Genre: Horror/Zombie
Premise: After a Zombie outbreak erupts, a devout Street Preacher must struggle to make it home and save his pregnant wife and young son while determined to keep to God’s commandments—especially, thou shalt not kill.
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, however, to use an alias and fake title).
Writer: Adrian Damian Ceranowicz
Details: 92 pages

I picked Day of Reckoning because it was one of the better structured loglines I’d received. It was not, however, a great idea in and of itself. As I’ve stated before, the zombie genre is one of the toughest to infiltrate because every single zombie idea has been done before. You have to do something different to stand out. That’s why the late-incubation zombie spec Maggie made so much noise. That’s why Oren’s script, “The Kitchen Sink” made so much noise. If you’re just trying to write a good ole fashioned homage to your favorite zombie films, you’re throwing yourself to the zombies. Because a producer knows he can’t sell that. Does this mean The Day Of Reckoning is DOA. No. You still have one last ace up your sleeve. Execute your idea perfectly. Not 80%. Not 90%. Not six championships, not seven, not eight, not nine. We’re talking about a 100% perfect execution of your premise. If you do that, you can get away with an average idea. So, did Reckoning do that?

30-something priest Burt is still coming to grips with the death of his 8 year old son a year earlier. Times are tough, but his pregnant wife Betty and his other son, Isaac (the son’s twin) are slowly starting to get back to normal. The thing that keeps Burt going is his faith in God. He assures his family that everything’s going to be okay as long as they keep the faith.

Dedicated priest that he is, Burt, his brother, and his father, head over to the local university and start blasting bible passages out of a bullhorn. Cause, you know, college kids love that. Pretty soon they’ve drawn a small crowd of hecklers, and Burt’s getting into it with them.

One of these kids asks him if you automatically go to hell if you kill someone. Burt says, yes, every time. “Even if it’s in self-defense?” the coed asks, worrying about his soldier brother. “Every time,” Burt assures him. A few hours into this God and pony show, some strange looking dudes with stumble-itis start eating the crowd. Oh shit! ZOMBIES!

People are bitten. People start running. And within minutes, it’s clear that the town is under attack. While the college kids seem to be aware that these are zombies, our hero, Burt, does not. He just thinks they’re a bunch of seriously sick individuals.

Well, after his dad gets bitten, Burt realizes there may be more to this than he thought, and he and his brother find a car to drive him to the hospital. But man, there are like, zombies, EVERYWHERE. They don’t get very far, and soon Burt’s brother is bitten as well.

Back at the house, Betty and Isaac are fending off their own set of zombies, and when Betty finally gets a hold of Burt, she tells him that they won’t be able to hold them off forever. So Burt changes gears and heads back to save his family, all while not being able to kill the monsters in his way, lest he get sent to hell.

The Day Of Reckoning is a noble effort in that it wants to explore the emotional component of a zombie attack. It’s trying to make a bigger statement than just, “Zombies eat people.” But in making everything so over-the-top serious and so over-the-top dramatic, combined with the fact that it doesn’t bring anything new to the table, it comes off as unintentionally clichéd, a simplified version of many zombie films we’ve already seen before.

I had a bunch of issues here actually, and it started at the top, with the story itself. The scale here is too small. We follow a gang of priests who we know nothing about to a college to yell at people, and then one of them has to travel 15 blocks (I’m assuming? Give or take?) to save his family. For a movie, that’s a tiny concept. It’s almost something you’d expect a group of film school students with no money to come up with to shoot themselves (which might be the case, I don’t know). When I originally read this logline, I imagined something closer to The Road, with a husband travelling cross-country with his pregnant wife and son, fending off zombies without being able to kill them. I was disappointed when the idea was more “Zombies in Suburbia,” which I don’t think is as interesting.

My next problem was Burt. Remember guys, how you introduce your main character has a HUGE impact on how we perceive them for the next 100 minutes. A character telling a funny joke vs. a character saving someone’s life vs. a character kicking a girl out of bed after sex vs. a character standing up to authority…all of those actions have very different effects on the audience. So you have to be judicious in what you show your hero doing in those early scenes.

While having Burt head to the local university to tell a bunch of college kids they’re going to hell MAY fit in with his character, it does not endear us to him, and so we pretty much hate Burt from the start. I don’t believe in God so I’m going to Hell? Yeah, that’s the guy I want to catch a movie with on a Saturday night. I mean obviously this is subjective. A devout Catholic may LOVE Burt because of this opinion. But since this is written for the masses and not Sunday Mass, you have to be more mindful of what your hero says and does.

Next we have the second act. And while this problem is more a consequence of a previous problem (the idea being too small), it still needs to be fixed. The fact that Burt gets to his house and then CAN’T FIND IT FOR 30 PAGES is a really bad story choice. He stumbles to the left. Can’t find his house. Stumbles to the right. Can’t find his house. Passes it again. Can’t find it. Passes it again. Can’t find it. I know this is explained later (spoiler: we find out he was bitten) but it doesn’t excuse the 70s style injured damsel in distress pulling herself away from the killer at .7 miles per hour. Plus it just felt like the story was stalling in order to get to the 90 page mark. When nothing new is happening in your script for 30 pages, that’s not a good thing.

