which begins with finding a local cop and killing him. Once done with the cop, he tells Olivia to find a high profile client that she helped beat a murder rap. It’s here where Olivia realizes she’s dealing with the son of the woman that client murdered. He’s using Olivia to get his revenge.

Since Olivia has no control of her extremities, she will need to use all of her wits to manipulate her puppet master, or else face where this is inevitably going – when Judge is finished using Olivia to kill everyone on his list, he’s going to kill her as well.

One thing I like about Townend. He doesn’t mess around with small concepts. He thinks big. He also knows how to write a spec. This script reads very very fast. He knows that when a reader reads a spec – a spec that doesn’t have IP attached and therefore doesn’t have a good shot at getting made – that you have to grab the reader from the first sentence and never let them go. To lose someone for even a minute in a spec could be the difference between success and failure. So he makes each scene count, each line of action count, each line of dialogue count. I dare you to read this script and be bored.

However, the script is fighting an uphill battle in that it feels familiar. We’ve seen a lot of these movies where a dude calls someone and makes them do everything they say “or else.” The twist here is that the bad guy has control over the main character’s body, giving him an extra element of control. But is it enough to freshen up the well-worn idea? Ehhh… I’m not sure it is.

With that said, the script does some interesting things from a screenwriting perspective. In a progressive move, Townend makes his female protagonist a deadbeat wife and mother who gleefully cheats on her husband. One of the oldest “rules” in screenwriting is that you can make your male protag a cheater. But the audience will never accept a female protag who’s a cheater. Neither male nor female audiences get behind a female cheater.

By ignoring that rule, it made Augmented, an otherwise Save-The-Cat formatted thriller, a bit risqué.

Another thing writers will want to pay attention to is how Augmented approaches exposition. When you have a lot of backstory or exposition to convey, have the relevant character be FORCED to give it up. I guarantee no one will know you’re throwing reams of exposition at them.

Judge’s ultimate goal is to get Olivia to admit that she knew the murderer she represented killed Judge’s mother, and yet still defended him. As a result, he’s constantly making her tell him what happened, threatening to stab her if she doesn’t. This allows Olivia to get into all sorts of backstory about why she represented the man and what he said to her and how the trial went down, all without us thinking for a second that we’re being bombarded with exposition.

If there’s a problem with the spec it’s that it all feels a bit boilerplate. Like a beach read. And I understand that that’s the risk you run when you write a balls-to-the-wall thriller. The genre isn’t built to dig deep. But I can’t help but feel like Townend should’ve given us more meat to chew on. Without the meat, it’s hard to get audiences to have an emotional reaction to the proceedings. And while scripts can survive just fine without emotion, the ones that don’t have it fade from memory a lot quicker. So while I think this is worth checking out, I don’t know if I’ll remember it a month from now.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Subtextual Conflict – Remember, overt conflict between characters (screaming, butting heads) has its place, but is often seen as on-the-nose. A better way to explore conflict is through subtext. Read the opening scene of this script. It has Olivia’s family (husband and two children) getting ready for their day. Not once do Olivia or Brandon argue with one another. But boy is there a ton of conflict going on. A disappointed look from Brandon after Olivia doesn’t back him up when he tells the kids to turn off their GLAZEs. A constant lack of eye contact. Olivia putting her GLAZE e-mails as a priority over her husband, who’s sitting right in front of her. Short quick answers to each other’s questions. I have a better feel for this relationship due to its use of subtextual conflict than I do most of the relationships I read after entire scripts.

Genre: Period/War
Premise: In the 1st century, a woman defends the country of Briton against a Roman empire determined to conquer the world.
About: While I don’t like to designate anybody by who they’re dating, today’s script is unique in that it’s written as a female Braveheart, and the writer, Rosalind Ross, is dating Mel Gibson. I find that serendipitous. Don’t you? The script landed in the middle of the 2016 Black List with 11 votes. Since then, Ross has signed on to adapt “Hell From the Heavens,” a book about the greatest kamikaze attack in World War 2.
Writer: Rosalind Ross
Details: 107 pages

Sarah Bolger for Boudicca?

After seeing the trailer for the Netflix movie, The Outlaw King, I found myself in a festive mood. I looooooooove Braveheart. And this film is clearly taking its cues from that classic, positioning itself as a pseudo sequel. In a completely unrelated situation, I learned that Mel Gibson, star of Braveheart, has a girlfriend, Rosalind Ross, who is a super-fan of Braveheart, so much so that she wrote a female Braveheart! It’s like Braveheart everywhere you look. Braveheart over here, Braveheart over there.

I still consider that film to be a screenwriting masterpiece. It does everything I say not to do (namely tells a story with an endless number of characters and an unclear end point in a period setting where it’s easy for the viewer to become bored). Yet it still works. And that’s due to the fact that its main character is the most driven and motivated character in cinema history (Goal = obtain freedom for country, motivation = avenge wife’s murder). It goes to show that if you put a jetpack of a goal on the back of your hero, it can turn any narrative into Superman.

