Many of you know Mastai’s work through “The F Word,” one of my favorite scripts I’ve read here on the site, and a 2007 Black List member. Since then he’s done a lot of assignment work, and it’s really paid off recently. He wrote an upcoming film starring Sam Jackson called “The Samaritan,” and is currently working with Oscar winner Alan Ball on his next directing project. This is one of my favorite interviews yet.  There’s a ton of great screenwriting advice in Elan’s answers. 

SS: How much time had you put in as a screenwriter before you finally found success? Are we talking years? Decades? How many scripts had you written?

EM: The short, simple answer is about seven years and fifteen scripts before I wrote “The F Word” and it launched my career in LA, scoring me my agents and manager, getting on the “Black List” and picked up by Fox-Searchlight, and opening doors for me to start writing studio projects, which I’ve now been doing since late-2008.

The longer, convoluted answer is that of those fifteen scripts, four got produced as low-budget independent features of varying degrees of quality, three got optioned but never made, five were assignments I got hired to write or rewrite, one of which also got produced but without my name on it (thankfully, because it’s atrocious), and three were semi-successful attempts to figure out what kind of writer I wanted to be, what my quote-unquote “voice” was, that I never did anything with because I knew they weren’t there yet.

Even though I was making a living as a screenwriter (in Canada, where I’m from), it wasn’t as rewarding as it maybe should’ve or could’ve been, because I wasn’t writing stuff in my own voice.

So, a super-low-budget movie I co-wrote premiered at Sundance in 2007. And everyone was very complimentary and all that, but deep-down I knew I couldn’t really present that movie, or any of the scripts I’d written to that point, to anyone as an example of what I felt I could really do as a writer. I realized I needed to re-think my approach to screenwriting.

And that led to me writing “The F Word”, which was the first script I wrote that conveyed my point of view, told the story in a way that only I could. In retrospect, it makes sense that it was the script that got me all kinds of attention in LA. But I had a lot of kinks to work through in my writing before I had the solid storytelling skills to pull off a script as low-concept and voice-driven as “The F Word”.

SS: During that time, when everything’s so uncertain, and that big beautiful dream of being a “professional” screenwriter is so unclear, what kept you going? How do you know whether to keep pushing through or not?

EM: Basically, I met other aspiring filmmakers through film festivals and film-related events. We watched movies, talked movies, made short films, read each other’s stuff and gave candid feedback, helped each other improve, kicked each other in the ass a little when it was needed.

In general, though, I’m pretty clear-eyed about my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. So I also spent those seven years writing scripts that allowed me work on my weaknesses. I wrote, like, kid’s movies, horror flicks, crime thrillers, teen comedies, sports movies, anything that would teach me something I didn’t know and fill in a blank in my toolkit.

It was very cool to read your review of “The F Word” and the ensuing comments thread because, whether people love or loathe the script, they’re seriously engaging with my writing. That’s awesome. But it’s also a little odd for me because the draft everyone’s discussing is, like, three-and-a-half years old. I’m proud of the script and it’s been a fantastic calling card for me, but I’ve also had the chance to rewrite it twice for Fox-Searchlight and write four or five other movies since then. And it’s funny because all the points being discussed in the comments are the exact same debates I had with the producers and execs when I was rewriting the script. I’d say, in fact, basically all the criticisms you voiced in your review have been dealt with in subsequent rewrites.

My roundabout point is that being hyper-aware of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer, without being so self-critical that you paralyze yourself from actually writing anything, is just as important before you break through as it is once you have.

Working as a professional screenwriter in LA, you have to present this confident, positive version of yourself to potential employers and creative partners. But you also have to be chronically objective about your limitations in order to improve as a writer. So the arguments in the comments thread (is my writing innovative and hilarious or overrated and boring?) are the same ones I ask myself every single goddamn day when I sit down at the keyboard to write something new.

SS: You’re from Canada. How difficult was it breaking into Hollywood from a different country, and what do you think the key was? (i.e. Did you have to travel there a lot? Get a second home there?)

EM: I’ve never lived in Los Angeles. I got my agents, manager, and lawyer and set up all of my studio projects coming to LA for a week at a time every few months. In between trips, I keep in touch via phone and email. I have a good long-distance plan on my cell.

But the key was definitely getting great representation. If my agents and manager weren’t doing the day-to-day groundwork for me in LA, it would’ve been impossible to build a career without living there.

SS: Every writer has their own journey finding their first agent. How did you find yours?

So, this is a story that people either find kind of inspiring or totally aggravating…

I didn’t do anything.