But the biggest issue of them all is the lack of punch behind the “Thou Shall Not Kill” device. This is the hook of your movie. A guy must survive a zombie attack without being able to “kill” the zombies. That’s the thing I was looking forward to the most. “Oh man,” I wondered, “How is he going to pull this off??” But Burt’s belief in this principle is sold to us via a sloppy conversation with an annoying college kid. That’s not how you sell the most important device of your movie. If you want to sell something important, you have to SHOW US. Not TELL US.

For example (and I’m not saying Adrian should do this cause it might cause more problems than it’s worth), if you started the movie a year ago with a bad guy holding Burt’s son at knife point and Burt has a choice to either KILL him or NOT KIL him, and he chooses not to kill him, which results in his son being murdered, that action (or lack of action) sells Burt’s belief in “Thou shall not kill” a billion times better than a half-hearted conversation on a college campus. Remember guys. These are movies we’re talking about. SHOW us things. Don’t tell us things.

Now there were some good things in “Reckoning.” I thought the last 15 pages were pretty powerful. From the flashbacks to the twist reveal to the gaping womb of Betty to Burt finally having to make that decision (kill or don’t kill). Maybe the script did a better job than I’m giving it credit for because I was into it. But it was too little too late. Burt stumbling around outside his house for 30 minutes was the death knell for this script. It killed every bit of momentum it had.

So “Reckoning” needs a big rewrite. The storyline needs to be bigger. Burt’s character needs to be redesigned (so we’ll root for him). Not everything can be so melodramatic. A whole new second act needs to be written without the “I’ve fallen and I can’t find my house” segment. And most importantly, the “Thou shall not kill” commandment has to be sold more convincingly. If that isn’t convincing, this movie doesn’t work.

I probably sound too harsh but I think writers forget how much effort needs to be put into a script. Just getting from point A to point B isn’t enough. You gotta push yourself. Especially with these zombie flicks since there’s so much competition. Always be asking yourself, “Have I seen this in a zombie movie before?” If the answer is yes, consider changing it. Good luck!

Script link: The Day Of Reckoning

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

What I learned: Something to consider when writing preacher characters – To non-religious people, all bible passages sound the same. So when you’ve got your preacher spouting this psalm and then that psalm and then that psalm, a large portion of your readers are hearing gibberish. Instead, try and individualize the message. For example, on page 13 Burt says, “All right. Young people, answer me this. Would you sell your eyes for a million dollars?” “Yes. No! What kind of question is that?” “How about five million?” “No! Never! Not for any amount!” “Then why are you all so eager to sell your soul for a little bit of sin?” That was the only religious thing Burt said in 100 pages that I actually thought about, because it wasn’t “random passage from Bible 8324.” It was a thoughtful point that the character himself came up with.

Yesterday, Joshua James hit us with The Jones Party, which sparked some pretty intense reactions (you can download the script here)!  Although it was his first script, it’s been optioned twice and gotten him a ton of assignment work.  I thought it was a really solid piece of writing,  Some of you thought it was way too “20s-ish.”  Whatever happened to letting people in their 20s hate??  That’s what our 20s are for!  But in all seriousness, I was happy when Josh agreed to do an interview for the site.  Amateur writers need to be aware that there aren’t just 2 types of screenwriters, madly successful ones and starving artists, but that the majority of writers fall somewhere in the middle, fighting for assignments while they belt out the spec they hope will put them on the A-list.  Josh has a blog where he gets into a lot of this in detail, but I thought I’d pick his brain for some finer points here on Scriptshadow. 

JJ: The following is only what I’ve experienced, it makes me no better or worse than anyone else. We are all flawed and imperfect creatures, which is oftentimes the source of great fun and / or embarrassment, oftentimes both at once.

SS: Now my understanding is that The Jones Party got you both your manager and your agent. Can you talk about that in more detail? How did you get the script into their hands? Did you know someone or was it a cold query?

JJ: It wasn’t quite like that. I was a playwright in NYC and had plays going on in the indie theatre scene, so I met people through that, some development people, etc.

I wrote Jones and gave it to a theatre producer / actor who’d produced some of my plays, he loved it and optioned it, tried to get it made with himself as the lead, but didn’t … he ended up making another film instead … happily, we’re still friends.

The option expired and then someone else optioned it, and that expired and then I hung onto it for awhile, turning down offers on it in hopes of finding a way to direct it myself. All the while, I wrote other scripts.

Through another friend, I was introduced to a director-producer named Ken Bowser, who had done some cool documentaries (he’s got a really great one out now about Phil Ochs) and he loved Jones and optioned it. Ken worked with me on developing Jones and I cannot understate how much I learned from him during this time.

Ken also had the rights to a book I’d read and loved, Peter Biskind’s Down & Dirty Pictures, that he was also developing as a feature rather than a documentary (Ken had also done Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls as a doc as well, which I had seen).

Now, I’d read Down & Dirty Pictures at least fifty times, I mean, I was a huge fan of the book and that era (the indie boom), and every time we met to work on Jones, I’d asked him how the book project was coming, heheheh … you know, just asking …

Turns out, the project was stalled, they’d had a writer on it but it wasn’t working out, the guy didn’t really get the material … I got a chance to pitch for it, offered a fresh take that Ken loved and I got the job. That was my first real job.

