Genre: Comedy?
Premise: A male stripper mentors a young impressionable kid, who ends up enjoying his new job a little too much.
About: This is the new exciting project from Steven Soderbergh, the man who’s retired more times than Brett Favre. It will star Channing Tatum (of course), Matthew McConaghy, and the new bad boy on Hollywood’s block, Alex Pettyfer.
Writer: Reid Carolin
Details: 114 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).

Ahhhh, Steven Soderbergh. One of the most controversial noncontroversial filmmakers alive. He’s responsible for movies like Traffic, Oceans 11, and Sex, Lies & Videotape. Unfortunately he’s also responsible for movies like Bubble. That’s why I’m always reluctant to open a Soderbergh project. I’m afraid of artsy-fartsy Soderbergh, the Soderbergh who doesn’t give a shit about entertainment. I’m even more scared of that Soderbergh these days, since he doesn’t have to worry about his next job.

But when I reached out to Scriptshadow Nation on Magic Mike, I was surprised to hear feedback like “Funny.” “Touching.” “Heartwarming.” It sounded like a real heartfelt character piece, not a glorified student film. And hey, Sex Lies & Videotape is still in my top five independent films of all time. So maybe this was going to be cool.

28-year-old Mike was born with something special. He’s got charm. He’s got looks. He’s got work ethic. And he’s got big dreams. He wants to open a restoration business that he’s been saving up for forever.

During the day, he’s a roofer, scraping by on 15 bucks an hour. But on the weekends, when the sun goes down, he’s a stripper at a hot Tampa Bay strip club. “Magic Mike” is the headline act – the one the ladies save the big bills for.

One day, during a roofing job, Mike meets The Kid, a 19-year-old bad boy in need of direction. He lives with his older sister, who may love him more than anything, but is frustrated he’s drifting through life aimlessly. Mike likes The Kid, probably because he reminds him of himself when he was younger, and introduces him to the stripping life.

The Kid immediately falls in love with it. Whereas before he was barely able to afford toothpaste, he’s now got more money than he can stuff in his pockets. Being 19 with money to burn is sort of like waking up in a candy store all alone as a 10-year-old. Where do you begin?

When The Kid’s sister, who Mike’s sweet on, finds out that her baby brother is stripping, she’s mortified. Mike assures her that he’s going to keep an eye on him. But eventually, The Kid runs into some trouble he can’t get out of. It will be up to Magic Mike to save the day. The question is, will it mean giving up all of his hopes and dreams to do so?

I wasn’t sure what to make of Magic Mike. It’s sort of like Coyote Ugly meets The Full Monty meets a trashy reality show. The biggest achievement of the screenplay is that it flips a well-known character type on its head. We’ve seen the stripper with a heart of gold a thousand times before. But have we seen the male stripper with a heart of gold? I don’t think so. And that’s what makes this script unique.

Probably the strangest thing I noticed while reading Magic Mike was that there’s so little conflict in the script. Remember, movies are about drama. And you can’t get drama unless you have opposing forces consistently clashing with each other. Somebody wants one thing, somebody else wants another. There isn’t a whole lot of that in Magic Mike.

I mean, the first three quarters of the screenplay are like a dramatized version of a Jersey Shore episode, with the characters running around, partying, and having the time of their lives. The Kid is introduced into this world and he just has a blast with it. Mike runs around unimpeded as well. He enjoys watching The Kid flourish. And he enjoys the fruits of his own labor, hooking up with endless women, and making tons of cash.

The only real conflict throughout the first three quarters of the screenplay comes from the sister, who throws Mike for a loop when she becomes the first woman in history who doesn’t go gaga over him, mainly because she considers herself above strippers. I suppose she’s also frustrated with her brother getting involved in a shady profession, so you could argue that there’s some conflict there.

But the thing is, she’s only passively interested in stopping him. She doesn’t like it, but as long as her brother’s happy, she’s happy. There’s a little bit of conflict in her rejection of Mike, but there was something missing from the relationship. I don’t know if I wanted them to have more chemistry or if their relationship wasn’t explored enough, but I didn’t care whether they got together or not, and I don’t think a situation like that works unless that’s the case.

