Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: After a young couple accidentally records the killing of a mailman, they try to collect on a little-known reward the government hands out for proof in the killing of federal workers.
About: This is Roberto Patino’s first breakthrough script, which landed on the bottom half of the 2009 Black List. Right now, Matt Shakman is attached to direct. Shakman has directed tons of TV over the last decade, including episodes of House, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Chuck, Weeds, and Six Feet Under.
Writer: Roberto Patino
Details: 100 pages – August 24, 2009 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I’ve seen a few comments lately about how if “these” are the scripts that are making the Black List, then the Black List can’t be that hard to make. A couple of thoughts on that. As I’ve already reviewed most of the top rated Black List scripts, most of the Black List scripts I review these days are from the lower half and lower third of the list. So when you’re using these scripts to identify the quality of the Black List, remember they’re scripts with the lowest amount of votes.

My feeling on the Black List is this. Just like there are only 10 to 15 really good movies a year, there are only about 10 to 15 really good screenplays a year. Since the Black List has around 100 screenplays, that means you’re going to have a considerable amount of scripts that aren’t “great.” But it’s important to remember that just getting your script to a point where people judge it on its story (and not on how many screenwriting mistakes you’ve made) is really difficult, because most screenwriters don’t have the experience yet to write a story that can stand on its own. They can write individual scenes and individual characters that stand on their own. But they have trouble putting the whole thing together. That’s what the Black List tends to be. 10 to 15 really good (and sometimes great) screenplays and 70 to 80 “good” screenplays. Now every once in a while, something really bad creeps in for who knows what reason (I’m still trying to find out what The Arsonist’s Love Story is doing on there), but for the most part, you know you’re not going to deal with any trash, which is unfortunately what you deal with on a regular basis when you read random scripts.

Now the cool thing about The Black List is that sometimes there are gems from smaller agencies that don’t get circulated as much as the bigger stuff, which means that every once in a while you find something really great near the bottom of the list. That’s why I try to read as much from the Black List as possible, because who knows when you’re going to find the next How It Ends? That brings us to today’s script. Is Cut Bank deserving of its low vote total? Or is it another gem?

Cut Bank (the name of the town the story takes place in) is about a 21-year-old kid named Dwayne who’s out with his girlfriend recording some practice footage she plans to send out to news agencies, when off in the background, the camera picks up a man in a mask stopping a mail truck and killing the mailman.

Later on, Dwayne and his girlfriend call the Sheriff over to show him the footage, and learn about a little-known clause that awards $100,000 for proof of the killing of any federal worker. Since this is very clearly proof of said type of killing, Dwayne stands to earn a lot of money for his footage.

Soonafter, however, we find out that things aren’t exactly as they seem. It turns out that mailman is still alive and part of an elaborate scam Dwayne has put together to get he and his girlfriend out of this small shit town. Unfortunately, people are starting to get suspicious. Dwayne’s girlfriend’s father thinks it’s awfully convenient that they were taping right in the spot where the murder happened. And when a federal agent rolls into town wanting a body, it’s something that, for whatever reason, the crew isn’t prepared for.

But things really start getting crazy when the local recluse gets involved. A man known simply as Derby, who many thought was dead he’s been holed up in his house for so long, seems quite upset about the fact that a really important package never made it to him. Derby is no fool. He doesn’t need to watch any videos or talk to anyone in town to know that this is a scam. So he methodically works his way up the chain of command, finding those involved one by one, and if they don’t tell him where that truck is, giving them an express ticket to that big mailbox in the sky. That’s right. Express Mail bitches. He doesn’t care that these guys are trying to pull one off on the government. All he wants is the location of the hidden postal truck so he can get his package.

As you’d expect, the scammers, the law enforcement, and the third parties all start clashing and people start dying, turning what was supposed to be an easy $100,000 into a game of survival for Dwayne and his girlfriend. The only way they’re going to win that game is if they somehow figure out how to take down Derby, and as everyone else involved can attest, that’s not going to be easy.

Cut Bank is about as close to a Coen Brothers film as you’re going to get without it being a Coen Brothers film. This is obviously heavily inspired by the famous siblings’ work, and while the dialogue and the intricacy of the plot aren’t as impressive or smooth as anything you’d find from the masters, there’s enough here to make it a worthy attempt.

My biggest issue with Cut Bank was the first 40 pages. The plot just didn’t unravel as smoothly as it should have. For example, it seemed awfully strange to me that these guys would’ve gone through this whole plan and not known that they eventually would’ve needed to provide a body. I mean, come on. I don’t know the first thing about scamming the government but I do know that if you want to collect reward money in regards to somebody being killed, you’re going to need physical evidence. So then later (spoiler) when Derby kills the mailman, it just seemed like a nice convenience that they now had an official body to collect the money with, when that wasn’t originally the plan.

