Genre: Drama/Mystery/Procedural/Love Story
Premise: An arsonist begins to fall for a woman while being pursued for an accidental murder he committed during his latest arson.
About: The Arsonist’s Love Story was a lower-half 2010 Black List script. Though I don’t know this for sure, I believe the writer, Lovejoy, wrote it as an undergrad at NYU.  Lovejoy hosted a TV series back in 2007 called “Life After Film School” where she interviewed some pretty big names, including the Farrelly Brothers, Doug Liman, Jason Reitman, Kurtzman and Orci, and others. She was also an assistant on the TV show, Eureka.
Writer: Katherine F. Lovejoy
Details: 118 pages – undated

Every once in awhile, you gotta burn something. Whether it be a piece of paper, a bunch of trash, or a Ford Dealership. I think we can all relate to the feeling of needing to burn down a Ford Dealership, right?

Stop! Don’t go reporting me to Homeland Security just yet. That was sarcasm people. I am not a closet pyromaniac. At least not yet. That might change after this review.

The reason I picked up these 118 sheets of red hot digital paper was because they sounded different. A love story based around arson. That could be out there man. I’d definitely never heard of anything like it before, and its Black List status gave it the cachet it needed to take a chance.

But 72 hours later I’m still not exactly sure what I’ve read. This was an odd duck. An odd flaming duck. And I’m either too stupid to understand it (totally plausible) or this story was as muddied as a jungle stroll after a thunderstorm.

28 year old Aiden Kinsley is mysterious and brooding and handsome. The kind of guy who gets what he wants just by flashing a grin. He’s Robert Pattinson without sunblock. Appropriately, he works in the art world as a dealer, getting museums to sign half million dollar checks for white canvases with red dots in the middle.

But Aiden has a big secret. He moonlights as an arsonist. Oh yeah. Aiden just looooves setting things on fire. We actually see him dump buckets of gasoline all over a local car dealership at 3 in the morning and light that shit up. Boom. Boom! BOOM! Every car on the lot blows up. Hell yeah. I know when I have a choice between the latest episode of Entourage and setting 7 million dollars worth of property on fire, I pick fire every time.

When arson inspector Klein Stephens shows up the next day, he discloses to us the path of destruction this mysterious arsonist has left over the past few years, setting dozens of fires all over the city. But this one is different. That’s because they find a barbecued dead female body in the back. Now Aiden’s no longer just an arsonist. He’s a murderer.

Aiden’s pretty torn up about this, but he’s also got to watch his back. So he takes the initiative, finds out where Klein hangs out in his off-time, and shows up there, using his charm to build a false friendship. His hope is to keep abreast of any developments in the case so he can stave them off.

Also, for reasons which still escape me, Aiden shows up at Klein’s teenage son’s school to befriend him as well. Luckily for the story, his son happens to be a painter, allowing Aiden to befriend him in a legitimate way – key since Klein finds out Aiden is hanging out with his son behind his back. Now if some mysterious dude “accidentally” ran into me at the park and then later I found out he also “accidentally” met and started hanging out with my son, I would probably think something was up. Especially if I was a policeman. Not Klein. He just shrugs it off and rolls with it, inviting Aiden into the family.

But the real meat of the story occurs when Aiden meets Maya, a singer (actress?) at a bar he frequents. She’s beautiful, sensual, and talented, and unlike most of the women Aiden meets, she doesn’t throw herself at him. That challenge forces Aiden to open up in ways he never has before, and before he knows it, he’s actually in love with the chick. But that love will be tested in ways he can never imagine, especially once the shocking ending to The Arsonist’s Love Story reveals itself.

The Arsonist’s Love story has two major problems. The first is that the story is REALLY murky. I was constantly reading pages twice to try and figure out what was going on. This is likely a consequence of the surprise ending. When you have a big twist, you’re forced to fudge a lot of the earlier details to make sure you don’t give that twist away. If you cheat too much though – if you’re forced to hide too many of the details – the story loses its shape. And I’m afraid that’s what happened here.

For example, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Aiden became friends with Klein’s son. I guess it was an attempt to infuse some conflict into the story. But I mean come on. If you’re the dad, there’s no way you’re not picking up on that coincidence.