I wrote “The F Word”. It actually started as an assignment to adapt this one-act play, which was very funny and charming, but ran about 30 pages, only had two characters in it, and was confidently “stagey” in execution. Which was great because, like a good short story, it allowed me to fill it out to movie-size with my own eccentric inventions.

The plan was to make it as a low-budget indie. So the original producer (Marc Stephenson of Sheep Noir Films, currently working hard to get the movie into production) sent it to a few agencies hoping to attract interest from someone who represented an actor who might possibly meet our at-the-time hilariously low standards of “bankability”…

So, what happened was, people at the various agencies liked the script and, for reasons I’ll never entirely understand, passed it along to other people at other companies. And those people liked it enough to do the same. And so, without me even knowing it, my script started circulating through Hollywood. And I’d cite all these people by name but I don’t know who any of them are. They’re total strangers who basically gave me a Hollywood screenwriting career by liking my script and recommending it to other people, who did the same thing, all for absolutely no possible personal gain, until it somehow ended up in the in-box of my future agents at Gersh. And they called me out of the blue one day and said, you know, they love my voice as a writer and they’d really like to meet me sometime to talk about my future.

Honestly, it was completely crazy and before it happened to me I’d have been way too cynical to ever believe that’s how this stuff works. Random strangers read your script and recommend it to other random strangers and eventually someone reads it who can change your life.

So, I don’t know, you tell me: inspiring or aggravating? Kind of both, right?

SS: What’s your number 1 tip for aspiring screenwriters? How do you break in?

EM: I wish I had some magical secret insight to offer. But all I have is the usual advice that’s so easy to give but so tough to actually take: write your ass off until you find your voice as a writer, and then choose a story to tell that will highlight that voice in the clearest possible way. Because your voice, your unique storytelling point of view, is the thing that creates a market for your work. If anyone else can write a script the way you do, why should anyone hire you instead of them?

SS: As I pointed out in my review, The F Word is sort of a low-concept idea. With the screenwriting market being so competitive, what do you think the key is to sending a script out that doesn’t have that obvious high concept hook? How do you make up for it? And do you recommend it?

I think it has to be the right kind of low-concept. In the case of “The F Word”, the draw was the universality. Everybody has been through their personal version of this story, either from Wallace’s point of view (falling for someone who is in a serious relationship and convincing yourself you’d be happy as just friends) or Chantry’s point of view (being in a relationship and meeting someone you find really interesting and convincing yourself there’s no reason you can’t be just friends) or both.

So I took a lot of generals with development executives who spent most of the meeting telling me about the time they had an experience just like the one in “The F Word”. Or even better were going through it right now. So instead of a stressful quasi-job interview kind of thing, we bonded about our personal relationship histories and how they made us who we are today. So, for me, the universality of the story was a huge boost.

I think that, fundamentally, the audience doesn’t care about anything other than empathizing with characters. Everything else in a movie is window-dressing on empathy. Now, in an absence of characters that the audience cares about, well, yeah, they’ll accept explosions and nudity and shocking plot-twists that make no sense when you really think about them.

So, with “The F Word”, I guess going low-concept showed people I could write characters you care about, especially since they weren’t operating in this propulsive plot-engine with world-rumbling stakes. Low-concept can be a great way to show off your pure writing skills. But, look, first you’ve got to spend a lot of time developing those pure writing skills. Or at least I had to.

SS: Your dialogue is great. Any tips you can give us to write better dialogue?

EM: Well, something to remember is that your dialogue will be read many times in script-form before it’s ever spoken by actors. So I use a lot of simple modifiers to make the dialogue read better.

Off the top of my head, here’s a flat line of dialogue: “She’s not coming back.”

Or you could write it like: “Look, I mean, you know she’s not coming back, right?

The two versions contain the same essential information. And I’m sure a great actor could make the former version sound awesome. But the latter version imbeds a lot of implied character information into the dialogue itself, the written-equivalent of all the nonverbal nuances an actor will eventually bring to the delivery.

Of course, you can overdo it with the “likes” and “you knows” and “wells” and “I means”. That’s why I read and re-read every line of dialogue out loud until the balance is there.

I also do live script-readings with actors. I did five full readings of “The F Word”, each with a completely different cast, so I could hear every line of dialogue in a different actor’s voice, hear what each line sounds like with varying intonations, pauses, verbal tics, emphases, and so on.

SS: One of the interesting things I found about The F Word was that the situations our characters found themselves in were situations I’ve seen characters in before. For example, we’ve seen the “both in the changing room scene” in Tootsie. Yet I still loved all of them. Knowing that you’re walking on ground that’s already been walked on, how do you still make your own scenes fresh?

