Pulled this quote off of CNN’s piece on him.  It’s advice we should all be following:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”

Genre: Thriller/Sci-Fi/Action
Premise: A genetically modified super-soldier who escaped from a secret project years ago, must find and save the daughter he’s never known before the organization that created him gets to her first.
About: This script sold earlier this year. The writers do not have a produced credit yet but have worked on the most recent Zorro project in development, Zorro Reborn. Alex Proyas has moved in to produce the film. Shane Abbess, who helmed 2007’s Gabriel, will direct.
Writers: Lee Shipman & Brian McGreevy
Details: 108 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).

There’s a very specific reason I chose this script. Unfortunately, I can’t get into it right now. I’ll just say this. A couple of years ago, I reviewed a script that I thought sucked. I’m asked all the time if I’ve ever read a terrible script that became a good movie, and the answer is always no. Even if the script’s going to be rewritten, you can tell a dud when you see it. But this is one of the few times where a bad script turned into an amazing movie. You’ll be able to hear more about that in my end of the year Top 10 list. But for the time being, you guys will have to guess which film I’m talking about (it shouldn’t be that hard once you read the review).

Future Perfect starts off 44 years in the future when private military companies have taken over the bulk of fighting in the world. Several of these companies are battling it out to win a contract with the United States, one of the last nations to adopt a privatized military. The dark horse contender, Sparta, is doing everything in its power to become the leading candidate.

Paul Hartley, 39, is your basic Joe Sixpack. If by basic you mean superhuman. You see, Paul works as a mall cop, but he’s got all sorts of secrets going on. One of them is that his hand trembles a lot. The second is that he escaped from a super-secret organization. But I’m getting ahead of myself. While at his job, Paul’s attacked by a group of motorcyclists, who he spins and flips and kicks and sautés into a bloody pulp.

Unfortunately, they eventually catch Paul, and he’s brought back to a man named James Blaylock, who may or may not be related to Professor X, as he too, is in a wheelchair. James is a high ranking official for Sparta and he’s been trying to find Paul ever since he escaped from the facility 15 years ago. The reason he needed to find him was to ask him where Maggie was. It turns out Maggie and one of the other Sparta employees, Sean, were part of the same project as Paul (adding superhuman qualities to human beings to make them ultimate soldiers), and Sean kind of fell in love with her before she and Paul escaped.

Stay with me. I’m getting to the point. Sean and Maggie had a child together who’s now 15 years old (or maybe it was Paul and Maggie – still a little confused on this aspect). Her name is Anna. Since Anna is the only child in the world who has been born to two genetically modified superhumans, she’s basically the perfect human being, kind of like Milla Jovovich in The Fifth Element. So she’s like, the sixth element.

Paul, who we thought was our hero, gets killed.  So now Sean has to go to Maggie to warn her what’s going on (or try to capture her – not sure which).  He ends up revealing himself to Anna as the father she never knew, and when Maggie gets pasted by the bad guys, Sean and Anna must escape and find refuge together, not an easy task since Anna holds a lot of animosity towards her deadbeat dad.

So basically we have an on the run film with a lot of kicks and punches and superhuman moves. These kinds of things always play better on screen than on the page because I don’t care how well you describe somebody kicking somebody else’s ass, it’s not going to be the same as if I’m seeing it. But even as I tried to imagine the best potential onscreen version of this, I couldn’t get past the fact that it all felt so familiar.

The writers have the right idea though. One of the things I preach is that when you put two characters together who have to achieve a common goal, it’s best to make them as resistant to one another as possible (or at least give them some sort of issues to work through), because then you’re going to have conflict, and conflict leads to drama. We definitely have that here. Anna’s frustration with her father makes every moment between them tense. And when you add the outside conflict of being chased, there’s never a dull moment.

I think the reason it didn’t work for me though was twofold. Like I said, everything feels so familiar! It’s kind of like going on a roller coaster for the 20th time. It’s sort of fun but you know every turn before it’s coming. Whenever you jump into a well-traveled genre, it’s your job to look for any way to make it different. Because if you make too many decisions that are the same decisions that everybody else before you made, your movie feels like a generic ripoff of a bunch of more memorable movies.

I think that’s something we have to remember. Most stories are familiar because they follow the same basic construct of a beginning, a middle, and an end (first, second and third acts). For that reason, there’s only so many ways you can make a story fresh. But it’s the choices you make within that construct and the details you populate that world with, that separate your story from everything else. I’m trying to think of one unique choice that was used here, and I can’t. We have the on the run stuff. That’s obviously been done before. We have the young superhuman girl. That’s been done recently (I think I’m revealing a little too much about my secret movie here). We have the superhuman fighting, which was obviously popularized in The Matrix.