Then there was the art dealer job. The art stuff had nothing to do with the story other than giving Aiden a plausible reason for hanging out with Klein’s son. But really, he could have been anything. A computer technician. A carpenter. A pilot. And it wouldn’t have affected the plot at all.

Then there were little things. For example, after the female body is discovered in the early arson attack, we see Aiden combing through the obituaries. In them, he finds Klein’s dead wife. Now I don’t know about you, but if a guy accidentally kills someone in an arson fire, then is looking through the obituaries, then finds a woman – isn’t it natural to assume that the woman he finds is the one he killed in the fire? Of course. But later we find out that Klein’s wife died awhile back, and he was just looking through the obituaries to get some dirt on Klein. This lack of clarity permeated through the screenplay.

The second major problem is the ending. I’m not going to spoil it here but let’s just say that if it made sense, I didn’t understand it. Oftentimes, writers feel that if they give you a general sense of what happened, that that’s enough. You can fill in the rest yourself. But if everything is unclear, how are we supposed to fill the rest in? For example, why did the location of the dead body change from the opening of the screenplay to the end of the screenplay? These details are never explained. And we’re just asked to go with it.

There’s some good to be found here. For example, just before the climax, we were really starting to get into some interesting stuff with Aiden and Maya. Their relationship was finally hitting its stride. The manufactured pasts were stripped away and it was more about two people who have trouble connecting with others finally finding a connection.

I also feel that women are going to enjoy this more than men. I can’t really say why but I feel like Lovejoy is writing to a female demographic here less concerned about the story logic and more focused on the emotion. It’s steamy. It’s passionate. It’s wrapped in this umbrella of heat and fire. In the same way I don’t understand Twilight’s appeal, I don’t think I’m fully able to appreciate Arsonist’s appeal.

But all I have to go on is my own opinion. And there was just too much murkiness here. The story was unclear. The characters were unclear. I could never get a feel for what was going on.

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

What I learned: I would stay away from peanut gallery admirations of your own dialogue. I see this occasionally, and it always pulls me out of the story. Here’s an example. When Aiden and Maya first meet, he tells her that she’s into him, even though she’s pretending not to be. She asks him how he knows that. “Because this city is full of people who bore you,” he says, “and you think I might be interesting.” The next line of description reads: “Whoa. Not the ordinary pick up line.” I don’t think this was Lovejoy’s intent, but this line basically sounds like a writer patting herself on the back. Let your dialogue speak for itself. You don’t have to give yourself a public hug when you come up with something good.

Genre: Indie Comedy
Premise: Two neighboring suburban families are thrown into disarray when the father of one family starts dating the daughter of another.
About: This was a huge script a few years ago as it finished Numero Two-o on the 2008 Black List, behind The Beaver and ahead of Butter and Big Hole. Co-writer Jay Reiss may sound familiar as he has another script on my Top 25 list, Lonny The Great. The Oranges has already completed production and dove straight into the chewy center of the indie film scene for its cast. We’ve got Hugh Laurie (playing David), Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, and Allison Janney. We also have Orange County native (so to speak) Adam Brody, and up and comer Leighton Meester playing the lead character, Nina.
Writers: Ian Helfer and Jay Reiss
Details: 116 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I’m a big Reiss fan. The Oranges was actually on my Top 25 List like a gazillion years ago when Scriptshadow started in the 1960s. Back then it was all about the drugs and the women man. Those were the days. Groovy. But I’ve matured a lot since then. 1500 scripts later, in addition to no longer lacing my French toast with PCP, The Oranges no longer resides inside the coveted Top 25. Somehow it slipped out. And I was curious why. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten the script. But there’s something that never sat right with me about it. I wanted to know what that was.

Say hello to another middle class suburb in Joisey, probably a stone’s throw away from where the Manzos and the Gorgas reside. This is where we meet two happy families. Or I should say two families who PRETEND to be happy. There’s married couple David and Paige. He’s overworked and she’s really gung-ho about Christmas. They have an outcast early 20s daughter named Vanessa. Then there’s Carol and Terry. Carol’s a therapist and Terry’s a gadget hound. He would sleep at Best Buy if it was legal. They have a daughter, Nina, who Vanessa used to be besties with, but not anymore. Turns out Nina left Vanessa for a bigger and better crowd. And Vanessa’s never forgotten it.