There were other hard to buy moments as well. For example, instead of going right to the police after capturing this “murder” on tape, Dwayne and his girlfriend go hang out at her house for the evening. They then casually call the Sheriff over, who also seems strangely unaffected by the murder (I’m guessing this is a small town where there’s never been a murder before) and figures he’ll deal with it when he feels up to it. Again, I can’t claim to know much about police procedure in small towns, but this seems like a decidedly lazy reaction when weighed against the enormity of the situation.

To me, authenticity is so important in a script. The second I feel like things are happening in the screenplay that wouldn’t happen in the real world, I start to question the story. I am now no longer involved in your imaginary world. I’m questioning it. And the second I start questioning your world, your screenplay is basically screwed. Because the suspension of disbelief is dead. And not dead like that mailman. Really dead.

But I’ll tell you what saved this script for me. Derby. What a great freaking character. I love the idea of this random dude who could care less about what these guys were trying to pull off, and only wanted his package. Without him, I’m afraid this script would have been too straightforward. But adding this wildcard factor created a whole new twist to everything, ensuring that you wouldn’t know how this was going to end up.

It also added a nice mystery. We really wanted to know what was inside that damn package. Now I’m not going to say that the conclusion to that storyline was satisfying, but it had me curious and guessing all the way up to the end.

I would call Cut Bank a mixed bag. You got some junk mail in here. You have some personal letters. You have some bills. You have an eBay item you’ve been waiting forever for. It’s not the perfect bag of mail but there’s enough good stuff here to keep you happy.

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

What I learned: I think this script taught me to always keep in mind the possibility of a wildcard. We often think in terms of the “good side” (the side our main character is on) and the “bad side” (the side trying to prevent our character from getting what he wants). Since that’s the way most stories are told, we often get locked into that line of thinking. But you can always complicate a story and make it more interesting by adding a third element – or wildcard. Derby here was the wildcard that sparked this story and turned it into something unique. Without him, it would have been another average small-town mystery thriller.

Genre: Horror/Thriller
Premise: A single mother on her last financial leg meets a rich charming man with a dark secret.
About: This is a spec script that was purchased a couple of years back. Haimes is the same writer who wrote the recently reviewed Jitters and since I enjoyed that script, I decided to read this one as well, even though it’s in a genre I don’t typically enjoy.
Writer: Marc Haimes
Details: 110 pages – January 2009 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).

Now some of you have pointed out in the past that when I don’t like a genre, I can become biased towards a story and not give it a proper chance. Well I’m here to tell you that you be wrong sucka. Because if there’s any screenplay I’m destined not to like, it’s a vampire screenplay. I think vampires are cliché. I think they’re silly. I sometimes daydream about buying up all of the Twilight books and hurling them onto the moon like Superman did in Superman IV. So when I heard rumors that today’s script was about vampires, I was so prepared to hate it.

But!

Like I always say. It doesn’t matter what the reader’s mindset is going into your script. If you write something good, you can win them over.

28-year-old Jennifer is a struggling single mom with two daughters, a five year old and a two year old. Jennifer is barely squeaking by as a party entertainer. She dresses up as someone known as “The Purple Princess,” and performs at really rich kids’ parties. Lately, however, money has gotten so tight that she’s had to bring her own daughters to these parties, making for an awkward experience.

Things get so bad, in fact, that Jennifer has to beg her employers for any work, Purple Princess or not. One of those employers begrudgingly sets her up with a catering job at a nearby tech company . While on the job, Jennifer finds a money clip underneath a couch with thousands of dollars in it. As she’s just about to pocket it, a man spots her, claiming the money to be his. As he backs her into a corner and is presumably about to harm her, another handsome man charges in just in time to save her. His name is Ray.

Jennifer and Ray hit it off immediately, and pretty soon she’s going over to his place and hanging out with him and making love to him and just like that we have a full-fledged romance. Jennifer’s shining knight in armor has finally shown up to save her.

Buuuuuuuuuuuut… Not so fast.

Ray cuts off communication almost as suddenly as he started it, citing some mysterious but secret danger. Jennifer is a cross between skeptical and concerned so she starts stalking Ray from afar, and in the process learns that there’s a lot more going on to Ray’s company than he first let on. You see, Ray works for a company of vampires. And as we all know, vampires are hungry little buggers who like to feast on folks, particularly young women. So Ray does his best job to distance himself from Jennifer to save her. The question is, is it too late?

What we saw with Jitters was a script Haimes was working on with producers and therefore an unfinished product. With this script, we have the spec draft that sold, and you can tell the difference. Every scene has been honed. Every story choice has been thought through. Every unimportant thread has been eliminated. This reads very much like the kind of spec script that sells in the industry. It’s a high concept idea that’s been executed to perfection.