You could also argue that there’s conflict within Mike, who wants to do something bigger with his life. The reason that conflict didn’t work either, though, is that Mike loved stripping. He seemed to have such a great life that if his dream of opening up his own business didn’t work out, you got the feeling he was going to be fine. I mean, this guy is smart, nice and good looking. Whichever way it goes for him, life is still going to kick ass.

Now eventually, we do get to some serious conflict, but it isn’t until the final act, when everything falls to shit. I admit it gets interesting, but I kept asking: Is it worth wading through 90 minutes of pure unadulterated partying for?

If you look back at what I believe is Soderbergh’s best film, Sex Lies & Videotape, you’ll notice that there’s conflict from the very first frame. The wife is living a lie – she’s frustrated with her marriage but she’s not admitting it to herself (conflict from within). Her husband is cheating on her (conflict). An old friend of the husband’s comes to stay with them. The two of them have unsettled business from the past (conflict). The friend is a sex addict who can’t have sex (conflict from within). And the friend and the wife start to have an emotional relationship (conflict) which causes even more conflict between the old friends and the wife and husband. That’s why that movie is so good – because no matter where you turn, there’s conflict. I’m not saying that Magic Mike needs to be the same way, because it’s a different movie, but I just found it strange how easy the movie was for all its characters.

Where the script really impressed me, though, was in the writing itself. The other day, we celebrated how fun and exciting the visual writing style of Christopher McQuarrie was. Here, the writing is as sparse as I’ve ever seen it. Carolin really stands by the rule of only writing what’s absolutely necessary to convey the story. Part of this is that he doesn’t have a lot of action to describe like Christopher McQuarrie did in his script, but that’s part of being a good screenwriter. You assess the kind of story you’re telling, and if it’s a story like Magic Mike, that’s more about the characters than the action and the visuals, you don’t include a lot of description.

When you take Magic Mike as a whole, I think there’s enough here to recommend it. It’s not filled with a lot of drama but it’s an interesting angle to a familiar subject matter. There’s nothing bad about the story. There was never a time where I wished I didn’t have to finish the script. And I suppose enough happens in that final act to sort of make up for all the coasting in the first two. So while I wouldn’t call this a home run, I’d probably say it’s a solid double. Worth checking out if you can find it.

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

What I learned: The less description you use, the more powerful and memorable your words will be. We all have a person in our lives who doesn’t talk very much, so when they do, it’s usually because they have something to say. For that reason, we listen. You wanna treat the action/description in your screenplay the same way. Only talk when you have something to say. There’s a moment early on in the script where Mike is leaving his place, and we catch a glimpse of his small business sign that says “Mike’s Detailing.” It’s a small but important character detail that tells us one of Mike’s passions. Now I might’ve missed this if this script was blanketed with descriptive blocks of text. But because it wasn’t, because Carolin only wrote what he had to, that detail stuck out. There’ve been a lot of times where I’ve pointed out to writers that I didn’t understand something in their script. They’ll say to me, “What are you talking about? It’s right here on page 36! It says right there that he walks into the barbershop! See??” And the page they show me has like five 4-line paragraphs on it. And the previous 35 pages all look similar. Of course I missed it. That detail is buried under a mountain of text. So be smart about what you include when you write. Because the less you write, the more your details will stick out.

Hey guys, for any of you who were thinking about buying the Final Draft software, today is the last day for the 20% off.  This is the screenwriting software I use and it’s the screenwriting software pretty much everybody in the industry uses.  It really is the best option.  So, if you want to get the discount, click on the banner at the top of this page.  And start having a way easier time writing screenplays.  :-)

Genre: Comedy
Premise: (from the writers) An American screenwriter and his nemesis, “The South Korean Julia Roberts”, get kidnapped and taken to North Korea, where they’re forced by Kim Jong Il to make a propaganda musical glorifying the revolution, all the while falling in love and plotting their escape.
About: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title). Also, it’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so that your submission stays near the top of the pile.
Writers: James Luckard & Gordon Smith
Details: 117 pages

Probably one of the biggest things I’ve learned from reading all these screenplays is how similarly people tell stories. When we start out, we believe that we’re this unique treasure that Hollywood has never seen before. We believe that we see the world in a way that nobody else can possibly see it. We think we’re more imaginative. We think we’re funnier. We basically think we’re going to change the system and become the biggest thing since George Lucas.