All of the above happened because I had Jones Party to show around, it opened a lot of doors for me, and got me quite a few meetings and other gigs, too (besides Down & Dirty Pictures).

At the time that I was hired on Down & Dirty Pictures, I had no representation, I’d left the agent and the manager I’d had back then (more on that later) and used an entertainment lawyer to handle the deal.

In terms of representation, initially Jones did get me repped, but not by the people I’m represented by now. When I first wrote it, a friend introduced me to an agent at a NY office who offered to rep me immediately and I agreed without hesitation.

This was a mistake.

I made the same mistake with a couple NY managers later on. They were the wrong fit, let’s say. One manager was a nightmare, you have no idea. He’s not even in the biz anymore. Shit happens, though.

I’d been given the following advice early on, and I should have heeded it but didn’t, said advice being: It’s better to have no representation than it is to have bad representation or the wrong representation.

I scoffed at this at the time, but now I can see that’s indeed true. I should have stopped worrying about agents and focused harder on my work. If you write enough scripts that people love, you’ll find the right people to represent you.

The Jones Party led to me getting hired to adapt Down & Dirty Pictures, and a good friend of mine (name redacted so he’s not swamped with requests) passed that script onto Dan, my current manager, and he loved it. We met a few times to talk and see if we were simpatico and it turns out, we are.

Dan’s awesome, and while working with him I wrote the original thriller A Black Heart, which led my current agent, who is also awesome.

Write a great script, and, if possible, write more than one and then the right representative will find you. Everyone wants to read a great script.

Everyone.

SS: The Jones Party was your first script. That’s mighty impressive, since it’s universally known that 99.9999% of all first scripts are terrible. What advice would you give to writers so that their first script comes out as good as The Jones Party?

JJ: Hmm … I guess I’d offer the following advice when it came to first screenplays.

1) With regard to Jones Party, I had something really specific to say about the subject matter, something unique and personal, personal to me, anyway.

I think having something to say is what got the interest of the people who saw potential in the script even in its earliest form, it’s why it was optioned right away (and multiple times after) and it’s a reason why different folks, especially Ken, spent a lot of time working with me on it, because the story spoke to them.

And it spoke to them because the story was saying something.

2) It’s fair to say that the early versions Jones Party were rough, no doubt, and not as polished as the version you read, and though the actions and characters and their journey were essentially the same then as they are now, but it was probably a harder read then, much rougher.

I’m lucky in that some people who knew more than I gave me great feedback on it and I listened to them. I listened to Ken. I think that’s the second piece of advice I’d give.

I chose to listen to people in the know (which isn’t everyone, but it is usually more than one someone) and take their feedback to heart.

You can’t (and shouldn’t) listen to everyone, but you should listen to someone and it should be someone smarter and more experienced, if at all possible, and at the very least someone who can tell you hard truths.

A writer needs at least one person in their life like that. You have to trust someone, even Stephen King has at least one trusted reader (his wife, Tabitha) who will tell it like it is and he’ll listen … I’m lucky in that I have more than one.

If you don’t know anyone to ask for feedback, I would recommend taking a class or joining a free online group, like Trigger Street, for example.

My good friend Scott teaches an online class, http://screenwritingmasterclass.com/ … Scott’s one of the smartest guys out there. Yeah, that’s a plug, but seriously, Scott’s a great guy and really knows his stuff.

3) The last thing is that I kept writing scripts, I worked on other screenplays, and each script taught me something new and I brought that back with me when it came time to polish Jones again.

They say you won’t really get it until you write at least ten of them. Jones was my first, but I wrote a bunch more after that and applied what I learned in subsequent rewrites and improved it and my craft. I definitely learned more about myself as a writer after script ten, no doubt about it.

To sum up:

1) Have something to say, something real and unique.

2) Listen to how trusted folks in the know respond to what you have to say.

3) Write more scripts.

SS: The thing that most impressed me about The Jones Party was the dialogue. What’s the secret to writing good dialogue would you say?

JJ: I’m gonna be a dick and link to a thing I wrote about dialogue on my blog.

I really just try to listen, that’s the thing, I try to imagine real people who care about real things and listen to what they want and what they have to say … and then cut out the boring parts. That last thing is the most challenging.

SS: A huge issue I have with amateur screenplays is that I only remember 1 or 2 characters after they’re over. Here, there a bunch of characters who pop off the page. What’s your approach to character? Do you write up character bios? Do you try and make sure your characters arc? Can you tell us a little about your process?

I don’t know if I have a process or if I just have a lot of voices in my head – LOL!

I just strive to make my characters real if I can, real to me, and if that’s not working, then I put real people from real life into my story … there is a real life Danno, after all. There was a Hope in my life, at one point. I have actor friends, and I will subconsciously plug them into a story.

I come from an acting background, I did a lot of it (oh me or my, the Meisner Training. The Meisner Training? The Meisner Training. The Meisner Training? That’s an inside joke … hardly anyone will get that) and so a lot of what I do with regards to character work is rooted in that. I put myself into a character whenever I can.

Also, I love what the FBI profilers say when figuring out who the killer is …

What plus Why equals Who.

I always found that very useful.

SS: The script also has an offbeat structure, in that it’s jumping back and forth and covering many different characters. How much emphasis do you put on structure as opposed to, say, writing by the seat of your pants?