EM: I guess my approach is, look, how many times have you had a “first kiss” moment in your life? Is it ever boring? Every first kiss I’ve been involved in was pretty electrifying because I really wanted to know what was going to happen next.

A person pointing a gun at another person can be tedious or riveting if you care about the people involved. The bond you create between your audience and your character, right off the top, that’s the fuel for the rest of your story.

The thing is, the audience brings certain expectations to every genre. And expectations are meant to be fucked with. When the audience anticipates something because they think they’ve seen it before, their guard goes down and that gives you a lot of narrative power to play around with them, sometimes without them even realizing it.

I mean, I don’t want to overstate it, because “The F Word” isn’t exactly “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. But basically I think about what the audience expects to happen in a given set-up and how I can mess with that a bit. And if you do that a few times, the audience gets a little off-balance, unsure whether their assumptions are correct, and that builds a useful slow-burn tension the audience isn’t necessarily even aware they’re feeling. Then if you do go for the expected result of a set-up every once in a while, the audience gets a little jolt of pleasure from being correct. And then on the next set-up you throw them off-balance again, and so on.

SS: You got to work with Alan Ball, who I think may be the best screenwriter on the planet. Did you learn any screenwriting advice from him? Feel free to go on as long as you’d like with this one. :)

EM: Well, look, I’m in the middle of the working relationship right now, so I don’t have a sweeping, incisive analysis of the experience for you. It’s a work-in-progress. And out of respect for the process, I don’t want to get too into it.

But, I mean, it’s been a fantastic experience so far. Alan is a writer first, thinks like a writer, talks like a writer, has a shockingly laser-like eye for raising stakes, revealing character details, propulsive storytelling. He’s the real deal and I’m lucky as hell to be working with him.

And, yeah, I know that’s all kind of vague and self-congratulatory and unhelpful to anyone reading this. So, okay, here’s something specific. When you introduce your main characters, give them an immediate decision that tells the audience who they are, right away. It doesn’t have to be a big moment. It can be a small, everyday choice. But it lets the audience notice that they probably would or wouldn’t make the same choice that the character just did. And that immediately tells them something important about who that person is.

SS: What do you think is the most common mistake beginning screenwriters make?

EM: Probably waiting for their big break to magically appear instead of writing as much as possible as often as possible. Because when you do get your big break, it really sucks if you’re not developed enough as a writer to take full advantage of it.

I say that as someone who did have their big break magically appear. But when it happened, I was more or less ready to jump on it. I was (thankfully) a much better writer than I’d been in previous years because I’d spent the previous years writing as much as I could.

SS: The relationship comedy genre is a crowded one. It seems like every 20-something writer is trying to break in with one of these specs. What do you think the key is to writing this kind of script successfully?

EM: The thing I really like about relationship comedies is that it’s the one genre you can’t hide in. You can hide inside horror flicks and family comedies and crime thrillers and sci-fi epics. But everyone is an expert in attraction. Everyone has intimate personal experience with falling in love and heartbreak and unrequited feelings and romantic longing and sexual tension and flirtatious banter and unforgettable first encounters. So what you have to say about those things exposes you in a very personal way to whoever happens to read your script.

Of course, many relationship comedies are bad. And the bad ones tell you a lot about the person who wrote them. Maybe it’s telling you they’ve got really screwed up ideas of what’s attractive to another person. Maybe it’s telling you they’ve had their ass kicked by love and still can’t stand up. Maybe it’s telling you they can’t open themselves up to a genuine human connection. Or maybe it’s telling you they’re not funny.

If there’s a key to writing a relationship comedy, it’s taking a good long look in the mirror and asking yourself if what you might accidentally show people is something you’re okay with them seeing.

SS: Screenwriters are constantly evolving, learning new things all the time. What’s your most recent revelation that you’ve been applying to your writing?

EM: I have the kind of brain that tends to not learn from other people’s advice, so I need to make the mistake myself to figure out how not to do it again, even if it probably seems like totally obvious screenwriting territory.

Like, here’s something completely self-evident and basically corny when you boil it down to a snappy sentence: there’s no success without risk. I know, I know, such a brilliant piece of advice that no one has ever mentioned before…

But the point for me is to always try, as much as it’s possible, to work with people I can fail in front of. Because unless you take some real chances with your storytelling, try something bold enough to potentially veer into humiliating failure, you’re never going to truly excite anyone. Especially in comedy, but really in any genre. Anytime I’ve played it safe with a script, because I didn’t feel like I could take the chance of screwing up, I ended up with a screenplay that everyone liked but no one loved. And if no one loves it, it’s never getting made.