Which leads us to today’s script. I still think playing around in distant period settings is one of the bigger challenges in screenwriting. It was a slower world back then and modern audiences don’t do well with slow. But there are ways around that challenge. Let’s see if Ross discovered any of them.

It’s the first century AD and Rome keeps invading Briton. It gets to a point where Briton’s king, Prasutagus, offers Rome a yearly sum of money if they’ll leave Briton alone. Boudicca, Prasutagus’s wife, is none too pleased by her husband’s cowardly actions, to the point where she wonders if she should’ve married her childhood crush instead, the cool-as-a-cucumber Aedan.

When Prasutagus dies of an illness, Rome rips up their truce and steals all of Briton’s able-bodied men, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves. A furious Boudicca teaches herself to hunt and to fight, always with an eye on doing what everyone else is too afraid to do: fight back.

That day comes when the Romans murder Boudicca’s daughter, prompting Boudicca to unite the local tribes, slip into Rome and massacre hundreds of people. Nero, Rome’s emperor at the time, has Boudicca captured so that he can watch her die in a Colosseum battle. But Boudicca easily kills her adversary, a tiger, then gets some help escaping.

She heads back home where she teams up with Aedan and finalizes her army in preparation for attacking Rome. But Rome attacks first. In a devastatingly brutal battle, there are very few survivors. Is Boudicca one of them? Or will she go down in folklore as a martyr?

Ahhhhhh!

I reallly realllllllly really wanted to like this script.

At one point I even put on my Scriptshadow pom-poms and gave it a cheer.

Braveheart and Barbarian
Both start with “B”
Please both be good
So it earns a “worth the read”

And the script starts off well. I like how Boudicca’s father is killed by the Romans. That gives her instant motivation. I liked the love story with Aedan, how she was forced to marry a man she didn’t love. And I liked how the man she was forced to marry wasn’t a dastardly on-the-nose asshole, like we usually see in these scripts. He was just a normal guy who Boudicca didn’t love.

All that was good.

Where the script goes south is in its lack of momentum and frustrating pacing. It has a very start-stop nature to it, with a lot more stopping than starting. We’d attack the Romans and then sit around in the village for an endless number of scenes. And I wasn’t really sure what any of these scenes were for.

I’m fine with slower moments in screenplays. Not everything can be an epic battle set-piece. But then the slow scenes need to have dramatic value. Interesting stuff needs to be happening. And I struggled to find any of it interesting.

The closest we got was Nero’s relationship with his mother, Agrippina. The two had some weird sexual mommy-son stuff going on. And I liked how Nero began to shun his mother once he found a regular girlfriend.

But this movie wasn’t about Nero and Agrippina. It was about Boudicca!

And a lot of her scenes were boring. We’d sit in the village. She’d talk with her friends, with her daughters, with Aedan occasionally. And during these moments all script momentum would die.

One of the reasons Braveheart was so good was that he was always moving forward. William Wallace was always conquering the next city. And if he wasn’t conquering, he was scheming on how he would conquer. I can’t remember us ever hanging out in any village in Braveheart for more than one scene.

And I’m not saying every period piece has to do that. Not every story is going to be constructed so that the hero keeps moving from city to city. But if you don’t have a setup like that which keeps the story moving, you have to be aware of that structural weakness and figure out a way to overcome it. Because nobody likes dozens of scenes with people sitting around in a village chatting.

There needed to be more tension, more conflict, more outside pressure so that our characters were never comfortable. So that we – the reader – were never comfortable. And unfortunately, it was the opposite for me. Whenever we were back in Briton I could lay back and feed myself grapes because I knew that nothing bad was going to happen for a long time.

On top of this, I was never sure what the ultimate goal was. In Braveheart, the goal is clear as day: FREEDOM. It was mentioned two-dozen times. With Barbarian, I went back and forth wondering whether Boudicca was trying to conquer Rome or just be a pest so that Rome would stop bothering Briton. It was never clear.

Nor was the scope of the story. The way it’s described, Briton is made up of like 500 people, most of whom were women, children, and seniors. So the whole time I was thinking, “How are they realistically going to defeat Rome, the city of a million people with the mightiest military in the world?” There’s a disconnect there that wasn’t being explained.

This is why period scripts are so tricky. There’s a lot of knowledge required to know who’s who and what’s what and where we are in history and the scope and scale of all the cities involved. It’s either you exposition us to death or don’t explain these things, risking the reader being confused, which is what I was.

Since I never quite knew what Boudicca wanted and I never understood why the mightiest army on the planet couldn’t destroy a village of 500 people, I couldn’t get into this. Which is too bad. Because I really wanted to.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Never give your hero a free pass – ESPECIALLY!!! – late in the script. The later in the script you get, the harder things need to be for your hero. You need to throw the biggest obstacles at them, and your hero has to use everything at their disposal to overcome these obstacles. Late in Barbarian, after Boudicca is captured by the Romans, one of the Romans just… LETS HER GO FREE! She literally gets a free pass. Seeing your hero use their unique skills and intelligence to overcome obstacles is what makes us fall in love with them! Make them figure it out. Never give them a free pass.