Vanessa also happens to be the narrator for our film (even though she’s probably the least important character of the bunch). She lets us know that David and Paige have ZERO chemistry with each other. Which, you know, is just like 70% of the marriages in America, so not a big deal. Except that Nina, Vanessa’s old friend, has just found out that the guy she’s marrying is cheating on her. So she runs back home to Carol and Terry, who seem to be swimming in I-told-you-sos, and starts having some inappropriately long conversations with David.

Because David isn’t exactly gung-ho about Little Miss Nutcracker (aka, his wife), he begins to entertain these flirty advances. And those advances quickly escalate to motel visits. Nothing like an aging TV set and a lack of non-bed furniture to take a relationship to the next level.

The thing is, they’re really bad at hiding their affair, so they just decide – fuck it – let’s tell everyone. Awwww. It’s so great when people are honest right? Well, unless the person you’re honest to is Paige, who was already a few twirls short of a candy cane. Paige goes on a ram-paige, moving out of the house and letting her Christmas spirit reach a whole new level. You’ll have to read to find out what that means.

Truth be told, the rest of the families aren’t really into it either. There is zero chance in hell (aka New Jersey) that David and Nina will ever be able to have a normal relationship together. So the fact that they’re selfishly trying is just leaving a lot of pissed off sons, daughters, and spouses. Even the community itself starts crumbling around them. They know they should end it. But do they?

Here’s the dealio. I liked The Oranges in a “I appreciate good screenwriting” sort of way. But I kept going back to that first read, where something didn’t sit right with me. Finally, after reading it this second time, I think I’ve located the problem. The Oranges basks in its hopelessness. Everybody here is mean and rotten and heartless and angry and selfish and cruel. Even in the central love story, between Nina and David, I didn’t feel that they liked each other so much as they wanted to use one another to piss everybody else off. Contrast that with a similar movie like American Beauty, where the central relationship, between Jane and Ricky, is so genuine.

As cheesy as it sounds, I like my movies to offer a sense of hope when they’re all said and done. I believe that’s why a lot of people go to the movies. To reaffirm their hope in the world. It’s why happy endings are so popular. If the message is just, “Life sucks, then you die,” – I’m sorry, but I can throw on CNN if I want that. And I’m not saying that’s exactly what The Oranges preaches. Vanessa and Nina do sorta rekindle their friendship at the end. But there’s no doubt that the pervasive message here is that we’re all fucked up selfish creatures doing fucked up selfish things and that there’s a good chance that’s never going to change.

But hold up. I love me a tall glass of OJ in the morning, and there are plenty of freshly squeezed bits here to savor. I liked the chances the screenplay took. For example, in every single one of these movies, the cheating couple keeps their affair secret until they’re caught. I liked that, around the midpoint, David and Nina sit everyone down and say, “Hey everybody. We’re together.” I wasn’t expecting that.  And it gave the rest of the story a whole new flavor.

Also, Paige’s obsession with Christmas and her unique Christmas-inspired breakdown is pretty damn funny. I thought it was a great choice to frame the story between Thanksgiving and Christmas in general, as it’s traditionally the most stressful month of the year. Talk about upping the conflict. I liked Ethan, Nina’s old boyfriend, popping back into the mix near the end to add even more craziness to the ordeal. Reiss and Helfer really nailed the chaotic element here. Everything that could go wrong, does go wrong, and we watch these characters hopelessly unravel as it does.

But I still can’t shake the feeling this screenplay left me with afterwards. I didn’t want to do anything for a couple of days. I just sat there and thought, “Are people really like this? Is this what America has become?” I’ll be honest. It bothered me. But the fact that the writer had me thinking at all is a good thing, as it means the story affected me in some way. And the writing itself, while not exactly inspiring “The Secret” like positivity, is really good. This was an interesting one. What did you guys think?