Now, taking bold chance with the storytelling means being potentially divisive. Some people may hate it. Hopefully the people who love it have more clout. It’s risky. But it’s the only way to get your material to stand out.

So, yeah, it’s a well-worn notion. But when you’re actually doing what you always wanted to be doing, writing studio movies, it’s so easy to not want to screw it up by doing anything too bold, even though being bold is what got you there in the first place.

SS: And finally, the question we’ve all been waiting for…Can a man and a woman really be just friends?

EM: Probably. But it kind of depends on your definition of “just”.

It comes down to whether or not both people are being honest about what they really want from each other. And that includes being honest with themselves.

Which is a good screenwriting lesson too. Being honest with yourself about whether or not your script is ready for outside eyes. About what your strengths and weaknesses are as a writer. About what you’re doing to enhance those strengths and bolster those weaknesses. About whether every line of dialogue sounds like an actual human could say it, since an actual human will have to when it gets made. About whether you’re avoiding that last polish because the script is really perfect or because you just want it to be done. And so on.

If there’s a basic theme to all my writing it’s this: You can’t lie your way to happiness.

Genre: Thriller/Romantic Drama mash-up
Premise: A half-deaf woman who’s repeatedly taken advantage of at her job, hires a young ex-con to help around the office, who she then begins to fall in love with.
About: Sur Mes Levres was originally a 2001 French thriller. Naturally, since this is what we do here in America, a company bought the rights to the movie to remake it. And apparently had some dough to do so, bringing in hotshot script writer Tony Gilroy (all the Bourne movies, Michael Clayton, Armageddon, The Devil’s Advocate) to sculpt the screenplay. Alas, this draft was written in 2004, and a remake of the film has yet to pass. Gilroy has two rules for his moves. “Bring it in within two hours” and “Don’t bore the audience.” You can read more about him in this New Yorker article here.
Writer: Tony Gilroy (based on the film “Sur Mes Levres” written by Jacques Audiard and Tonio Benacquista)
Details: 127 pages – 9/28/04 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).

If yesterday’s script was tough to get a handle on due to its simplicity, today’s script is hard to get a handle on because of its complexity. The narrative here is all over the place. There’s no defining hook to the story, making it difficult for an average American audience to understand why in the world they would waste their time on it. Americans like clarity in their concepts. They like when you tell them, “This is why you’re going to show up.” Read “Crazy Stupid Love” and then go watch the trailer. There’s no true hook in “Crazy Stupid Love,” but notice how the trailer emphasizes the “nerd to stud” angle of Steve Carrel, so that audiences can go home and identify it as “that movie where Steve Carrel turns into a stud.” Read My Lips doesn’t have any concept to hang its hat on, so I’m not sure how it would be marketed.

Carla is an executive assistant for a construction management company. This is man’s world she works in, so she’s already fighting for her life, but Carla’s situation is complicated by her hearing problem. She’s half-deaf, and her co-workers relentlessly use her impairment to take advantage of her.

At the center of this advantage-taking is her boss, Paul Verlawn. This man is as pathetic and as slimy as they come, and he repeatedly has Carla doing the dirty work for him then taking all the credit when the big board meetings come around.

One day, after Carla is chastised for not getting enough work done, she’s told to hire an assistant (an assistant to the assistant! – I thought that only happened in Hollywood). She brings a guy in named Danny, who immediately informs her that everything on his resume is a lie and he just wrote it to get the interview. Boy did this guy not get the memo on how to nail an interview. Oh, and he’s also an ex-con who just got out of the slammer. A real winner. But Carla, feeling bad for the guy, actually hires him.

Danny begins to see how Carla is treated and implores her to stand up for herself. So the two hatch a plan to prove that her slimy boss, Paul, is dealing in some shady bidding practices and is on the take. Carla uses her “secret power” of reading lips to track what the big timers are saying to each other in meetings, and uses the info to take Paul down.

In the meantime, Danny’s criminal past catches up to him (those darn criminal pasts – they never go away do they?). He owes some big-timer named Marco a lot of money, and Marco plans to get that money back. So he has Danny start bartending at his club, despite Danny being on probation and knowing that if he’s caught around these dudes, he’s probably going back behind bars, filming scenes for MSNBC’s Lockup.

Eventually Carla figures out that Danny’s homeless, and so illegally sets up a makeshift apartment for him in one of the buildings her company owns. He then starts to hit on her, but because Carla is so unfamiliar with any sort of intimate contact, she doesn’t know how to react, and solves the problem pretty much by running away. However, secretly, when she gets home, all she can think about are Danny’s advances. In the end, they’ll have to take down her boss, escape Danny’s thug friends, and figure out if they’re going to be an item or not.