Sorry for the late post. I spent all last night watching a triple feature of Meg + Crazy Rich Asians + Slender Man. In the process, I was taken to a higher plane of existence where I was told by a man in a purple elephant onesie the meaning of life. I asked the man if I could share the answer with you, but he informed me that I would first have to take a trip to the planet Glufonix and “get initiated” by singing the Seven Hymns of Layamaise to Princess Dave. I chose instead to go to In and Out and sing the seven items of the secret menu. There’s a 5% chance that I was sick and had a fever dream and imagined all this stuff, but I’m fairly certain it was the former. The good news about the wait is that we’ve got some interesting scripts today. I’m personally interested in how three of them turn out. Can’t share which ones, unfortunately. Don’t want to influence the votes!

Here’s how to play Amateur Offerings: Read as many of this weekend’s scripts as you can and VOTE for your favorite in the comments section. Winner gets a review next Friday. — If you’d like to submit your own script to compete on Amateur Offerings, send a PDF of your script to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

Good luck to all!

Title: Crater Lake
Genre: Drama / Thriller
Logline: When a young widow’s son mysteriously disappears in Crater Lake National Park she will have one week to find him before the snowy season begins & buries any trace.
Why You Should Read: Much of my writing has always been complex, so I took this opportunity to write something simple, short, sweet and a quick read. I call it Flightplan in the woods. Mother loses son and will do everything to get him back, but has everything in her way. Singular park location with limited characters, a mysterious level of suspense and intrigue, mixed with the paranormal. As this is my first foray into something this simple, I’d love to hear any feedback the group has and take in any suggestions.

Title: The Reckoning
Genre: Action/Thriller/Horror
Logline: After being led to investigate the death of a papal candidate, a world-weary, former member of the Swiss guard finds himself embroiled in a dark conspiracy, one that spans across borders, over generations, and if unstopped, will uproot the very fabric of human existence.
Why You Should Read: Hey there! Mike here. Finally decided to throw one of my scripts in the running. Little background first… I went to high school in Rome. There, I met these guys that used to be in the Swiss Guard. We were at a bar one night and they started telling me how they got into it. Basically, they left their homes at the age of twelve to start training for a career that was in their words “a sacred duty.” They finished at the top of their class and were recruited into a special division inside the Vatican. And let me tell you…when your place of work is an ancient city surrounded by walls, the word “special” takes on new meaning. One of their missions involved an extraction of some Catholic parishioners during the Second Congo War that I’m sure would have made headlines if weren’t commissioned by an institution that’s been keeping secrets for thousands of years. So, long story short, I took some of their history, threw my twist on it, added some subtle supernatural elements, and came up with the Reckoning. It’s less Dan Brown, more 24 meets the Exorcist. Hope you enjoy it!

Title: The Trouble With Ringo’s Soul
Genre: Drama
Logline: When the Beatles discover that Ringo sold his soul to be in the band, they make a bet with the Devil to win it back, and in the process create one of the greatest albums of all time.
Why You Should Read: Biographies are hot, but they bore me to death. Bubbles was a nice way to inject some life into a biographical story, but then it faltered because it didn’t really give me what I wanted, which was Michael Jackson. The Trouble With Ringo’s Soul splits the difference, melding the real world Beatles with the movie Beatles to yield a fourth “Beatles” movie. So far it’s not doing well at contests, though I feel like it’s the kinda script that if the right person saw it (maybe a Beatles fan like Ron Howard), it could get some attention. The script might be best suited for animation, or, like, puppets or something.

Title: Easy as Pie
Genre: Comedy, Satire
Logline: When a hardworking, driven sales rep, in need of money for her sister’s operation, battles her conniving rival in a contest involving the world’s first negative calorie pie, she realizes that kindness is an important part of the winning recipe.
Why You Should Read: Many moons ago, I placed a small classified ad in The Toronto Star, seeking people looking for “a great business opportunity” (it was for an MLM program I got roped into and soon abandoned). I only got one response. It was from a young lady. She wasn’t looking for “a great business opportunity.” She was looking to get me involved in her “great business opportunity.” — After I signed up for her MLM program, I got to know her a bit. She was fun, driven and didn’t take “no” for an answer. Even so, I soon lost interest in her program, but I always had fond memories of her. I knew in my tiny little heart she’d make a great lead character in a story exposing the realities of multi-level marketing. — Many years later, I wrote it. And while it started off as a satire on the MLM business, it slowly shifted to a satire on business (and to a certain extent politics) tackling issues such as love, greed, and kindness. — The result is “Easy as Pie,” a “non-serious comedy.” I call it “non-serious” because the plot is centered on something that sadly the world may never see, a negative calorie pie.