Then you had the characters. I liked that there was conflict between them, but I didn’t feel any conflict within them. I didn’t get the sense there was any depth there. I suppose Sean had this complicated past with Maggie, which did add some context to the relationship with his daughter. But again, it all felt so familiar, like we were hitting the beats all the screenwriting books tell us to. As a result, the characters didn’t feel like real people. They felt like screenplay creations.

I don’t know. The audience for films like this – I’m not sure they care as much about story and characters as I do. Maybe they just like seeing a bunch of flying kicks and punches. But I crave writers who look for ways to make their scripts stand out, who are willing to try different things here and there so that their movie is their own, and not just an amalgam of all of their favorite films from the past. I didn’t see that here.

The script has some weird developments as well. For example, it seems like everybody here is related to each other. I thought they went a little bit overboard with that. When things start to feel contrived, the audience is taken out of the story.

Then there was the changing of the main character.  Paul is the main character.  Then Sean is the main character.  What the hell is going on here?

And I was also wondering what the point of the story was. After all that running, I realized that I had no idea what the goal was. Was it to just keep running? I think it may have been to escape, but then go back and kill the bad guys, but that goal wasn’t made clear so I was confused about the characters’ motivations half the time. Once the reader is confused about your characters’ motivations, your script is in a heap of trouble.

So why did it sell? I don’t know. It might be a direct to video action film, where the criteria for originality isn’t as high. A producer who knew another company wanted a film like this could’ve developed the story with the writers. And since these movies can be sold overseas easily, they knew if they could shoot it for a price, they could make an easy profit. My guess is it’s something like that.

I fully admit that I’m not the audience for this kind of movie so reviewing it is a little like dragging a kid to the Opera. Chances are, he’s gonna be bored out of his mind. But, I felt the same way going into that mysterious script I keep alluding to, and that movie turned out to be awesome. Who knows? Maybe they’ll do the same here. But in script form, there was nothing original enough here for me to get excited about.

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

What I learned: Just ask yourself a simple question after you’ve come up with your movie idea: What’s different about my story? It’s a scary question to ask, but an important one. If you can’t find a single thing that makes your story different/fresh, chances are you’re in trouble. Because those are the things that the person who reads your script is going to be selling to the next person they try to get to read it. “You gotta read this script. It’s kind of like James Bond, but the main character has amnesia and it takes itself way more seriously.” (The Bourne Identity). Nobody’s ever excitedly said to somebody else – “You gotta read this script. It’s just like everything else out there!”

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A couple of lifelong friends, now in their 40s, are shocked to find out that their kids have been secretly dating and are now getting married. Hilarity ensues when the parents try to hijack the wedding.
About: This will be screenwriter Jeremy Garelick’s first directing effort. He’s the writer of The Break-Up and has a ton of projects working their way through development around town. Garelick has been trying to make it into the directing chair for a while but no one would give him a chance. It wasn’t until he spent 25,000 dollars of his own money to shoot a 6 minute scene from one of his scripts (titled “The Pretender”) that studios started taking him seriously. Yay for creating your own opportunities.  The Insane Laws will star Vince Vaughn and Jason Bateman.
Writer: Jeremy Garelick
Details: 107 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).

I thought The Breakup was a solid entry into the romantic comedy genre. What I liked about it was that it never did what a typical romantic comedy would do. Every choice, in fact, seemed to be the opposite of what you’d get in a standard rom com. It was also one of the last times I remember Vince Vaughn playing a real character. Vaughn has been a victim of his own success, playing variations of giant goofballs who spend more time riffing on things like different types of female nipples than they do actually inhabiting the story they’re in.

Since Garelick was the writer of that film, I figured this script had a shot at being decent. Maybe instead of another series of standup comedy bits, Vaughn would actually play a real person.

Jeff Tucker and Monte Mays have been best friends forever. Monte is the crazy guy who will call you up in the middle of the night pretending to be a mob boss who’s putting a hit out on you. Jeff is the more conservative one – the smart practical guy with the smart practical job who’s so caught up in his own life that he actually falls for calls like that.

The two are now in their 40s and both doing well in their own respective ways. Monte owns a flourishing retro videogame company and Jeff ended up marrying a super-rich maybe-a-little-too-uptight-woman who’s thrown him into a higher tax bracket.

Taking inspiration from the Chinese, the friends also each have one child. Jeff has Noah, a smart cultured 19-year-old. And Monte has Eve, his slightly reserved but talented pride and joy – the kind of girl who can be anything she wants to be.