Just from my summary there, you’re probably a little confused, which shows just how off-beat this screenplay is. There’s a lot going on and unlike a traditional Hollywood movie, the A-plot doesn’t have much to do with the B-plot. What I mean is, part of the movie is about Carla taking down her boss, which is sort of a PG run-of-the-mill underdog story. But then Danny’s storyline is a hard R John Woo mini crime saga with Danny being roped into a sketchy murder attempt. I guess other countries like these schizophrenic storylines. But to Americans, they just don’t make sense.

Also, the love story is really odd. It’s never clear why Carla hires Danny in the first place (“feeling sorry for him” was my best guess). Carla spends the majority of the time equal parts angry and afraid of Danny. Yet when she’s alone she walks around naked in his smelly t-shirt. When she does start to accept his advances, he’s angry and frustrated by her for some reason. I don’t know. I just never really understood what was going on there. But at the same time, that’s why I kept reading. Their relationship was so weird, I had to see where it ended up.

Where you could really sense the Europeaness of the story, though, was in Carla’s impairment. Carla is half-deaf. This is so not a Hollywood choice. In Hollywood movies, things are black and white. You’re either all deaf or not deaf. You’re not half-deaf. An audience doesn’t know what to do with half-deaf. “Well, she can still hear,” they say. “What’s the difference between that and being able to hear perfectly?”

I suspect it’s to set up her lip-reading ability, but that was another problem I had with the script. The lip-reading is given a pronounced set-up, but it never really comes into play in a huge way. It’s more something they depend on sporadically, helping them here and there but that’s it. It’s this sort of “one foot in the pool, one foot out of the pool” approach that confuses us dumb Americans. (“If you made such a big deal out of it, why doesn’t it become a big deal later?”)

Read My Lips’ strength is in its characters. There’s so much going on with these guys. Look at Carla. We know about her flaw (doesn’t stand up for herself), her desires (take down her boss), her handicaps (her hearing), her inner conflicts (wanting to be with Danny but being scared), her relationships (her conflicted relationship with her sister). That’s a character you remember right there. On the downside, the plot is disjointed and unsure of itself. The main storyline we’ve been introduced to (taking down the boss) is solved 70% into the screenplay, turning Danny’s life into the main plot, a strange shift that requires a readjustment we’re not very comfortable making.

I’m going to be a little French Film racist here but I see a lot of French movies that take this unclear narrative route and I’m not sure I like it. I remember watching 2010’s “A Prophet” for instance, and thinking, this film is freaking amazing. It’s this gritty story about a dude dealing with the complexities and politics of jail. But then like 70% into the movie, it switches gears into something completely different. And then it just kept going. And going. And going. At a certain point I realized I no longer had any idea what the movie was about.

But I’m getting off track. Despite all this, Read My Lips has something undeniably compelling about it. Whether it’s the weird romance, the moody atmosphere, or its dual storylines. You want to get to the end. And that’s why I think it’s worth your time.

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

What I learned: Tell us who a character is through the way they react to something. On page 18, Carla’s sister tells her that she’s cheating on her husband. Carla’s reaction to this is one of horror. But not just horror. Naiveté. It’s as if Carla’s never heard of a woman cheating on her husband before, much less her own sister. This tells us a ton about Carla’s character. She’s sheltered, naïve, buttoned up, traditional. It’s a clever way to reveal character. All you had to do was show her react to something.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A married couple who get a night off from their kids, get adventurous and decide to spice up their lives by making a sex tape. When they wake the following morning, the tape is missing, and they must find out who took it and how to get it back.
About: Sex Tape is one of the biggest spec sales of the year, taking us back to the early 90s with its giant 7 figure price tag. As is usually the case, these huge sales don’t go to newcomers, but rather established veterans. Angelo’s been around for awhile. She was a writer on the TV show, Becker. She was a producer on Will & Grace. And she wrote the script, “The Back Up Plan,” starring J.Lo.
Writer: Kate Angelo
Details: 118 pages – May 31, 2011 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Here’s what my peeps are telling me about Sex Tape.

Married Folks: This totally captures what your life (and sex life) becomes once you have children.

Single Folks: I don’t get it.

So there seems to be a sharp divide. Just looking at the concept alone, I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it seems like one of those ideas where you say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” On the other, it feels a bit dated, doesn’t it? I mean we had the “Zoey and Chachi Make A Sex Tape” or whatever that Kevin Smith movie was, and that script had been lying around for a decade. So has the sex tape thing run its course? Of course, this script isn’t as much about the gory details of the sex tape as it is about getting the sex tape back. In fact, it’s very much similar in tone to Date Night, another big spec sale, and kind of a family film. Does that mean Sex Tape is a family film? I don’t think you can make a family film about a sex tape, can you?