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

What I learned: I’m still not liking the message here. People are mean. Don’t trust anyone. When the going gets tough, give up. Here’s a good lesson to remember. One of the character types that really resonates with audiences, is the character who keeps trying despite the world repeatedly pushing them down. We don’t like quitters. We’re attracted to people who persevere. To see someone fall into so many pitfalls, yet keep going, is the essence of hope. It makes us feel good. If they can do it, we say, then maybe we can do it too. That’s why I liked Lonny The Great. And if you look through your list of favorite movies, I’m going to bet that 80-90% of the main characters fall into that category as well. Anyway, I just didn’t like how the characters here seemed to be continuously throwing in the towel. It bummed me out.

Hey guys.  So I’ve sent out e-mails to all the longtime Scriptshadow readers, asking for their Top 10 favorite unmade screenplays.  If I didn’t e-mail you and you want to contribute to the list, go ahead and list your top 10 right here in the comments section.  The rules are, if it hasn’t been released yet, it’s eligible.  It can be in pre-production.  It can be in post-production.  Just hasn’t been released.  Also, it’s not limited to screenplays I’ve reviewed on the site.  It can be a screenplay you read 30 years ago.  Have at it and have fun. :)

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: A geneticist who specializes in cloning risks his reputation and life’s work to save his sick daughter.
About: The Keeper Project is a 2009 PAGE Award Bronze Prize winner in the Sci-Fi category. That makes it Top 31 out of 6300 entries. — 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: Michael Coleman Jr.
Details: 108 pages

You guys wanted Amateur Friday scripts with a little more luster behind them? Well I aim to please, senorita. But not without reservations. Someone asked me the other day what my favorite genre is, and I told them sci-fi. And then it hit me. Outside of Passengers, I don’t have a single sci-fi script in my Top 25. Wow, what’s up with that sci-fi writers? I dug deeper. There have been like zero good sci-fi specs in the market this year. Black Lister What Happened To Monday was the last sci-fi script that was actually ambitious AND had potential. But otherwise we’re getting a lot of “I Am Number 4” clones. Yuck. So let’s start bringing some game sci-fi writers. Send me your damn good sci-fi screenplays for Amateur Friday. In the meantime, let’s review this one.

Baltimore, 2027. Dr. Abraham Keeper, 53, treats his sickly 11 year old daughter, Abigail, at their home. Despite her fast-approaching expiration date, Abigail seems to be in high spirits. Maybe that’s because her father is a fantastic doctor, and he’s been doing cloning and stem cell research around the clock to save her life.

Keeper’s lab seems to be a hotbed for activity. The cloning councils and the government aren’t exactly in support of what he’s doing, and it seems like there’s a new angry group outside every day protesting his practice. He even has junkies hanging around for who knows what reason. One of those junkies, 25 year old Erica Blue, has a unique connection with Keeper. We know this because whenever she passes by, she gives him a really intense look.

Later on, when Erica takes off her shirt at home, we see that she has a SECOND MOUTH on the back of her neck. What the! That can’t be good. This country already has an obesity problem. Imagine if you had a second mouth. We don’t have to be math majors to figure out that one mouth plus another mouth means Erica used to be a patient of Keeper’s. Maybe even a daughter of sorts. But because of her deformity, he cast her away like a cheap tube of toothpaste.

Back at the labs, Keeper takes on a new assistant and the two push harder than ever to iron out the cloning process in time to save his poor Abigail. But with the boards and the government and the protestors squeezing him from every side, time is running out to do the saving.

The Keeper Project is thinking man’s sci-fi with a healthy dose of character development. This is definitely stronger than most of the sci-fi amateur scripts I read. And I can see why it finished high at Page. It’s actually similar in many ways to another high profile script that came out of Page, Maggie, which if you remember I reviewed awhile back.

However, there’s something missing here for me. Michael knows how to create a hook. He knows how to explore characters. He knows how to create tension and suspense and conflict. But the script lacked that elusive “wow factor.” That thing that makes a reader readjust the way he’s sitting so he can lean in a little closer and ingest that story even faster.

What is the “wow factor” exactly? Is Simon Cowell involved? The wow factor is a lot like love. You don’t know it until you feel it. But if I were referencing other sci-fi films, the wow factor would be the kung-fu in The Matrix. It would be the unexpected twists and turns in Moon. It would be the documentary angle that makes everything so real in District 9. It would be the tripiness of the dreams within dreams of Inception. It would be the “what the fuck is going on right now” feeling you got when you first read Source Code. It’s an edge. Something that separates your script from every other script out there. And while The Keeper Project is always strong, I kept waiting for it burst out of its shell and become great. But the lack of a wow factor kept it from happening.