Now I want to highlight a couple of things here. Two weeks ago I reviewed a script, Underling, where our main character was never actually around the threat. It was his girlfriend who was around the threat and therefore *he* was removed from the central danger in the story. As a result, we never really felt that scared because we were never around the person who posed the most danger to us. Some other character who we barely knew was.

Elevator Men does this the correct way. The person we’re highlighting, Jennifer, is directly involved with the danger. Jennifer is dating Ray, who is the mysterious man who may or may not be trying to kill her. That’s how you want to do it. Whatever the danger is in your story, you want to put your character as close to it as possible. The further removed they are, the less scary your script is going to be.

I’d also like to highlight a key scene in the movie because last week we spent so much time talking about “scenes of death” and I need to point out that there are ways to write scenes of death and still make them work.

The truth is that you’re always going to have scenes where you have to convey backstory or exposition, and while it’s preferable that you hide all of that stuff within existing scenes that push the story forward, sometimes, depending on how plot heavy your script is, you’ll need entire scenes dedicated to getting that stuff out of the way.

The trick is, recognizing that scene of death, and looking for a way to keep it interesting. The scene in question has Jennifer over at Ray’s house to basically talk about their pasts. Uh-oh. Talking about your pasts is definitely a scene of death. Now it’s important to note that their pasts specifically set up plot points later in the story. So these aren’t just random backstory elements to help us know the characters. They have a dual purpose. Still, we don’t know that yet, so the scene still has the potential to be boring.

Anyway, Haimes adds two elements to make the scene more exciting. The first is dramatic irony. We know by this point that Ray is peculiar and probably dangerous. Except Jennifer doesn’t know that yet. So every moment that Jennifer is alone with Ray is a potential moment she could be harmed, making us scared for her, which creates anticipation, since we want Jennifer to get out of this alive.

The other element is gimmicky but it still works. Throughout the script, the vampires make a loud screeching noise. During this scene, we first hear that loud screeching noise from a distance. As the two continue to talk, the noise gets closer. And closer. In other words, we have sort of an aural ticking time bomb. We know the vampires are getting closer, which means danger for our hero. So again, a typical “scene of death” actually becomes an exciting scene with danger on two separate fronts.

The only real complaints I have were complaints I realized in retrospect. For example, I’m not sure the casino stuff really goes with the story. And the more I think about a mom breaking into a company in the middle of the night with her two kids, the more I question if that’s really happening. I mean, it was an exciting scene, especially when the daughters got lost. But I mean, come on – is an audience really going to buy that? It’s only one step removed from the babysitter who goes upstairs to check on a noise.

But hey, like I said, I only thought of that stuff after the script was over. While I was reading the script, it was all pretty awesome.

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

What I learned: I used to think that using money as a character motivation was a lazy choice. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that even though it’s a cliché, it’s a cliché that works. One of the most relatable situations in the world is a lack of money. Not being able to pay the bills. Not being able to pay the rent. Not being able to pay the mortgage. We’ve all been there. So creating characters that need to do questionable things because they’re desperate for money is probably going to work. I was just watching Warrior yesterday (a good movie btw) and the physics teacher’s need to fight is driven by the fact that he can’t pay the mortgage. Yes I’ve seen that a million times before. But I also know that it happens a million times a day in the real world. So it’s just one of those clichés that works.

Genre: Thriller/Drama
Premise: A young woman comes to live with her estranged sister who is married to a mysterious and dangerous man.
About: Jamaica Inn was a best selling novel back in the 1930s which was eventually made into a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The script appeared on last year’s Brit List, which is the British equivalent of the Black List. Rebecca Hall, the actress who played Ben Affleck’s girlfriend in The Town, is said to be circling the lead role. Daphne du Maurier, the author of the book in which the screenplay is based on, also wrote the novel “Rebecca,” which was turned into the movie that won an Oscar in 1940, and the short story, “The Birds,” which of course Alfred Hitchcock went on to direct as a film.
Writer: Michael Thomas (based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier)
Details: January 1, 2010 draft – 124 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Whenever you read a script where the main font is something other than Courier, a bevy of red flags pop up and usually means one of three things. You’re reading a script by the Coen Brothers. You’re reading a script by a novelist who is writing their first screenplay. You’re reading a script by someone who’s never written a screenplay before. Now if it’s option number one, you’re still in good shape. If it’s option number two, chances are you’re going to get a lot of extensive prose accompanying a story that takes way too long to get going. And if it’s option number three, you’re in for a long afternoon my friend.