But then you start reading screenplays and you realize that you’re not nearly as imaginative or funny or interesting as you thought you were. You see people using the same jokes, the same characters, the same plot points, the same concepts. The truth is we’re all tapping into the same stream of information. That story you just read on CNN about a murderer who escapes prison disguising himself as a woman – sure, that might be the genesis for a good movie idea. But guess what? 20,000 other screenwriters read that same story. Which means you’re going to have some competition.

This is one of the biggest reasons why longevity improves screenwriters. Because after a while they realize how similar their ideas are to everyone else, and they start challenging themselves more, trying to come up with truly unique choices. You wouldn’t think you would need to be trained to imagine, but you do.

How does this all come back to North Korean Musical? Well, I wanted something different. I was tired of reading screenplay after screenplay that was the same. When I read this logline, it looked like somebody had come up with something truly different. A comedy musical set in North Korea? If that doesn’t promise a unique experience, I don’t know what does. So I was eager to be transported into this outrageous world.

We’re on the set of Yoojin Park’s latest film. Yoojin is the Julia Roberts of South Korea. Her success there has allowed her to make some inroads into Hollywood, but she’s a bit of a diva, and in this instance, refuses to film a scene until it’s better written. Enter Tom Collins – not the drink but the person – a “working writer.” Now his resume isn’t gonna sets IMDB Pro on fire – it’s mainly a bunch of B action movies – but hey, at least he’s in show business. Problem is, Tom wasn’t Yoojin’s first choice, so she’s kind of furious that he’s there.

Boy is she going to wish that was her only problem. Soon after, both of them get kidnapped by ninjas. Why ninjas? I have no idea. I didn’t know that North Korea was a big ninja country. But anyway, when the blindfolds are removed, they find themselves in North Korea. It turns out that Kim Jong Il wants to produce the greatest musical ever made to inspire his people, and he specifically wants Tom to write and direct it, and Yoojin to star. I think he believes that once this movie is shown, South Korea will finally want to reunite with North Korea.

Why Tom? Because Tom wrote some B action movie way back in the day called Double Barrel which is one of the most celebrated movies in North Korea history. It’s only natural then, that he write and direct North Korea’s greatest movie ever. The problem is that he and his star don’t get along at all. But since making this movie is the only way that the great leader will allow them out of the country, he has no choice but to buckle up and make it work.

What follows is hijinks galore. The great leader insists that many of his own family members star in the film, family members who couldn’t act their way out of a Jersey Shore episode. An undercover FBI agent with really bad Asian makeup is also constantly trying to get Tom to play pranks on Kim Jong Il. And a seductive Chinese government official keeps offering him freedom if he will publicly admit that America is stupid. Oh, and of course Tom and Yoojin get to know each other better and eventually start to like one another. I think that’s all you need to know.

I’ve realized that after I summarize a screenplay, that nine times out of 10 when I start the following paragraph with “Okay,” it’s usually bad news.

Okay, so the big question is, did this achieve what I was hoping it would achieve? Well, the setting was definitely different. But I would have to say, sadly, no. This was basically yet another example of a screenplay where the comedy took precedence over the story. As we all know, this drives me nuts, although I’m going to take some of the blame for this one. I mean, it was a comedy titled “North Korean Musical.” So what was I expecting?

Well, the first thing I was expecting was A MUSICAL! I was hoping for wild and crazy musical set pieces and instead I got a story about people making a musical. I’m just not sure you can write a movie titled North Korean Musical and it not be a musical. So I was really bummed there.

Another thing that bothered me was the central relationship. There’s nothing that gets to me more than a romantic comedy couple who hate each other only because the plot requires them to hate each other. There’s no basis for that hate. There’s no back story driving that hate. It’s just: This is a comedy, so the lead male character and lead female character have to hate each other.