You can write by the seat of your pants and still worry about great structure, structure isn’t story, per se (I’m possibly gonna get roasted in the comments for that) but rather it’s how the story is put together.

How I view structure regarding scripts and stories, is:

1) Story is what happens.

2) Character is who it happens to.

3) Structure is how it happens.

So whether you’re writing by the seat of your pants or plotting everything out beforehand by the page, via scriptments, you still want it be be as cool and efficient as possible.

Jones is structured in the way it is to get maximum impact in as short of time as possible … you could start at the chronological beginning (two years before the party, when Derwin and Hope first meet) and follow the story until we get to the party, but I don’t think the story would deliver the same emotional punch as it does now.

How it happens now, structure-wise, it maximizes the impact, I think. Folks are free to disagree. But the point is to tell the story as fast and efficiently as possibly.

The story is about these people participating in a Jim Jones Party and why.

Writing by the seat of the pants is fun, and that’s how I wrote Jones, I mean, I had no fucking idea how I was gonna end it when I started.

But I did know, in a way, when and where I wanted it to happen in the story, so I guess you could say I had an inner structure clock in my head. I had the where and when, just not the what. The what is the story, not the structure.

But writing without knowing the end is not always practical, either … if you’re working on a spec, it can be cool to write yourself into a corner and take weeks or months to get out of it. But if you’re on an assignment, that’s not so cool. And there’s something to be said for writing a bad ending so you’ll have something to fix later.

These days I usually do a treatment or an outline, just to work faster. But not always, it depends. Different genres, different types of movies have different demands in order to realize their impact, or potential … I don’t think that there’s ONE structure to rule them all, it has to be the right structure for right story …

I think Dirk Nowitzki has the perfect structure for a basketball player, but a terrible one if he wanted to be a horse jockey. He’s seven feet tall. He’d need a vastly bigger horse.

Speaking of big horses, the real action in the Godfather doesn’t start until Vito is gunned down, some forty minutes into it. That’s perfect for that movie. It wouldn’t be perfect for, let’s say, Meet The Parents (actually, I haven’t seen that movie, but I’m presuming Ben met DeNiro earlier than forty minutes into the movie) as an example.

Everything has a structure, everything … even bad scripts. The problem is that the structure is either an incomplete or not efficient or serving the story’s needs. Good ideas told badly are usually one or the other.

Or the story isn’t compelling or just bad … you can write a perfectly structured story that doesn’t work … I remember something a friend wrote about Goethe about criticism:

Goethe asked three questions:

1) What was the author’s intent?

2) How well was it done?

3) Was it worth doing?

And I try to keep that in mind when going back over my own work. I try. Maybe ten years from now I’ll think differently … I accept evolution as an established scientific theory.

SS: The Jones Party feels like a very personal story. Which leads me to the age old question. Do you think writers should try to break in with a high concept screenplay that they don’t necessarily have a personal connection with, or something more low-concept (like The Jones Party) that’s extremely personal to them? Obviously, The Jones Party falls into the latter category, but I’m interested to hear if you think that’s right for everyone.

JJ: It’s not high concept? A feel-good movie about suicide isn’t high concept? LOL!

I believe you have to write what you’re passionate about.

If you’re passionate about big movies, write about those stories, if you’re passionate about smaller, more intimate stories, write those. I happen to be passionate about both.

I was, and still am, very passionate about this particular story (Jones), as others have been, it’s a unique story, one not about people dying but about people finding a reason to live, an idea which really moves me … it is indeed very personal.

I’m also very passionate about Down & Dirty Pictures (I am an ex-video store clerk-geek, after all) to a rather ridiculous degree, I love-love-love movies and what they’ve done for my life … so it was a pleasure to write about guys who loved movies as much (if not more) as I did, which is what Down & Dirty Pictures is about, at its essence. It’s about guys who love film and movies so much it hurts.

Who among us here can’t identify with that? LOL!

But I’m passionate about a lot of things … I love thrillers, for example.

Action thrillers, I love stuff like that, and it’s no accident that I’ve written more and more stories like that, not just screenplays, but short fiction, novels (I have a couple crime novels I tinker with in my spare time) … anyone who knows me can attest, I love films like that. Always have. I don’t write those only because they’re high concept, I write them because those types of stories turn me on.

When my manager and I first met and had a series of meetings, we found we both shared a love of the classic suspense and action thrillers from the sixties and seventies, and spoke about what we’d like to see that hasn’t yet been done, and my script A Black Heart is a direct result of those conversations … I’m very drawn to those types of stories.

I love those kind of movies (I grew up on Lethal Weapon, in fact, and don’t get me started on Bruce Lee movies) and I’m passionate about them to a ridiculous degree. And kung fu flicks! Oh man. I can go on and on (I LOVED Taken, and again I’ll probably get roasted for that in the comments, but I loved it, man) until my wife tells me to shut up already …

I’m also passionate about people, certain characters, both living and dead and also ideas, there are many, many ideas I’m passionate about.

And there are probably things that I’ve not yet discovered that I may be passionate about, you know? I just recently discovered something new and cool and dove right into it. That’s part of evolving, after all … everyone does it. You find new things to love.

How long ago was it that almost no one knew the difference between standard poker and Texas Hold ’em? Now most folks do.

We live and we grow and the only thing constant is the change.