My guess is that we’re dealing with door number two. Thomas definitely has a way with words. When he described a room or a setting or a person, I could feel myself being transported into the story. But the prose was such a priority that the actual storytelling suffered. Transitions between scenes were confusing, setups of scenes were muddled, and I wasn’t always sure what was going on within the scenes.

For example, I didn’t know until I went over to Wikipedia that one of the main characters, Joss, was a ship marauder who, along with his band of hoodlums, would kill everyone on a ship and steal the loot. When I was reading the actual script, we’d just all of a sudden inexplicably be on a ship with a bunch of people throwing a bunch of other people off, and I honestly had no idea where any of it was coming from. I eventually chalked it up to one of the characters having some recurring nightmare, as that’s the only logical conclusion I could come up with at the time. Again, this was due to the way that scenes just sort of bled into each other without any defining purpose or structure.

Now I suppose it’s fair to ask if this is my fault or the screenwriter’s fault. Here’s what I’d say to that. When you write in a non-industry-standard font, the reader doesn’t trust you, because they assume you don’t know what you’re doing. So when those weird moments happen, the reader is less likely to chalk it up as their fault and more likely to chalk it up as yours. If the formatting is correct – had the presentation been consistent with industry standards – then the reader is more likely to go back and reread something to figure out what they missed. Because of the presentation, I wasn’t willing to do that. And that’s usually the case with most readers. They just don’t have time to dick around.

Having said that, it’s important to note a couple of things. This script appears to be developed in-house, which means it’s being written for only the producers. Also, I admit I’ve seen quite a few screenplays off The Brit List using a font other than Courier. So I’m wondering if they don’t use Courier as a standard font over in the UK? Maybe somebody from across the pond can clear that up for me.

Anyway, it’s time to tell you the plot. I’m guessing the story begins back in the 1930s, though I couldn’t tell you for sure because no date is given in the script. I’m just going off when the novel was written. As those of you who read the site know, not giving the date of your story is a huge pet peeve of mine, but I’ve ranted about it before so I’m not going to do it again. A young down on her luck woman, Mary, has come to the city to live with her sister, Patience, at the Inn that her husband owns. When she gets there, she learns that said husband, Joss, is an alcoholic evil brood of a man.

Her sister is also a shell of her former self. Once beautiful, she is now shriveled and thin and haggard, the result of years of constant abuse. As Mary tries to reconnect with her sister, she encourages her to see what she’s become and to think about leaving her husband. But what Mary will soon find out is that Joss is not an easy person to run away from.

He begins treating Mary much like he treats his wife, but Mary is not as easily scared, and does her best to stand up to Joss. However, her bravery starts to dissipate when she sees Joss kill a man. On top of that, Mary realizes that nobody ever actually checks in to the Jamaica Inn. Which brings up the question, how the heck does Joss make any money?

Of course, through the help of Wikipedia, we learn that Joss and his band of buddies rob incoming cargo ships and that’s how he makes his dough. If all of this wasn’t enough to handle, Mary finds herself sexually attracted to Joss, a temptation she must constantly battle but one in which she has little control over. I guess that’s one way to go about proving to your sister that her husband isn’t right for her. The Jerry Springer approach.

So again, my big problem with Jamaica Inn was that I was never quite sure what was going on. The emphasis seemed to be on the prose and not on the storytelling. I can’t emphasize this enough for young writers. Readers don’t care how well you can describe what a tree looks like in the morning mist. They care about how you craft your story. They care about how you create drama. They care about how you create conflict. They care that you can tell your story in a clear and concise way. I’m not going to say that the way you choose your words isn’t important. If I were writing the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan, I would use descriptive visually arresting words and phrases. But as far as everything else, just tell the story. Don’t describe to me the sound Private Vin’s pants make when they rub against each other. Save that stuff for your novel.

I think there’s some good things about the script. Rebecca Hall is a hot actress at the moment and has her pick of the litter. So her interest in this is telling. Both of these female lead roles are juicy and the kind of stuff upper echelon actresses don’t get a chance to play very often. I also thought the relationship between Mary and Joss was interesting. On the one hand she was terrified of him and on the other she was attracted to him. I’m not sure it totally made sense but there was definitely an intriguing chemistry between the two whenever they had a scene together.

The thing that will either make or break this movie is clarity. On the page, I wasn’t exactly clear what was going on with all of the ship stuff. But I think onscreen, when we see the faces and the people involved it’s going to be much easier to follow. Still, I’m hoping that they addressed the confusion surrounding that whole storyline and that they don’t make it feel like a dream sequence, which is how I interpreted it in this draft.

The truth is, I was really hoping this was going to be a ghost story. When you have an Inn that nobody comes to, I think you’re hoping for a bigger payoff than that the owner goes off and loots ships. Or at least that’s how I felt. So with the payoff being disappointing and the writing being too confusing, I can’t say I would recommend this. But I will say that the idea has potential.