Anyway, the script opens with a wonderful fifteen page montage of our two leads, Jay and Annie, meeting at college and falling in love. And fucking. Lots and lots of fucking. They fuck in the school library, in the car, in their dorm rooms – anywhere where two people can fuck, they fuck.

But then they get married and start having kids and the sex starts to slow down. But they still love each other so they keep trying, but now there are babies crying and kids sleeping in beds and kids peeing in beds and Annie being exhausted and before you know it, Annie just doesn’t have time for sex anymore. It’s not that she doesn’t want to. She just has too many things going on.

But when she realizes how much this non-sex is affecting Jay, Annie decides to do something special. So she sends the kids away with their grandmother and gives Jay 12 straight hours of access to her body to do whatever he wishes. Well, one thing leads to another, they turn on a video camera, they eat a few pot brownies, they find an old copy of The Joy Of Sex, and they decide to try every position in the book (and then some) while making the really big mistake of taping it all.

Cut to the next morning and they don’t remember much. What they do remember is that sex tape though, and to their horror, when they look up at the tripod, the camera is gone. Uh-oh. They run downstairs to find the maid, a construction worker, and about ¾ of their house torn up. Whoa, they really went wild last night. Why the construction worker is here is a “wtf” detail I’ll get to later. But basically, they suspect that one of these guys took the tape.

So they follow them and eventually realize they didn’t, and then become suspicious that some other entity stole it, or that the maid passed it on to someone else, and that it’s very likely to end up on the internet, something that cannot happen, since Annie’s blog is a parenting website that is about to be purchased by Fisher-Price, a company that probably wouldn’t embrace an employee with a well-known sex tape, (though you never know these days).

Jay and Annie run around like chickens with their heads cut off, desperately pulling together every little clue and trying to stop the inevitable from happening, all the while wondering what the hell they did on that damn sex tape. In the process, they learn about the importance of putting your partner first in life, even if it takes a little extra effort to do so.

So, how was Sex Tape?

Well, I thought the first act was great. It got a little broad there with the sex tape itself (getting high on pot brownies and turning into Joy of Sex characters and using the baby swing for a sex move? — why not just cut to black and have them wake up – so the audience is just as curious about what happened as them?) but I absolutely loved the montage of them meeting and getting married. I thought it really captured two people falling in love mainly through the copious amounts of sex we all have when we’re first in a relationship.

I also liked the third act. As they’re running around, by this point having absolutely no idea where the tape is, you get some great little scenes, like them at their son’s recital realizing that there’s a very good chance their tape is about to be played in front of their son’s friends and parents.

Also, if you’re like me and have read too many scripts where the writers answer the burning plot question with a total copout (the camera ran out of tape 10 seconds after they started taping so there was never any sex tape in the first place), I have to admit that the explanation for what happened in this one was extremely well set up and satisfying. Always a good thing when you leave your reader on a happy note, and Sex Tape does.

What I didn’t like about Sex Tape was the second act, and the reason is, there was no form to it. And I see this all the time, especially in comedy specs. Where writers set up the first act perfectly. Where they nail the third act. But the second act is just a formless mass of wackiness. And that’s what happened here. The second act was an excuse to throw a bunch of shit against the wall and see what stuck.

It started with the construction worker. First of all, if you plowed a wall over during a wild sex night, how the hell would the construction worker know about it BEFORE YOU EVEN WOKE UP? Can this construction worker predict the future? Did he know you were going to call and so showed up ahead of time? They attempt to explain this by saying the Grandmother sent him over. But that would require some sort of ESP on her part as well. Either that or really good intuition (“Hmm, they probably got so wasted and had so much sex that they knocked over a wall. Better call the construction people.”) So the fact that this guy (and the maid) are our prime suspects right away destroys the early credibility of the piece, and makes getting into the mystery a forced endeavor.

From there on, there’s no real plan or form to the chase. The two just sort of stumble around a lot and run into crazy situations, like the Porn Con, which is a logical place to take this story, but it wasn’t logically explained how we got there. It was more like, “Ooh, they should have to go to the Porn Con.” And that idea was inserted into the script with only threadbare motivation.

Someone who read Sex Tape e-mailed me and said, “If this happened to my husband and I, we would sit down and logically map out all the possibilities of where the tape could be. Then we’d methodically go down that list until we eliminated every one.” These two never do that. They act like they’re 14 years old and in movie world, where things don’t need to make sense as long as the wackiness is in full supply.