Look at a movie like The Proposal. Not a great film by any means. But you actually understood why Ryan Reynolds hated Sandra Bullock. He’s been working for her for three years and been treated like dirt the whole time. Of course he’s going to hate her. You always want your comedy to emerge from your story and your characters. If things just happen because the writer wants them to happen, the story’s going to be thin.

There were other sloppy choices as well. Tom is a writer. He was brought in to write this film. But then, once he gets there, he’s told that he’s also directing the film. This just seemed like a lazy choice. I know this is a comedy but these are two completely different skill sets. I thought with just a little more effort, they could’ve come up with a creative solution to this problem.

For example, why not make it so he has to work with a director who’s already there? And he’s this crazy North Korean director who’s terrible? Maybe halfway through the production he goes insane and Tom is forced to take over. Or why not make Tom a director instead of a writer? That would make more sense anyway. If you’re going to bring in somebody to make a film, it’s probably going to be a director and not a writer. Or maybe Tom is a writer who spent the last 10 years trying to break in as a director but no one would give him a shot. This ends up becoming his shot, and he realizes that even though he’s making a musical for North Korea, that if he can make it great, it can be his calling card for Hollywood. Now you have a character who really cares about the outcome of the film.

That would solve another problem I had, which is that there are no stakes to Tom doing well (I guess he gets out of the country, but it never feels like it’s that hard to get out of the country anyway). If your main character doesn’t really care whether he achieves his goal or not – in this case to make a good movie – then why should we care? Even if it’s a goofy comedy. This is why I’m constantly repeating this. Your screenplay is going to be in much better shape if your main character desperately wants to achieve his goal. If he doesn’t, then the audience is constantly wondering why they’re supposed to care about this person who doesn’t care about what he’s doing.

I could go on but I’d just be piling on. I’m going to say something to all future screenwriters who want to submit comedies to Scriptshadow. Unless you give me some substance to your comedy, I’m probably not going to like it. I’d like your main characters to be properly developed. I’d like your main character to care about his goal. I’d like some sort of thematic through line. I want the comedy to stem from the story and the characters as opposed to random craziness. That’s the kind of screenplay I would love to review on amateur Friday. I am not saying that that’s the only kind of comedy that does well in the marketplace. We live in a world where a Jackass movie can make $40 million on opening weekend. I’m just saying that that’s the kind of comedy that I personally respond to. I really hope that some of you guys who aren’t as anal as I am enjoy this, because it does have some funny moments. But because of the reasons I listed above, it wasn’t for me.

Script link: North Korean Musical

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

What I learned: We have another example of something that drives me crazy. A 120 page comedy. There are really two factors for a screenplay being long. The first is a large character count. Laying out character storylines takes time, which takes up pages. The second is a complicated plot. When you have lots of developments and twists and turns – the kind of stuff that needs a lot of setup and exposition – that’s going to take up time as well. The thing is, comedies shouldn’t have either of these problems. Comedies usually center on a small group of people, or even one person. And the plots themselves should never be that complicated. Don’t believe me? When is the last time you went to a comedy to see an extremely complicated plot? That’s why you get readers and producers and agents who look at a 120 page comedy and roll their eyes. Because they know that the writer has included stuff that they shouldn’t have. So keep your character counts down and your plots simple in comedies. Do so and you shouldn’t have a problem with too many pages.

Yes, after many long hours of reading, the Nicholl finalists have been revealed.  First of all, congratulations! Are you on this list? I would love to check out these scripts myself, so feel free to send them my way. And best title of the list and possibly of the year definitely goes to: “Fig Hunt: The Quest for Battle Armor Star Captain.”