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

What I learned: Remember, whenever you have a slow build to your story – and what I mean by “slow build” is that no real goal emerges in the story for a long time – you have to use other storytelling methods to hook the reader in the meantime. Slow builds are really dangerous because readers are impatient people. So you want to think long and hard about how else you plan to keep them interested. Here, there are two things. There’s the mystery of what’s going on at the Jamaica Inn, and there’s the unique conflict between Joss and Mary (Do they hate each other? Do they like each other?). Now whether those are enough to keep one’s interest is up to the individual reader. But the point is, you need something there to keep the reader interested until the real story kicks in.

We’re back for our last day of Star Wars Week. To find out more, head back to Monday’s review of The Empire Strikes Back.

Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy
Premise: (from IMDB) After three years of fighting in the Clone Wars, Anakin Skywalker concludes his journey towards the Dark Side of the Force, putting his friendship with Obi Wan Kenobi and his marriage at risk.
About: Revenge of the Sith was the script that Lucas had worked on the most out of the prequels and that is evident in the final product. He was originally going to open the movie with seven battles on seven different planets but eventually decided that the key to making the movie work was to focus on Anakin’s struggle to resist the Dark Side, so he rewrote the opening to focus on that.
Writer: George Lucas

There are many who consider Revenge Of The Sith to be the best Star Wars prequel. That’s a little like saying that Clarke is the best Hanson brother (MMMMMMMMMMMbop!) but it does happen to be true. The reason for this is that Sith has the cleanest storyline in any of the three films. Of course, since it’s Lucas, we have to wait half a movie to get to that clear storyline, but at least half of the movie has focus. I’m referring to when Palpatine goes after the Jedi. It’s the first moment in the prequel series where there’s some actual chasing going on, some actual urgency going on, and, most important of all, a storyline we can understand. So kudos to George for finally figuring that out.

In addition to that, for the first time in the prequels, we have a character with a genuine internal conflict. When critics or audiences talk about depth, the thing they’re usually referring to is a central character who’s experiencing an internal struggle. You do this by creating a dilemma, preferably something that pulls that character between the “right” way and the “wrong” way. This is, for instance, why Michael Corleone is such a compelling character in The Godfather. He doesn’t want to be a part of the family business and yet circumstances dictate that he has to be. That tug of war pulling at your character can be really fun to watch. We didn’t get any of that in the first two films. But we get it here and it’s a welcome addition to the series. It of course doesn’t work all the way because Lucas is a terrible writer and finds ways to screw it up, but it’s better than nothing.

That means Sith is basically divided into two halves, both of which sort of work. The first half is about Anakin battling who he should give allegiance to. And the second half is about the Emperor trying to eradicate the Jedi.

So then why is Revenge Of The Sith still sort of sucky?

Well, besides the obvious, it boils down, once again, to sloppy storytelling. Lucas cheats in a big way and as a result, what should be the most compelling part of the movie feels lazy and unsatisfying. You see, Lucas needs a way for Anakin to turn to the Dark Side. The only way he can really do this is if somebody very close to Anakin is in danger and Palpatine is the only person who can help save that person. Then, and only then, would it be believable that Anakin would join the Dark Side (at least with how the series has been set up). The problem is, the only person that’s really close to Anakin is Amidala and we can’t have her hurt because she still has to have babies. So Lucas creates a loophole. Anakin has a dream that Amidala is going to die……eventually, and this allows the best of both worlds, Amidala can still have her babies, and Palpatine can lure Anakin over to the Dark Side.

Remember, any time you can feel the writer’s hand reaching down and creating a plot convenience, the suspension of disbelief is gone. The audience becomes aware that this story isn’t “real” and no longer trusts what’s in front of their eyes. It’s no coincidence that the second Matrix movie uses this exact same story device (Neo has a dream that Trinity is going to die) and that that movie is also bad. I suppose that because Anakin’s a Jedi and can sort of see into the future, you can rationalize why this should work, but it’s such a false way to drive a story that we see right through it.

Another huge problem with this film is that things are just too easy for the characters. If you remember in Star Wars, when the Millennium Falcon was captured by the Death Star, the characters had to hide inside the cargo bays of the ship. They needed to lure storm troopers in and slip into their outfits. They needed to pretend like Chewbacca was a prisoner. There was some real thought that went into how they would sneak around this place. Now it wasn’t perfect. Sometimes people just hid in closets. But you still got the sense that the screenwriters were trying.