Despite this, I can see why Sex Tape sold. You have an easily marketable concept. You have a great first act. The ending is satisfying (so important – since that’s they last thing you leave the reader with). And it does have a few good set-pieces and laughs. Combine that with a studio that’s looking for this kind of movie, and you’ve got yourself a sale. I just hope they get that second act into shape.

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

What I learned: I’ve been reading a lot of scripts lately where a key character’s profession is “blogger.” I would warn against this, partly because every writer’s been doing it, but also because it’s a job clearly chosen out of laziness. Who needs to research a blogger? Anyone can blog! Which means you don’t have to think up the job or what they’re doing at the job or any of those difficult details that flesh out a character’s life. You just have’em hang out all day on the computer! Perfect for someone who doesn’t like effort. All I ask is that if you’re making your character a blogger, ask if you’re doing it because it’s right for the story and for the character and fits with the theme, or if you’re doing it cause you don’t want to be bothered with figuring out the details of “a real job.”  As long as the decision makes sense for the story, blog away baby.

What I learned 2: A question to all those with kids out there. When you have kids, does projectile vomiting all of a sudden become hilarious? Because to me and all of the non-married people I know, a projectile vomiting joke is near the top of the list of desperate humor, right up there with stepping in doo-doo and an inappropriate fart. Yet I keep seeing writers use it over and over again. I’m thinking you just have to experience it yourself before you understand its genius? Help me out here.

We’ve had so many sign ups the last couple of days that the Tracking Board guys decided to extend the deal til the end of tomorrow (July 4th).  The Tracking Board has spec screenplay updates every day.  What specs are going out.  Which of them are selling.  Important info every screenwriter should be keeping track of.  Tons of Scriptshadowers have already signed up.  What the hell are you waiting for??  Go to the original post and sign up now!

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Dr. Frankenstein runs a successful cosmetic surgery practice which quickly begins falling apart.
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).
Writer: Kenneth L. Kleeman
Details: 87 pages

Is there really any way to analyze this script? It’s called “Frankenstein 90210.” I mean, you pretty much know what you’re going to get before you open it, right? Goofiness. Silliness. Ridiculousness. Well you’d be wrong. Or right. Depending on your point of view. Or not? The truth is, there’s no way to categorically explain what happens inside the pages of Frankenstein 90201. Of all the scripts I’ve read this month, this one stayed with me the most. Stayed with me how? That’s the question of the moment. And a question the alien species who finds our remains 2 million years from now will also be asking. “Bekjleira eaja;kj; aalkes? [I do not understand. What is this Frankenstein 90210?].” The script bounces back and forth between off-the-rails sit-commish comedy and Mystery Science Theater 3000 audio track worthiness. I’m not quite sure what I’ve read here, but I can’t deny that I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Dr. Tim Frankenstein, who’s, um, Frankenstein, has moved into a plush office space and is one of the 90210 area code’s top cosmetic surgeons. A chimpanzee has torn your face apart? Dr. Tim Frankenstein ts the guy to fix it for you. Kinda.

He’s accompanied by his bitchy secretary, Kelly, who provides a running commentary of all the freaks who walk through the door (and there are plenty), and Tiffany, Dr. Frankenstein’s head nurse, who’s a little grossed out by the job.

Across the hall is, um, well, hmmmm, how do I say this? Well, across the hall is Dr. Frankenstein’s psychiatrist, Dr. Phildrew. Oh boy. You’re going to want to sit down for this one. Are you sitting down? Dr. Phildrew has two separate heads placed on the same body. One of those heads is Dr. Phil (yes, the real life Dr. Phil) and the other head is Dr. Drew (yes, from Celebrity Rehab). If it’s too difficult for you to comprehend why Dr. Phil and Dr. Drew’s heads have ended up on the same body, you might want to avoid this script like facial reconstruction surgery. Cause having two heads is probably the MOST sensical thing about Dr. Phildrew.

Anyway, Dr. Frankenstein’s business is so stressful that he’s often required to unload his problems onto Dr. PhilDrew, who, of course, gives him conflicting advice.

Part of the reason Frankenstein’s so stressed is that his wife is a major pill-popper. She uses Frankenstein’s practice to score free pills, and in just about every scene we see her in, she’s barging into his office demanding more narcotics. Frankenstien’s just a big pushover so he always lets her have her way.