– Chris Bessounian & Tianna Langham, Los Angeles, Calif., “Guns and Saris”
– Dion Cook, Altus, Oklahoma, “Cutter”
– K.E. Greenberg, Los Angeles, Calif., “Blood Bound”
– Ehud Lavski, Tel Aviv, Israel, “Parasite”
– John MacInnes, Los Angeles, Calif., “Outside the Wire”
– Aaron Marshall, West Hollywood, Calif., “Fig Hunt: The Quest for Battle Armor Star Captain”
– Khurram Mozaffar, Lisle, Illinois, “A Man of Clay”
– Matthew Murphy, Culver City, Calif., “Unicorn”
– Abel Vang & Burlee Vang, Fresno, Calif., “The Tiger’s Child”
– Paul Vicknair & Chris Shafer, Los Angeles & Hermosa Beach, Calif., “A Many Splintered Thing”

Before you start this review, I’m going to need you to do something. Go to your kitchen, grab yourself a large Tupperware container, and place it under your computer screen. You’re going to need that to collect all my drool, because even though we’re entering the best time of year for movies, I’m pretty positive I just found my number one, and it’s Drive baby. It’s all Drive.

Now this movie isn’t going to be for everyone. As someone noted in the comments section the other day, there’s an article out there about how disappointed audiences have been with this film. The reason for this seems to be the age-old marketing dilemma of trying to bring in the widest audience possible – even if it means misleading your customers. So they sell this as Fast Six, and you get Fast Six, but the way a 25-year-old Terrence Malick would direct Fast Six. The thing is, that’s why I loved it so much.

And this is coming from somebody who was expecting the worst. I finally saw Everything Must Go the other day, which you may remember was my favorite script at one point. Watching that movie was an exercise in futility. What seemed so alive on the page felt dead on the screen. And I’m not even sure why. My guess is the casting of Will Ferrell. I just kept waiting for the guy to say something funny and he never did. I’m not sure he’s interesting as an unfunny person. And since the whole movie was based around him, I guess that’s why I was so bored.

Drive was the opposite. As you know, I loved the script. I gave it an impressive and put it in my top 10. But after hearing such mixed reactions about the film, revolving around all the cutting and the minimalism, I was expecting some weird control freak European director who thought it was more important to impose his vision on a film than tell the great story he’d been given. Man was I wrong.

Somehow, Refn figured out a way to take a script that was already great, pare it down to its bare essence, and in the process make it better. This guy is just an amazingly talented director with such a unique voice. You can’t write the way it feels to watch Gosling drive through the neon lighted nighttime streets of LA with a soft focus lens and an errie techno pop song playing over the radio. It conveys the loneliness and isolation of this character within 5 seconds, something that might take three or four scenes in a screenplay. 

And Gosling – I’ve had my problems with this guy in the past. I mean, I wanted to slit my wrists during Lars And The Real Girl. And I’m not sure I like how seriously he takes himself. But man, did that come in handy here. This guy has moments where he conveys the same screen presence as a young DeNiro. When that guy approaches him in the bar and asks him about doing another job, and Ryan turns to him and says if he doesn’t walk away he’s going to kick his teeth in, I mean, I don’t think I’ve been more convinced by a performance this year. He just embodied that character- and that wasn’t easy to do since so much of his performance was internal and restrained. Brad Pitt is getting all this credit for his restrained performance in Moneyball. But Gosling’s performance puts him to shame.

Gosling’s character is not an easy character to get the audience to like either. He doesn’t say a whole lot. We don’t know much about his past. So the writer and director look for little moments here and there to build that trust between you and the character. We see the way he looks at Carey Mulligan’s son for example. We see him smile whenever she comes around. And of course, we see that he cares so much for this family, that he actually puts his own life in danger to help the husband pay back the money he owes, so the family will be safe. That’s another thing I loved about this script so much. There were so many layers going on. You’re saving the two people you love, but in the process you’re creating a scenario where those two people can never be yours.

It was interesting to see how much they carved out of the original screenplay (namely the dialogue), and how much it actually helped. Dialogue can become a writer’s own worst enemy. It’s so much easier to tell the audience something than it is to show it. It takes time to think of the “show.” And writers are lazy when it comes to that stuff. Why try to think of a clever way of one person showing another person how much they love them when they can just say “I love you?” Never forget that filmmaking is a visual medium. Try to tell your story as visually as possible. And if you have any questions on how to do that, watch this movie.