Here, you don’t get that sense at all. In the opening sequence Anakin and Obi-Wan fly into a ship and just start running around willy-nilly. Oftentimes they run through entire hallways where nobody is around. Even when they walk into the place where Palpatine is being held, there’s nobody there – no guards or anything. It’s like Lucas didn’t even consider how things would really be – or worse, ignored them. I mean the genius of Star Wars was that so much thought went into everything. I don’t know about you, but if I was thinking of a giant space station, the last thing I would’ve thought of was where the trash went. But the writers of that movie did, and integrated it into one of the most memorable scenes in movie history. We don’t get any of that here.

Instead, we get this strange sloppy sequence where they’re on an elevator and then Anakin slips off the elevator and then he hangs out in the elevator shaft and then the elevator goes down and then it goes back up and then Anakin gets back in the elevator and then Anakin and Obi wan run through a hallway where there’s nobody around and then out of nowhere a shield traps them. It feels very much like one of those fever writing sessions we all have once in a while where you write like 20 pages really really fast and at the time it feels amazing because you’re just blazing through it. But inevitably you read it the next day and realize that 90% of it is terrible. The difference between you and George is that you then start rewriting it to get it to a place where it’s good. George, on the other hand, just thinks well, it felt good at the time, so it must be good. And sticks with it.

Now the thing is, there is an arguably strong goal driving this sequence. Anakin and Obi-Wan are trying to save Palpatine. But here’s the problem. We have no idea who the two villains are that are holding Palpatine. I still don’t know who Count Dooku is. I have no idea who this General Greivious guy is. And I have no idea why either of them want to hold Palpatine hostage. That means the stakes for this goal are extremely murky. Logically we know that Palpatine needs to be saved. But since we don’t know why, we don’t care. And that’s why this sequence feels so empty.

Now I’ve actually argued that creating more than one villain can strengthen a screenplay, but only if each villain’s role is clear. If you remember, I pointed this out in The Shawshank Redemption, where there are three villains. But notice how clear each villain is. We had the rapist. We had the head guard who abused his power. And we had the Warden. If you can explain to me how Count Dooku is involved in any of this, I’ll personally send you a dollar.

Another big mistake Lucas makes is that he brings us into Amidala’s pregnancy right at the beginning of it. That means that Revenge Of The Sith takes place over a timeframe of 7 to 8 months, by far longer than any other Star Wars movie. If you want to talk about a lack of urgency, have your movie take place over 7 months. This forces George to try and cheat and pretend like things are moving along faster than they actually are, but those moments are always fighting against themselves and it just adds to the clumsiness of the movie. What he probably should’ve done was have her eight months pregnant and make it so that Anakin already knew this. That way, when he first comes back to see her, we have a relatively tight time frame.

Also, once again, Lucas plagues his screenplay with an endless number of scenes of death. Once we get back to Coruscant after saving Palpatine, we have a scene where Anakin talks to Amidala. We have a scene where he talks to Yoda. We have another scene where he talks to Amidala. We have a Council meeting. We have another scene with Anakin and Amidala where they talk about how much they love each other. He has a scene with the Senator where they talk about I don’t even know what. Obi-Wan, Sam Jackson and Yoda then talk about Anakin (characters talking about other characters – scene of death!). We have a scene where Anakin tells Amidala how he had a nightmare about her. We have a scene where Anakin and Amidala talk about if they’re on the “right side” or not. I mean seriously. You gotta be kidding me. This is the very definition of scenes of death where characters are just talking to each other about their feelings or about other people or about their opinions.

Once again, somewhere in all of this is Anakin becoming confused about his allegiance, which is the only potentially interesting thread in the movie. But instead of two or three powerpacked scenes where we explore this and it really resonates with the audience, we get 12 to 14 scenes where it’s brought up in bits and pieces and is therefore diluted. You always want to combine scenes that are saying the same thing so you have one strong scene as opposed to two or three weak ones.

This is the hardest of the three prequels to judge because it does have its moments. But all of the things that plague the previous two films are unfortunately still on display here. We have full sections of the movie that have no engine driving them at all (mainly the stuff after the opening rescue sequence). We have strange tonal inconsistencies (having somebody slaughter a bunch of four-year-old kids in a Star Wars movie?). We have a story that doesn’t really make sense (who are these villains?). We have a timeframe that’s too long. We have entire sequences that don’t matter (the Wookie planet battle). Every one of the prequels needed to be majorly simplified. As much of the politics as possible should’ve been eliminated. Lucas needed to make things fun and easy to follow, like the earlier films. Instead we had a screenwriter who doesn’t understand the craft trying to pull off one the most complicated types of stories there is. The second half Jedi stuff gave this movie just enough of an edge to climb out of the rating gutter, but it’s still pretty bad.