I think it’s important to write what moves you, what excites you. Whatever that is.

For me, there are many things that move me, I get excited about a lot of different things, a lot of characters and ideas, love, life, living, dying … and while it’s good to think about concept, it’s also good to make sure the idea is something that really moves you.

SS: I know you read a lot of scripts to keep yourself sharp. What would you say is the biggest difference between a pro script and an amateur script?

JJ: The biggest difference is that when you’re reading a well written script, you often forget you’re actually reading it … you may not even see the words, you just see the people in the story and you’re dying to know what happens next.

A professional usually has no unnecessary space, words … nothing unnecessary on the page and as a result the story moves like a freight train.

I read the Fight Club screenplay, because I wanted to see how the adaptation was done … it’s like 144 pages and I blinked and was at the end before I knew it (and hell, I’ve seen the movie and read the book, so I knew what happened, but still it drew me in). It moves.

No fat.

I read Taken, which has long blocks of action, and it flew by. No fat on that, whatsoever. Good writing, regardless of format, just flies by.

SS:  Kyle Killen, the writer of The Beaver, likes to tell the story about how his wife got pregnant and he had nine months to make it as a screenwriter or forever be miserable in a “real” job. He sold The Beaver with a few days to spare. Let’s play make believe. If you had to start over, what would your plan be to make it as a screenwriter if you only had 9 months?

Wow, I so had the opposite reaction when my wife got pregnant!

Seriously, I was working part time and busting my ass as a writer, making a couple grand here and there writing scripts for others, and when she told me she was pregnant I stopped and got a full time job as an office manager right away.

This was right around the time I left a bad agent, too. I thought, well, I had a good run but now I’m gonna make sure I can feed my kid. I’m gonna be a responsible dad.

I let Jones get optioned, to Ken, which in turn led to the Down & Dirty Pictures job a few months later, I left the office job as a result and have been fortunate enough to be able to work as a writer since then.

But in answer to your question, you realize that it’s not make-believe, right? It actually is that way, in a fashion, for everyone … we all have a limited amount of time.

You may only have nine months, you may have a week, you may have to do it early in the morning before your day job, late at night and on the weekends … you may be broke and unemployed … I was unemployed when I wrote the very first draft of Jones, I gave myself two weeks to write it, sat in a cafe and pounded it out, not sure where I was gonna get money for food (this was, happily, before I was married and a father) …

I wrote that draft, then got a crappy part-time job … kept going, kept writing and working and living and breathing.

You may have to completely start over, more than once.

You have until the money runs out, and even then, you can still keep going, you only have until your will and urge to do so runs out.

You have until the end of your life, but when is that? Fifty years. Ten? A week? Tomorrow? No one knows, right?

My friend Scott Myers has said, “Writing doesn’t owe anyone a living” and that’s so very true, so if you’re doing it, do it because you love it, and try (this is hard) to write like there’s no tomorrow.

Kyle’s a brilliant writer, if he hadn’t sold The Beaver by the time his wife gave birth, he would have eventually written something else that sold, even while at a crappy day job, had he wanted to. And I think he would have, some people, they have to write, they can’t help it, they absolutely have to.

Sounds to me like Kyle wrote like it was his last shot.

The trick is to write everything like that, every day.

I believe that.

Tomorrow is promised to no one, therefore the plan is the same as it always is … work hard, work smart, be grateful for good fortune and especially to those people in my life who enrich it and be certain to repay them by making the most of every moment.

If everything ends tomorrow, what note would you want it to go out on?

SS:  Being a paid writer, you experience a part of the business that there’s very little information on – trying to land writing jobs.  Can you put us in the room of an assignment meeting? What do you think the key is to landing a job?

As that I live in NYC, a lot of stuff is over the phone …

I sold a pitch once, over the phone, and I had a list of ideas I was going down and I couldn’t see the guys I was talking to, obviously, they didn’t say much (other than, nah, not that one) and so I had no real idea how I was doing until I got to the one they liked, and that was, yeah, we like that, we’ll take it … what an experience that was, man! Can’t see them, can’t really hear them well (on a conference call, that happens a lot). You’re talking into a phone, it’s hard … but hey, I’m talking to someone who’s interested in my ideas, so I’m not complaining!

You just have to talk ideas, paint the movie out verbally and be positive, I think.

They want to see the movie, I’ve been hired a few times to write something for someone, they had an idea for a movie but didn’t know how to make it breathe as a film, make it work, that’s the key to landing jobs like that … how do you make it work?

You meet a lot of people, listen to what excites them, tap see the movie they want to make but haven’t yet and, if you can, solve that problem for them …

I was hired to help polish Cat Run (more here: http://writerjoshuajames.com/dailydojo/?p=2104) and it was about two weeks before they started shooting, yikes… we’d had a couple conference calls and the rest by email … now, that close to shooting, there’s very little time for messing around, the director doesn’t want to debate you about story or character, what you’re really there for is to solve his problems.

The director has this script section he’s not happy with and needs it to work … how to solve it? You throw ideas out there, he throws them back and so on until we find the one he likes and says, write that, get it to me by tonight. He’s in Europe (or wherever they were shooting) and I was in NYC, just busting out pages. My job was to solve his problems. He doesn’t have time for anything else other than that, and nor should I.