The problem? I think it’s too safe of a story. I preach following the rules a lot here on this site. And I stick by that. You need to know the rules. But you also need to step off the beaten path every once in awhile and take chances. Break some of those damn rules. Because those deviations are what’s going to make your movie unlike any other movie out there. It’s your own personal edge. I was watching Stand By Me the other day, and in that movie, somewhere around the midpoint, the entire movie stops so that the main character can tell a story about a pie-eating contest where the hero barfs on everybody. It’s ten minutes long. It has no effect on the plot. There is no information in it that sets up later story developments. It’s just a random story. No screenwriting book would allow you to make that choice. But it worked. Because it wasn’t safe. Because we’re not expecting it.

The point I’m getting at is that The Keeper Project played things too safe. Human cloning has been explored a lot in sci-fi over the last 20 years. The “Clone Wars” were even mentioned in the original Star Wars, back in 1977. So if you’re going to write a story about human cloning, you gotta push the envelope. You gotta give us something new. Having a second mouth on the back of your character’s neck is a little freaky, sure. But I think audiences want more.

That’s not to say I didn’t appreciate the story. Like I said, there’s some actual character development here. That’s rare in sci-fi. I love that Michael actually dug into these characters. Also, while I wouldn’t call the surprise ending mind-blowing – it was telegraphed throughout most of the second act – it was pretty darn good.

I just think sci-fi comes with certain expectations. Audiences want to connect with interesting characters, sure. But they also want to leave that theater talking about that cool scene or that moment that wowed them. The Keeper Project too often pulls its punches.

There were some smaller issues I had as well. I didn’t understand why Erica Blue didn’t go to the press or the police once she was discarded by Keeper. Wouldn’t that have been the logical thing to do? Expose him? I thought Veronica (the assistant) was a messy character. Once she realized that this guy was cloning human beings, I wasn’t buying that she just went with it. Maybe if she’d been with him for ten years. But she just started like a week ago. I would’ve been like “fuck this,” and walked out. And finally, the one setback for using the stem cells from the clones to save his daughter seemed to be the physical deformities. Did that mean he wasn’t saving his daughter because she might have a little mouth on the back of her neck? Wouldn’t a 4 hour operation with Dr. Hollywood take care of that? I just couldn’t figure out why a tiny deformity took precedence over a daughter’s life.

Now despite these issues, this was way better than most of the scripts I review on Amateur Friday. I want to make that clear. I’m just being hard on it because I demand so much from my sci-fi. But I liked this better than Maggie, which won the Page competition. I’d just like to see a draft with a little more teeth, no pun intended. Anyway, read it and decide for yourself.

Script link: The Keeper Project

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

What I learned: Most of the time, you’ll want to use as few words as possible to describe a room or a space. Therefore you might describe a barbershop like this: “This barbershop is straight out of the 50s. Even the TV is black and white.” You want to convey the essence of the space in as few words as possible then move on. But the one time you do want to get into more detail, is when you describe your main character’s home. Why? Because a home tells us A LOT about a character. Is the place dirty? Clean? Modern? Old-fashioned? Filled with art? Bare? Big? Small? I think it’s okay to take a couple of paragraphs to describe a home. Just make sure that what you’re describing tells us about the character who lives there.

F. Scott Frazier broke onto the scene over a year ago with his eerie spec script “The Numbers Station,” which he sold to Content Film. The script is about a man tasked with guarding a strange top secret remote station that ends up getting breached, putting his life in jeopardy. The film is going into production within the next couple of months. He followed that up with a more recent sale, “Line of Sight,” to Warner Brothers, about Delta Force Three-One (considered to be the most dangerous men in the world), who are brought in to quash an anti-government uprising on American soil. He also has a mystery third sale (as I found out during this interview) that has not been announced yet. Besides being a great writer who’s tearing it up on the spec market, Scott’s a genuinely down to earth and cool guy. I loved hearing what he had to say about the craft.

SS: When did you begin your pursuit of this craft? What were your first impressions of it? Did you find it harder than you initially thought it would be, or easier?