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

What I learned: The Anakin-Palpatine dialogue scene during the opera is actually a good scene to study for creating subtext in your screenplay. Whenever you have one character who’s saying one thing but trying to get something else across, you’re creating subtext, which will usually make the scene more interesting. So if Palatine had done what Lucas had been doing for the majority of these prequels, he probably would have said something like “Look Anakin. I’m actually a Sith Lord and I really think it would be cool if you joined me,” which, of course, would’ve been on the nose and boring. Instead, he tells him a story about a Sith Lord who once had the power to bring people back from the dead, preying on Anakin’s need to save the woman he loves. It’s by no means the best example of subtext, but it’s good enough to work.

We’re back for Day 4 of Star Wars Week. To find out more, head back to Monday’s review of The Empire Strikes Back.

Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy
Premise: (from IMDB) Anakin Skywalker shares a forbidden romance with Padmé Amidala while his teacher, Obi-Wan Kenobi, makes an investigation of a separatist assassination attempt on Padmé which leads to the discovery of a secret Republican clone army.
About: Lucas was a little shaken by the response to his screenplay for The Phantom Menace, so was reluctant to write Attack Of The Clones. He ended up writing a couple of drafts and then gave off the final draft to Jonathan Hales, a writer on Young Indiana Jones, who had little experience writing theatrical films. Hales finished his draft a week before production began.
Writers: George Lucas and Jonathan Hales (story by George Lucas)

Of the three prequels, Attack Of The Clones probably had the best chance of becoming a real movie. There’s definitely a lot more going on here than in Menace. You have an assassination attempt. You have a much more interesting dynamic in your Jedi pairing. The set pieces are more interesting. But much like The Phantom Menace, there’s too much junk you have to sift through to find the gems. By far, the biggest fault of the screenplay is its treatment of its love story. If you ever plan to write a love story, watch this movie to see how not to do it. Lucas has referenced numerous times how this storyline was his “Titanic.” And that’s a great place to start because I want to show you just how inferior this love story is to Titanic.

Probably more important than what happens during the love story, is how you set up that love story. Your job as a screenwriter is to set up a situation that mines the most drama out of the relationship. In Titanic, we have a poor drifter falling for one of the richest women on the ship, who also happens to be engaged – and oh, they’re on a ship that will eventually sink and kill most of the people on it. I can safely say that’s a situation that will bring out a lot of drama. Now let’s look at Attack Of The Clones. Anakin and Amidala are told to go hide out on her planet.

I want you to think about that for a second. Hiding out on a planet. There is no goal here. There’s no engine driving the story thread. There’s nobody after these two. There is no urgency. There are no stakes. You’re simply putting two characters in an isolated location and asking them to sit and wait. Is there any drama to mine from that situation? No. This means that before our characters have a single conversation, their love story is doomed. There is no way for it to be interesting. Contrast this with The Empire Strikes Back, where the entire love story takes place on the run with our characters constantly in danger. That’s how you want your love story unraveling.

Next up is the dialogue. This is a huge mistake that a lot of amateur screenwriters make. They believe that if the characters are telling each other that they love each other, that the audience will by association feel that love. Wrong. Actually, the opposite is true. We feel love through actions. We feel love through subtext. The time when we least feel love is when two characters are professing it to each other (unless we’re at the end of the movie and you’ve earned that moment).

One of the best ways to convey love is through subtext. Characters are saying one thing but they really mean something else. The best example of this is in The Empire Strikes Back. During that movie, Han and Leia are arguing with each other nonstop. Yet we can feel the desire each has for the other in every argument. Even when Han is directly trying to make a move on Leia, he does it by challenging her. He’s constantly telling her that she likes him, which is far more interesting than if he would’ve sat her down and professed his love for her, which is exactly how all of the love scenes happen in Clones.

Another thing you need with any good love story is conflict. You need things constantly trying to tear your leads apart. Whether it be something between them, an outside force, a battle from within the individual. The more things you can use to tear your lovers away from each other, the more those characters have to fight to be with each other, and those actions will translate over to the audience as love. So look at all the things keeping Jack and Rose apart on Titanic. First they’re from different classes. A poor kid like Jack just can’t be with a rich woman like Rose. It doesn’t happen today and it definitely never happened back then. Also, Rose is engaged. Even if the class thing weren’t an issue, she’s getting married. Also important to note is how much is at stake with that marriage. Rose’s mom needs her to marry to save their financially crumbling family. The two are also constantly being chased by her fiancé’s Henchman. And on top of all that, they’re on a doomed ship, a ship that will sink and likely kill one of the people in the relationship. I mean if you want to talk about things that are trying to rip a couple apart, all you have to do is watch this movie.

Let’s compare that to all the things keeping Anakin and Amidala apart in Attack Of The Clones.

(insert long silence here).