That’s what I did, in a sense, was help solve the third act and the finale, how do they get into the castle, how do they do this, how do they do that, all in a way that was cool … you really have to lose the ego, then, and just focus on doing the work. It’s not about words, at that point, it’s about making the story work in a way that makes them happy. And having fun, too. I had fun on that project, even though I know a lot of what I was writing was going to be changed once they got on set. I had fun.

The thing to remember is, everyone in the movie business loves movies as much as you do … they all want to make cool movies, but everyone gets jammed up (yeah, everyone gets jammed up, everyone, some of us just lie about it much better than others) on a project they love and if you can solve the problem and clear the log-jam for them, you’re gold, Pony-Boy, gold.

SS: Over the years, you’ve probably heard hundreds of screenwriting tips and pieces of advice. What advice would you say has influenced you the most? What tips would you say still guide you today?

JJ: Man, I can’t write everything that’s influenced or guided me the most, I’ve already yammered on past the point of maximum density as is.

Tell you what, I’ll share two simple things that directly impacted my life and career and still do … they’re simple yet I’m amazed at how often I have to remind myself about them.

1) Don’t waste a moment.

I had that insight one day, that every word, every character and every moment in the story should count … I was dumbfounded when I looked at what I was working on then, lots of time I had filler scenes, filler conversations, filler characters, stuff that killed time until we got to the good part.

I realized that every moment had to matter, every character, every line had to be something. It all had to be the good part. Once that hit me, much changed. It’s hard to follow through, though, real hard. But a good hard.

2) One day I realized that all I want from a movie, a book, a song or a story is to be moved. And as that I’m no different than anyone else, ergo, that’s all anyone else wants.

 Affleck’s decided on another project and it looks like it’s going to be “Tell No One,” one of my Top 10 scripts.  Except he’s NOT using the Orci Kurtzman draft.  Why?  No idea.  It’s ready to shoot this instant.  There’s nothing you can really do to make it better, except maybe take out all the underlining and capitalization.  Are Hollywood politics involved somehow? Read about Affleck attaching himself to the project at Deadline Hollywood then go read my review of the Orci-Kurtzman draft here.

Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: Two royally screwed up roommates secretly in love with each other throw a massive Jim Jones party on the eve of their suicide.
About: This was Joshua James’ first screenplay, which has been optioned on two occasions and has gotten him numerous writing jobs around town, including an adaptation of the book, DOWN & DIRTY PICTURES. Although he’s moved mainly into thrillers (He’s working on “A Black Heart” with Captivate Ent. and “Block Island” with Adler-Grey), The Jones Party is a favorite of his which he’d like to see made one day. James has his own blog where he ruminates on screenwriting whenever he gets a chance.
Writer: Joshua James
Details: 106 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).

One of the things I tell new writers is to just write that first script and get it out of the way. Cause it’s going to be bad. Actually, I’m being generous. It’s going to be terrible. That’s not something to get discouraged by though. It should be freeing. It means you get to go crazy, experiment, have fun, and enjoy the high of writing without consequences. Well not so fast, Carson. While the club is limited, there are writers out there who have thrived on their first script, and Joshua James is one of them. True, he’s rewritten it to death over the years, but The Jones Party is his first foray into the craft.

33 year old Derwin is one of those people who just oozes cool, who oozes nonchalance. Volleyball-sized meteor chunks could be raining down around him and he’d still find time to smoke a cigarette and ask you how your day went.

Hope is the polar opposite. Young and pretty, she’s got Woody Allen’s neuroses and Russell Crowe’s temperament. She’s strange and fleeting and bi-polar and moody. It’d take her a couple of minutes just to find and light the cigarette, much less smoke it.

I guess that’s what makes them perfect roommates. Their weaknesses are the other’s…non-weaknesses. I wouldn’t say strengths because I don’t know that they have any strengths. Sure, Derwin is cool, but he’s so emotionless and detached. And Hope? Well, a good day to her is just making it to the finish line.

Which might explain why they’ve decided to kill themselves. But being that they’re Derwin and Hope, they’re doing it in style. Instead of just hopping in the car and letting the exhaust take them to happy land, they’re executing a Jim Jones style “End Of The World” party. You know Jim Jones. That crazy religious dude who convinced 900 people to kill themselves with him so they could get into heaven through the back door or something?

Yeah, so Derwin and Hope invite anybody and everyone who wants to terminate their policy early to come over for one rockin party where there are no rules, no consequences, nothing to do but drink, get high, and have sex. Then, at 5 a.m., they drink some specially spiked Kool-Aid, and call it a life. With a lot of people out there sick of the way the big blue marble has treated them, let’s just say the party is a lively ticket.

While we bounce around from partygoer to partygoer (which includes a really clever device by James of having a “confessional” room where people just randomly rail on life), we keep coming back to Hope and Derwin. Though their relationship seemed to be so cut and dry at first, flashbacks (yes, dreaded flashbacks!) paint a more complicated picture, and we soon realize that these two are in love with each other but so afraid of emotion, of closeness, of committing to life, that they’ve been unable to admit it. So will they be able to admit it before it’s too late?