SF: I’ve written my entire life. Short stories, plays, books, screenplays, you name it. Nothing that you would ever call good. Nothing that you would ever call finished.

Right out of high school I got a job working at a video game company where, after nine years, I ended up as a producer. I started making a pretty good career for myself. But my dream had always been to write, and in 2009 I quit my job to follow my dreams.

I knew that it was going to be hard. When I knuckled down to try and finish a script, I realized what an immense undertaking it really was. It was definitely harder than I thought it would be but there was great enjoyment in the difficulty. There was immense pleasure to be found, and there was something to be found in the overcoming of obstacles and arriving at the solutions to all the problems.

People told me it was harder to break in than it was to write a really great script. And while I appreciate the opinion on the matter, I decided early on not to listen to it. I was going to break in. And the only obstacle I had to overcome was writing a really great script. (At least in my mind.)

However, I also knew I needed to have a finished product as soon as possible, at the highest level of quality as possible. And so I set about writing as close to eight hours a day, seven days a week as I could manage. When you have little money and live 35 miles outside of LA it’s really quite amazing how much you can get done.

SS: At what point did you believe you were capable of doing this? Was it a certain script? Was it a particular mental breakthrough?

SF: After finishing the rough draft of my second script, I put it away in a drawer and didn’t look at it for four months, truly believing it was awful and not worth the space on my hard drive. My creative process has always included a cooling off period. I always like to get time away from anything I’ve written. However, when I went back to that second script, telling myself how awful it was, it turned out it wasn’t as bad as I had remembered it being. In fact it was really quite good. It still needed a lot of rewriting, but I had a feeling that it was something special.

This was the script that eventually got me representation and I’ve since sold it. It is ramping up for production at the end of the year.

Reading the rough draft of that script was a defining moment. It didn’t suck as much as I remembered it sucking. I knew that I was getting better. It gave me the confidence to push on. It gave me the confidence to rewrite it. It gave me the confidence to query it. And it gave me the confidence to not quit and go back to my day job.

SS: And how long was it before you sold The Numbers Station? How many scripts did you have under your belt before that happened?

SF: I got representation in January of 2010 (Chris Fenton and Chris Cowles at H2F, Mike Esola at WME) and we sold Numbers Station in April of 2010. Up to that point, since quitting my job, I had two complete screenplays as well as four others that were in various stages of completion. Although that doesn’t include the literally thousands upon thousands of pages I had written over the first 27 years of my life that will never be completed and will likely never see the light of day. (Because they’re awful.)

SS: Did The Numbers Station sell with or without Ethan Hawke attached? And because it seems like you need a name actor to get your script sold these days, can you explain how that process works? I mean, how does one even go about getting Ethan Hawke attached to their screenplay?

SF: From my perspective, it all happened simultaneously, where one day I was told that we were making a deal on the script, and then a few days later that Ethan was attached. I’m sure there was a lot of wheeling and dealing in the background that I was just not privy to. And knowing how the industry works now, I have to assume that Ethan was instrumental in getting the project off the ground.

The producers, Sean and Bryan Furst, have done an immense amount of work in moving the script from the recesses of my imagination to a greenlit movie. Set to start production in less than six weeks.

I couldn’t even begin to tell you how Ethan Hawke was attached to the script outside of the general knowledge that he had worked with the Furst brothers in the past and they had an ongoing professional relationship. As far as the process is concerned, I couldn’t say one way or the other, all I can tell you is that one morning I was driving down the 405 when I got the phone call that Ethan Hawke, a real honest-to-goodness movie star, wanted to be in my movie. How or why it happened, I’ll probably never know.

SS: I’m assuming The Numbers Station is what led you to your agent. Since getting an agent is such an important step in a writer’s success, can you explain how that all came about?

SF: H2F came first. I was introduced to Chris Fenton by his next-door neighbor. I went to high school with her son. And although neither my friend nor his mom worked in Hollywood, having lived in LA my whole life was the catalyst to getting representation. So if I’m going to throw my hat into the ring, in regards to a lot of online discussions right now between burgeoning screenwriters, I would greatly urge writers to take the chance and move to LA, if at all possible. It’s where the business is, it’s where the deals are made, and if you’re going to build a career early on, it’s where you’ll eventually have to be anyway.