I mean I guess if you were to push me on it, I could argue that there’s something about how Jedi’s are not allowed to love. That, to me, is the only element of conflict keeping these two apart. But the thing is, there are no explained consequences to this conflict. It’s never explored in anything other than words. And Lucas never commits to it. As we’ll see in the next film, their “secret romance” has Anakin sleeping over at her apartment every night. Yeah, they’re trying really hard to keep this a secret. This leaves us with absolutely zero conflict in any of their scenes, putting all the heavy lifting on the dialogue, and since the dialogue is mostly Anakin professing his love for Amidala, this storyline turns out to be one of the worst love stories ever put to film.

This also highlights something I brought up yesterday – the scene of death. Every single scene on Naboo between these two characters is a scene of death. The characters are either talking about their feelings or talking about politics. You will never be able to make those scenes interesting because, again, there’s nothing else going on in the scene and none of these scenes are pushing the story forward.

These scenes of death are everywhere if you look for them. Remember, when you’re writing a story and trying to convey any sort of character development, you want to show and not tell. Now George does a pretty poor job of this in an early scene with Obi-Wan and Anakin, but he does do it. After Obi-Wan and Anakin chase an alien into a bar, the two get into a series of disagreements on how to handle the matter. It’s sloppy and it’s on the nose, but at least we’re showing their problems and not telling the audience their problems.

However, a few scenes later, we’re up with Amidala in her apartment and the entire scene is dedicated to Anakin telling Amidala how he feels about Obi-Wan. This scene of death (two people talking about another person) is violating three screenwriting rules at the same time. First of all, it’s not pushing the story forward at all and therefore is unnecessary. Second, it’s telling us and not showing us. And third, it’s repeating information we already know. Lucas has given us a few scenes now that have shown us that Anakin has a problem with Obi-Wan’s authority. This is the kind of mistake a screenwriter who is writing their first screenplay would make. It’s that bad.

As for the structure of the screenplay, all you need to do is compare it to Empire to see why it fails so spectacularly. Remember how in that movie, we were cutting back and forth between Han being chased and Luke training to become a Jedi? In this movie, the two threads we’re cutting back and forth between are a love story on a planet where there’s no urgency whatsoever, and a procedural where Obi-Wan plays detective, a sequence that also has little urgency. That means instead of two threads with high horsepower story engines, we have one thread with just a tiny bit of horsepower. No wonder the movie feels so slow.

The funny thing is, there’s only a single interesting scene from a screenwriting perspective in the entire movie. And the reason for this is probably that Lucas ran into it by accident. Good screenwriters deliberately structure their screenplays to create these scenes. Bad screenwriters stumble upon them luckily every once in a while, wondering why they’re the only scenes that feel right in their script. The scene in question is when Obi-Wan meets Jango Fett in his apartment. This scene is a good one because there’s so much subtext at play – one of the few times in the prequels that we actually have subtext. Obi-Wan suspects that Jango Fett is the one who tried to assassinate Amidala. Jango Fett knows that Obi-Wan is on to him but must act aloof. This is what creates the subtext. The two are having a somewhat normal conversation, but both are hiding some critical pieces of information that they know about the other.

The only things that actually work in the film are things that were born out of the original films. We’re excited to see Yoda fight for the first time. We’re excited to see a bunch of Jedi’s take on another Army. We’re excited to see Obi-Wan battle Jango Fett. But none of those things are generated through the dramatic components of this particular story. We enjoy them based on nostalgia. Attack Of The Clones is a little better than The Phantom Menace but not enough to garner a better rating.

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

What I learned: What I’m realizing with these prequels, especially after yesterday, is that there’s no urgency to them whatsoever. I mean look at this stretch of four scenes early in the movie. We have a scene of the Jedi Council telling our characters what to do. We have a scene where Sam Jackson and Obi-Wan and Yoda discuss how Jedi’s have become arrogant (scene of death). We have that scene where Anakin and Amidala talk about how Obi-Wan is mean (scene of death). And we have a goodbye scene at the ship station with Obi-Wan and Amidala (scene of death). That’s four scenes in a row where the only thing that happens is the Jedis order Anakin to protect Amidala. There are no story engines driving these scenes whatsoever. Everything just sits there. Go watch the first act of Empire. After the 15 minute “Luke kidnapped by Wampa” sequence, we get a fun little scene where the crew jokes around about what happened, and then the very next scene they find out the Empire has spotted them, beginning the next sequence where they have to escape the planet. If Lucas would’ve wrote that sequence? He probably would have added three or four scenes with Han and Leia talking to each other, with Han and Luke talking to each other, and God knows who else talking to each other. When people say to keep your story moving, this is what they mean. They mean don’t write all these unnecessary scenes that you don’t need.