And the strange thing about the dialogue is if I showed it to you in a vacuum, you’d probably think it was pretty bad. Or at the very least, boring. For example, we get a scene where Ryan comes into Carey’s apartment for the first time, and the extent of the conversation is that she asks him if he wants some water. Not exactly Academy award-winning banter here. But you have to remember, it’s not the dialogue itself that matters, but everything surrounding it that adds context and subtext to it. So in this case, we feel Gosling’s restraint. He doesn’t usually get close to people. Being in this room, enjoying a moment with another human being, goes against everything he’s about. And yet there’s a part of him that’s attracted to this girl. So, “Do you want a glass of water?” takes on a whole other context. Because saying yes means he’s going to stay here a little longer, something he’d normally never do. This is screenplay 401 stuff here – the kind of things you should be ingesting into your very screenwriting soul. It’s just really good writing.

Probably the biggest shocker, and the biggest difference from the script, was the violence. I’m not sure how I would’ve felt if I hadn’t been prepped for it. But I thought it was great. I remember these same complaints were coming out of A History Of Violence – that we had these needless graphic violent moments that added nothing to the film. But with all that quiet in Drive, with Refn ’s minimalist approach, the violence jumped out at you in a way that it doesn’t jump out at you in other movies. These days, you see these movies with mindless violence from the first frame to the last. After a while, the violence doesn’t mean anything to you, because you get used to it. Here it’s the exact opposite. Refn sets you up with these long flowing sequences of restraint, and then the next thing you know Christina Hendricks’s brain is being splattered across the bathroom wall.

The other huge addition was the music. I’ve said this before, but it doesn’t matter how elegantly you convey music in your screenplay. If the reader isn’t listening to it, he’s not going to feel the same way he’s going to feel in the theater. This was a huge gamble by Refn . There was a lot more dialogue in the script – a lot of which was built around Ryan and Carey’s relationship. Here, it’s all looks against music. It’s a drive down the Los Angeles River against music. It’s him hanging out with the family against music. This is one of those areas where the director – as long as he knows what he’s doing – can change entire scenes because he knows he can convey the exact same emotion that the scene in the script conveyed, but through images and sound, as opposed to two people talking to each other.

Another smart move was keeping the film short. It’s under 100 minutes. Whenever you write a movie where there’s little dialogue, you have to keep it short. Audiences aren’t used to silence. They aren’t used to characters not talking. So you’re already making them uncomfortable. If you try to extend that out to two full hours, you’re going to have a lot of inpatient people on your hands. Just with the length of the movie now, you have people who feel that way. So when you take chances like this, it’s a really good idea to keep the story as clean and quick as possible.

Speaking of that, I’m shocked with just how much plot they were able to put into this movie with so little dialogue. Actually, maybe that’s the reason why they were able to get so much plot in. Because we didn’t have these three or four min. scenes with people talking, Refn was able to throw a lot more plot in. I remember reading the original script, which was over 120 pages, and I don’t think they lost a single plot point in this 97 page version. That’s really impressive, and proof that you don’t always need characters explaining things to get your plot across. Maybe I’m looking at this through rose colored glasses, but I can’t remember a single line of obvious exposition in the film. I mean you have to give it up to any writer and director who are able to pull that off.

I don’t really know what else to say about this movie. I just loved every single second of it. As a fan of movies, I loved how different it was, how much restraint was used, how the writer and the director were constantly looking for different ways to convey the story. I mean, tell me you weren’t affected by that elevator scene.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this film come Oscar time. Will it disappear? Will someone get behind it? It seems like the perfect kind of contender because people have such strong feelings about it one way or the other. But I’ll tell you what. I love this movie. I think right now it’s the best film of the year. As I look back on it, I can’t think of anything I would change. This is pure filmmaking and pure storytelling. It’s films like this that make me proud I’m a small part of this amazing medium.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[x] genius

What I learned: This reminded me to always look for a visual solution to a problem as opposed to a dialogue solution to a problem. One of my very first film school teachers made us write a scene where one person broke up with another, but we weren’t allowed to use dialogue. It’s a great way to look at your scene. Maybe dialogue is still the best way. But the right visual solution always makes the scene so much better.