After being introduced to Chris over email, he sent me the scariest letter of my life. It contained 5 words: “Send me your best script.” And for an entire weekend, I read my two completed scripts over and over and over, trying to decide which one was better. I ended up choosing my second script over Numbers Station because it was a little bit bigger and a little bit more of a high concept. I guess I chose correctly, because Chris called me in for a meeting within a week.

I was introduced to Mike Esola through Chris, again based off of my second script. When Mike and I met for the first time, we had a great rapport with one another and I could tell after fifteen minutes he was just as eager and excited to be a part of this business as I was.

SS: You’ve sold (I believe) two scripts now. Did either of those result in one of those notorious back and forths between writer and agent where your agent keeps coming back to you with a higher and higher number? If so, what’s that like? Is it the most nerve-wracking experience in the world? I mean, how do you not just take the first amount they offer you?

SF: So far I’ve actually sold three scripts, and every time the experience has been different. I trust my reps to handle the business side of the equation. I try not to get too involved in the moment-to-moment back and forth of negotiation. When they tell me, “This is a good deal,” I take it.

Whenever we’re getting close to selling something, I’m always nervous. I try to do anything and everything I can to keep my mind off of it. I also find a little time to celebrate after it’s done. But then something in the back of my head reminds me that in this business you’re only as good as your last success and I invariably end up back in front of my computer, starting a new script.

SS: In your opinion, what is it you know now that makes you a better writer than three years ago, when you were eating ramen noodles and living on people’s doorsteps?

SF: Thanks to my selfless wife, I was lucky enough to never have lived on anyone’s doorstep or eat ramen.

I think the thing that has become the most clear to me over the last 18 months, is that when building a career in this industry, selling your first script is the easy part. And that’s a really, really tough lesson to learn.

And although it took me a bit of time to realize, I eventually learned to not be too beholden to rules and trends. To write a script the way I want to write it, the way I want to see it appear on the screen, the way I want it to feel and sound. The one thing everybody in this town is looking for in a writer is that unique voice. That alchemical combination of choice, structure, narrative, plot, characters, and world view. You’re the only person equipped to deliver a screenplay in your voice. And while I think copying and learning from those who came before us is one of the key steps to success, you have to eventually break away and deliver a screenplay that is 100%, unequivocally yours.

And so it really comes down to this: write the movie you want to see at the theater this Friday night. Make it yours and yours alone and people will stand up and take notice.

(That’s not to say you can write 180 minute musical about a Russian oligarch in the 18th century who falls in love with his pet mule and expect to sell it to a major movie studio for mid-six figures.)

SS: Do you outline your screenplays or just go where the story takes you? If you do outline, how big a part of your process is it? Do you write just a few pages? A lot of pages? Take us through it.

SF: One of the things I’ve had to overcome is that I get bored very easily. This has helped because it makes it so that it forces me to finish something before I want to move on to the next project. But it’s also made my writing process a bit more fluid. While I always outline, from project to project my outlines will change in both density and format. Right now I’m addicted to note cards. In the past I’ve written 30-page treatments, as well as bullet-point lists. The one constant between all these various types of outlines is that I know my major beats, I know who my characters are, and I know what I want them to go through. Depending on the genre, I’ll also want to know what my big set pieces are, where they go, and how they interact with both the plot and the character arcs.

The things I usually never know before going into a rough draft are things like: theme, length, dialogue, and moment-to-moment scene structure. I like to discover all of this along the way. I’m never beholden to the outline or any previously held ideas or notions about the story or characters while working on the rough draft or any subsequent major rewrites. I find a lot of times that I’ll surprise myself with fun twists that I didn’t see coming when I keep myself open to the creative process.

And although sometimes it’s absolutely frightening, I have to dare myself to suck in order to finish what I started.

SS: Let’s talk about The Numbers Station for a second. It’s such a cool idea. How did you come up with it?

SF: I heard a story on NPR about this couple that goes out into the desert to try to find short-wave radio broadcasts. I was immediately fascinated by the topic. And after doing some research and realizing how deep this rabbit hole went, I knew I wanted to write a movie around these theories. Of course my mind immediately goes to spies and action and being the first script I ever attempted to finish, I wanted it to be a little bit smaller than normal with fewer characters and fewer moving parts to juggle.