Also joining the fray is Hunchback Yvette. Hunchback Yvette is a sweet young ambitious nurse with a dream of straightening out her life. Um, literally. Some women have to worry about camel toe. Yvette has to worry about camel….back. So she’s come to Frankenstein, offering her services, if he’ll get rid of her hunchback. Despite the other women in the office being disgusted by the large lump on top of her back, Frankenstein hires her and agrees.

During this time, Frankenstein, his employees, and his patients, all seem to double up on appointments with Dr. Phildrew right after their surgeries, resulting in us moving from one office to the other and back again in an endless pattern. In fact, I’m not sure we ever leave this building during Dr. Frankenstein. These appointments are complicated by an ongoing court battle between Dr. Phil and Dr. Drew for possession of their body. Naturally then, every time we pop in, one of them has the body and the other is relegated to sitting atop an inanimate object, like a box of wood. Also, Dr. Phil likes to slap Dr. Drew around a lot. There’s a lot of slapping here.

Are you confused yet? I know I am. Welcome to Frankenstein 90210.

Okay, I’m going to take a wild stab at this and guess this is Kenneth’s first screenplay. I say that because, obviously, there’s no real attempt at telling a story here. It’s more about stringing together a bunch of silly scenes long enough to get us to the end of the race. This can be seen in the length of the script, which barely meets the spec requirement at 88 pages. We talk a lot about screenplays that are too long, but when a screenplay is under 95 pages, it’s usually a sign that the writer doesn’t know how to flesh out his story.

And that’s beyond clear here. Nobody’s going after anything. There’s no character exploration. There’s no central problem that needs to be solved. I mean there are minor issues, like Yvette’s hunchback, but a story needs a central problem, like the practice being in trouble or something. We don’t have that. So the story just wanders aimlessly.

Also, the scope of the story is too small. If you have only two locations and it’s a comedy, you’re probably better off writing a play. A movie needs scope. Characters need to be going places and doing things. Nobody lives in a world where they spend 99% of their time inside of two rooms. Unless you’re writing a contained thriller with a tight time frame, you need to open your story up.

As for the comedy itself, I’ll get to that in a second, but let me say this. The “anything goes” comedy is not a good avenue for a spec script. You’re putting too much emphasis on the jokes and while those are obviously important, the real stuff, building an interesting story with believable characters, is what agents and managers and producers care about. You have to learn the 3-Act structure. You have to learn how to build a character arc. Even if you’re a really funny guy, industry people want to know that you can CONSTRUCT a story. And that’s where I think Kenneth has to go before writing his next script. Read Michael Hauge’s “Writing Screenplays That Sell”. Read “The Sequence Approach.” Read a hundred screenplays. Then build an actual story around this premise as opposed to just writing one long extended scene off the top of your head.

All that being said, I have to admit that I was giggling despite myself throughout Frankenstein 90210. Kenneth is definitely a funny guy, and every few pages, before I could get worked up about the lack of direction or the total disregard for structure, there’d be a joke that made me forget about it. For example, one of the patients who comes in is a woman who’s had her face torn off by a chimpanzee. We never see her face. Only Dr. Frankenstein’s reaction to her face. After she insists that she needs facial reconstruction surgery, Dr. Frankenstein calmly responds, “While I’m sure having a face would give you a temporary ego boost, I don’t think it would solve your real problems. I think you would be happier if you learned to accept yourself as you are.” Very funny stuff. And then when she’s leaving, Kelly, the bitchy secretary, sends her out with, “So long chimp chow.”

And while the Dr. Drew and Dr. Phil stuff is completely ridiculous, I admit that for some odd reason I looked forward to going back to them. I mean, I just had to see who was going to win the custody battle for the body!

Frankenstein 90210 is born out of the Family Guy pool of humor so if you like that sort of non-sequitor no central idea type of humor – but like, like it so much that NOTHING has to make sense – then you might want to give this a try. Cause it will make you laugh. Otherwise, I’d probably stay away. Stay very very far away.

Script link: Frankenstein 90210

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

What I learned: You have to figure out which vessel is the best vessel to tell your story through. Who has the clearest most interesting goal? Who has the most going on internally? Who’s dealing with the most issues? Who has the most to gain? The most to lose? Then, make that person your main character. And if you don’t want to make that person your main character? Then build up the person you DO want to make your main character until they’re as interesting as that candidate. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is our lead, but he doesn’t have anything going on. Our most interesting character is actually Yvette, the hunchback. She’s the one who has the big problem. She’s the one who has the most drive. She’s the one with the clear goal. She’s the one who has the most to gain or lose. She’s the underdog. The story should probably be told through her eyes. And yet she’s relegated to supporting role status. Try to tell your story through your most interesting character if possible.