The Jones Party was a fun script and the neat thing about it is that it feels very much like a first screenplay, yet one that’s been reworked through the eyes of a wily vet. What I mean by “it feels like a first screenplay” is that there’s all this emotion, all this frustration, all this dialogue, all these flashbacks, all these fun little asides. When you first start out, you want to try a lot of things and you want to scream out to everyone and let them know how YOU feel, what YOUR position on the world is. A first screenplay tends to be the bullhorn that allows you to do that.

The problem is that, normally, that’s all it is – a big bottle of opinions and emotion. There’s no structure. There’s no form. And I don’t know what the very first draft of The Jones Party looked like, but I’m willing to bet it was a lot more ranting and a lot less direction than this.

Clearly, over the years, James has learned to give his stories purpose, and the mystery of what’s going to happen to Derwin and Hope helps guide this story to a perfect climax. To be honest, I was a little worried that this was going to be Dialogue Fest 3000, just a bunch of characters telling you how they felt about the world. But the flashbacks of Derwin and Hope not only brought direction back to the screenplay, they moved the story forward.

Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute.  How did flashbacks move the story forward? Isn’t that a paradox? Here’s how. Each flashback revealed a key piece of information about Derwin and Hope’s relationship that we didn’t know before. We thought they were just roommates. Oh wait, we find out Hope has feelings for Derwin. We think Derwin is impervious to feeling, but oh wait, we learn that he does indeed feel. These increased our appetite for an answer to the question – will Derwin and Hope realize they love each other in time to call off the suicide? It’s a powerful question. And one we desperately want answered.

And to me, that’s what really separated this script from all the wannabes – the ending. (Spoilers!) The script’s tone dictates that anything other than suicide will be a cheat. So the story is kind of handcuffed in that sense. It has only one option. Kill off its characters. Somehow, and I’m still marveling at how he did it, James managed to accomplish this but still keep his characters alive in a believable satisfying way. You’ll have to read it yourself to find out how. But I thought it was the perfect ending.

Longtime Scriptshadow readers will be quick to point out that there is no character goal (other than to kill themselves – although that’s not really a goal since it’s already pre-determined). But remember, if you don’t have a character goal driving your story, you need a compelling question in its place, and The Jones Party has one: Will Hope and Derwin get together before it’s too late? As long as we care about the answer to that question, we will stay interested the entire time. Not to mention, the time frame is so tight here (less than 8 hours) that the structure becomes focused almost by necessity.

I liked the dialogue a lot. I liked that the script got me thinking what I would do with 8 hours to go and no consequences. Always good when a script breaks that fourth wall and makes you an active participant. My complaints are few. I didn’t like the opening. It was confusing. Something happens in the closet and then Hope breaks out in a clown suit with a gun. It felt like a very “writerly” moment. In other words, I could feel the writer’s hand from above. And it led to more confusion than intrigue, at least for me.

And the only reason I don’t give this an impressive is because it’s not the kind of film that I’m personally into. Yes, it wisely peppers its story with humor. But we’re still talking about suicide here, not the kind of subject matter I typically block out my Friday nights for. In a strange way, this is a script you battle with just as much as you enjoy, and it’ll be interesting to see how people react to that.

Still, this was really solid writing, and I can totally see why it’s helped James carve out a career.

Edit: Josh has ok’d me posting the script.  Link: The Jones Party

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

What I learned: Again, if you’re going to write about something really depressing, it’s a good idea to do so from a humorous angle. If The Jones Party would’ve been a straight drama, it would have been dead (no pun intended) by page 10. It would have been a Depressing Fest, the worst kind of scripts there are. Humor is to depressing subject matter what the Iron Man suit is to Tony Stark.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A socially unaware blissfully inept moron named Doug Himelfarb falls in love with a woman on their first date and surprises her by showing up at her parent’s home for Thanksgiving.
About: Himelfarb sold as a spec script to Warner Brothers back in 2006 and was the first sale for writers Paul and Mogel. It also finished in tenth place on the 2006 Black List. The writers got their first produced credit with Jim Carrey’s “Yes Man” a few years back and have a half dozen projects in development, including “Harvey and Marky: A True Story of Friendship and Betrayal” about childhood friends Harvey and Marky, who reach an impasse when the shy Marky falls in love and the domineering Harvey hires a fake girlfriend in order to show him up. Paul is also an actor and has had many bit parts in movies and TV. He was also a staff writer on a few series, including Stargate: SG1.
Writers: Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel
Details: 117 pages, June 20, 2006 (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).

After reading Himelfarb, I was convinced that Jarrad and Andrew, the writers, had somehow managed to build a time machine, travel back to the year 2009, watch The Hangover, travel back, and write this script. “Oh no,” you’re saying. “Not another Hangover clone.” Oh don’t worry. Himelfarb is nothing like The Hangover. My theory is based on the premise that these two managed to write the perfect character for Zach Galifianakis before anyone knew about Zach Galifianakis. I mean, try to read a single line of Himelfarb’s dialogue without thinking of the portly Between Two Ferns host. Seriously. At certain points, I would physically see an animated version of the comedian dancing on my screen between lines. It’s that obvious.

Doug Himelfarb’s been hurt, man. He’s been scalded by the pain of love. His old girlfriend, who he broke up with by the way (according to him) has left a hole in his heart that he doesn’t know how to fill. Luckily he’s got his filmmaking career to fall back on, if you consider making self-funded test commercials for companies that ignore you a “career.”