Unfortunately, lately, it’s been hard for the two friends to get together. Family life and the real world have made each of them super busy. So they decide to have a big double family gathering to make up for lost time. After establishing that Monty and Jeff have about 1600 annoying inside jokes with each other, their son and daughter request to make an announcement. Eve is pregnant. They’re having the baby. And, oh, they’re getting married.

Now you have to understand that Jeff and Monty had no idea their kids were even dating, so this is shocking to them. Monte, in particular, doesn’t handle it well. In fact, he wants to cut Noah up into a bunch of little pieces and feed him to the local zoo animals. But after everybody calms down, they realize this is going to be a great thing (They can be one giant family!), and the real work begins – prepping for the wedding.

Adding a little bit of a ticking time bomb, neither family wants the embarrassment of people knowing Eve is pregnant, so they decide to schedule the wedding before she starts showing. A short prep time means a mad dash to get everything done. And this, of course, is where all the comedy comes from (assuming you share the same definition of comedy as the film’s collaborators). The problem is that Jeff and his wife want a tasteful wedding and Monte and his wife want a fun wedding. Since that means a disagreement on just about every decision, hilarity ensues.

I’ll probably forget about The Insane Laws by this time next week. There’s nothing here to get that excited about. That said, it isn’t bad. I mean, it’s better than The Dilemma and Couples Retreat. And I think it’s a nice update to Father Of The Bride. I like how they added a new spin by focusing on two neurotic families as opposed to one. And Garelick’s a pretty funny guy. The jokes here are way sharper than the jokes in those other Vaughn catastrophes (I laughed my ass off at “Dos Beckys” – the supposed mythical woman with two vaginas – and the stuff about the Samoan porn, which I realize sounds dumb without context).

But I did have some story problems. I thought it was curious, for example, that we never got to know the kids. I mean, at all. They have a quick intro at the beginning of the story then become as hard to find as the chupacabra. On top of that, they’re just extremely boring. This wasn’t a huge problem because the movie is more about the parents. But since the wedding is the driving source of all of the drama and conflict, it seems strange that we know nothing about the two people actually getting married. It reminds me of a good tip you always want to keep in mind. Pretend like you have to sell every single role in your movie to an actor. Would an actor want to play this role? Taking money and opportunity out of the equation, I don’t think you’d find a single actor or actress who would want to play Noah or Eve. That’s a problem.

Another thing that bothered me – and that bothers me in general – is when writers give their characters really trendy weird jobs that have absolutely nothing to do with reality – the kind of job that nobody on the planet could relate to. So Monte, for example, sells vintage video game units – like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. I mean, yeah, it’s kind of cool, but it’s such a weird job and has so little to do with the story, that it just feels like it’s there because it’s quirky and different.

I’ll continue to subscribe to the theory that you give your character a job that tells us something about them. Bill Murray in Groundhog Day is vain and full of himself, so of course he works in front of the camera as a news personality. Hugh Grant in Notting Hill is a plain guy who’s never been anywhere, so his job is managing a tiny travel bookstore (throwing some irony in there to make it even more relevant). The best high concept comedy of all time, Liar Liar, places its character in an environment where he’s forced to lie every day, a law firm. I admit I harp on this because it’s a pet peeve of mine but I really think it makes a character better.

Sadly, The Insane Laws descends into the same kind of wacky directionless humor that has become the standard for Vince Vaughn films. The humor stems more from the situation than, say, Dodgeball, but it still feels like a bunch of wacky gags and set pieces stitched together by a weak story. And it doesn’t help that the wedding angle has been done six cagillion times. So there’s nothing really new to get excited about. I really wanted to like this but it’s just too messy to recommend. Hopefully, they find a way to make it work in production.

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

What I learned: You may not have time to extensively develop every character in your story, but that doesn’t mean you should abandon them. The most important characters to get right are your main characters. Those are the characters that are going to bring in the stars and get your movie made. Clearly, that’s what Garelick did here. But in the process, he completely ignored developing Noah and Eve. This happens a lot actually. You realize certain characters only have five or six scenes in the movie and you figure, I don’t have time to make them memorable. But good writers can make anybody memorable – even with a single scene if need be. It only takes a few minutes, for example, to show that Steve Carrell collects childhood action figures and rides to work on his bike every day in The 40 Year Old Virgin. We have a good feel for that character’s life and what he needs to change within those 3 minutes. So never give up on your characters. Always ask yourself, would an actor wanna play this part? And if the answer is no, keep working on them until the answer is yes.

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.

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