SS: I recently had an idea for a thriller where many of the characters were lying about who they were. I backed off of it because I realized it would be too difficult to create real characters that the audience could identify with if everyone was a chameleon. You sort of run into the same problem with The Numbers Station. Because of the nature of the story, the characters can’t really talk about who they are. How did you navigate this? Was it something you thought about? Were you worried that the audience wouldn’t be able to relate with them? Or did you simply shift the emphasis over to the plot?

SF: In all honesty, I never really thought about it that much. I think within the spy genre, there’s always an expectation of duplicity, and again going back to the smaller cast of characters, I think it’s much easier for one or two people to be lying to each other than six or seven or even ten.

I’m reminded of the movie WICKER PARK where one character’s lie sets in motion the entire plot. And I think that if you can somehow find a way to balance the duplicity against the dramatic irony of the setup, you can find a way to make the characters relatable without sacrificing the narrative conflict.

Lying, half-truths, misdirection are such a staple of the thriller genre, that I think audiences have been groomed to expect and accept that at some point in this experience they will be lied to.

SS: My favorite part about The Numbers Station was the mood you created. It just had this dark eerie vibe, sort of like the way I felt watching “Let The Right One In,” even though they’re two totally different stories. Is mood something you think about? If so, how do you approach it?

SF: Both mood and tone are very important to me regardless of the genre or script. When I set out on a new project I want the script to reflect the movie I see in my head. If there’s a big surprise, I want to write it in such a way that the words jump off the page, with capital letters or underlines. If there’s a little bit of tension, I want the reader to hold their breath with long run on sentences and a sprinkling of ellipsis…

I want the pace of the script to mirror the pace of the movie.

To me, a lot of this comes from word choice. I wanted The Numbers Station to feel impersonal and closed off. So I used words like “sterile” and “claustrophobic” to describe the locations. I knew that audio was going to be a big thematic undercurrent of this movie, and so describing sound and the way the sound interacted with the movie was just as important as the visuals. I didn’t really want the action to be glorious or stylized, so I purposefully wrote it in a very matter-of-fact style. This happens. And then this happens. Again going back to the impersonality of the story.

I don’t know if I accomplished it in every scene. But it was definitely a conscious decision to write the scenes and the movie as a whole in styles and structures that matched the emotions at any given moment.

SS: In your eyes, what was the key component to making The Numbers Station work? What was that “ah-ha” moment when you knew you had a screenplay?

SF: I don’t know if there was ever a moment when I knew I had a screenplay other than when I was through with it and had no more changes to make. It definitely took a couple drafts to feel like I had a movie on my hands. Even on scripts that I’ve sold, I don’t know if I ever have that moment outside of writing “the end,” and sending the PDF to my reps.

SS: It seems like the way most specs sell these days, is they’re written under the guidance of a producer, who understands the market and therefore knows who he’s going to try and sell it to once the script’s ready. I get the sense that that’s how you sold your second spec, Line of Sight. Can you take us into how this process works?

SF: I had been introduced to Alex Heineman over at Silver Pictures when Numbers Station had gone out as a spec. About six months later, he came to me with an idea that I found incredibly intriguing and after breaking the story together, over a few conversations, I wrote my first draft. I turned it in to Alex in January. We did a couple of rewrites together, and then it was sent to Warner Brothers in March. Alex seemed to know exactly what it was they wanted because they bought it less than two weeks later.

Producers definitely know what buyers want, and if you’re able to get in there with the right idea at the right time, you can have a winner.

I personally tend to write multiple scripts at once, and my own rule for writing specs is to write one with a producer and one without. Gives me the best of both worlds and is also key in building relationships in the industry.
 
SS: You have a lot of young writers out there hanging on your every word. What advice would you give them to find success in this pursuit?

SF: Write every day. Finish things. Write every day. Don’t ever listen to anyone who tells you how hard it is. Write every day. Write what you like, not what you know. Write every day. Avoid the trap that is cynicism, it will cripple and rot every creative bone in your body. Write every day. Know that with a metric ton of hard work and a limitless supply of perseverance, success is out there waiting for you. And write every day.

And also, write every day.