Himelfarb’s partner in crime is his younger brother, Sandy. After their father died, Himelfarb’s become the father figure of the clan, and has made the still mourning Sandy his personal assistant, a position Sandy takes very seriously, despite having no idea what a personal assistant does and rarely doing his job right.

Himelfarb feels that it’s finally time to get back on the dating horse, so he sets up a blind date online. When the attractive small-town actress, Julia, first sees Himelfarb, she tries to escape, but he spots her just before she’s able to slip away, and the date begins. Within ten minutes, Himelfarb proceeds to break up with her because he realizes that while he’s ready to love, he’s still not over his ex, still not ready to move on. Julia, who’s terrified by Himelfarb and wants nothing to do with him, points out that they can’t break up if they’re not together. But Himelfarb won’t hear such nonsense. He assures her that even though this relationship is over, they can still be friends.

Over the ensuing weeks, Himelfarb suspects that he made a mistake, and starts writing Julia, and calling Julia, and writing Julia, and calling Julia. He begins to suspect that something’s wrong because Julia doesn’t write or call back. He remembers her talking about going back to her hometown for Thanksgiving during their date. So he grabs Sandy, drives cross-country, and prepares to surprise her.

Back at Julia’s parents’ house, Julia’s dealing with everybody’s favorite time, the annual Thanksgiving Break “Why The Fuck Don’t You Have A Husband Yet?” parental interrogation. So to get them off her back, she tells them she’s met a guy, using Doug’s name because he was the last person she went out with. How could she have possibly known that Doug would then show up a few minutes later?

The parents are thrilled, taken by Himelfarb’s strange but optimistic demeanor, and we quickly morph into “Meet The Parents: Bizarro World” version, as Himelfarb tells Julia he’s ready to take the next step and Julia tries desperately to get him the hell out of here, a task that’s proving more and more difficult as Himelfarb burrows his way further into the family’s good graces. The big question is, will Himelfarb be able to win over Julia herself? The answer, of course (spoiler alert), is no.

You’ll rarely get me to say I liked a script with a weak story. But sometimes, if the main character is interesting/unusual/funny enough, it can happen. Such is the case with Himelfarb. I couldn’t tell you what happens once Himelfarb gets to Julia’s house. There’s something about a pagent and Julia’s younger adopted sister or something. I don’t know and I didn’t care. All I cared about was hearing what this majorly delusional weirdo would say next, because most of the time, it was hilarious.

I would go so far as to rate the first act of Himelfarb “genius.” Watching Julia mistake a much handsomer more charming man for him on their blind date, then Himelfarb cutting in and saying, “Actually, I’m your date,” seeing her devastated reaction, yet still soldiering on excitedly, was perfect. Watching HImelfarb break up with Julia ten minutes later. Classic. Watching him teach his brother, Sandy, how to be more socially aware, despite being the most socially unaware person on the planet. Hilarious.

Of course the script changes radically once Himelfarb gets to Julia’s place. And that’s where things start to dissolve on the story front. Julia just happens to tell her parents that she’s dating Doug mere minutes before he shows up, forcing her to go along with Himelfarb’s claim that they’re together? I’d call that quite convenient timing for the story and we never quite buy it, knowing that in the real world, she would’ve had him out on his ass within 60 seconds.

But here’s where the genius of Himelfarb lies. You don’t care. You don’t care because Himelfarb is so damn funny and so damn clueless that it doesn’t matter. When he starts directing the rehearsal for the pagent, and is in charge of coaxing a realistic performance out of Julia (who, amongst other things, is dealing with her imminent failure as an actress), and tells her that she’s doing it all wrong….just seeing the rage build on Julia’s face is enough to make you forgive the script’s many other shortcomings.

On a technical note, I loved what these writers did with parentheticals. A lot of writers stay away from parentheticals because they consider them “directing the actors,” which is supposedly a no-no in screenwriting. But parentheticals can be a very handy tool in comedy, as long as they enhance the line or the line reading. “not interested at all,” “dramatic pause,” “very uncomfortable,” “annoyed,” all added context to the lines that followed and made them much funnier.

Predictably, where this script loses its mojo is in its length. At 117 pages, it’s 17 pages too long and you feel it with every pointless scene. Not only that, but this is a thin premise. Guy crashes girl’s Thanksgiving. You don’t need 117 pages to tell that story. I can buy 117 pages if you have a character going back in time trying to reunite his parents before attempting to get back to the future. But this is a story that takes place at one house on a Thanksgiving weekend. Why so many pages??

Also, please people, no more adopted Asian daughters in your comedies. These guys get a pass cause they wrote this 5 years ago but if I had a buck for every time I saw an adopted Asian daughter in a screenplay, I’d be palling around with Mark Zuckerberg.

This would’ve probably received an impressive if the screenplay was condensed and they did a better job convincing me that Julia wouldn’t have kicked Himelfarb out 2 seconds after he walked in. But as it stands, it’s still damn funny.

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

What I learned: When writing a screenplay, you don’t always have to start with an idea. You can just as easily start with a character. Think about it. When looking back at movies, the first thing you remember are the characters. So why not start with one? Create someone interesting, unique, strange, quirky, original, someone that people will remember, and then build your movie idea around him/her. I don’t know if this is how Himelfarb was constructed or not. But I’m willing to bet it was.