Genre: Crime/Thriller
Premise: After being left for dead, a man plots his revenge against the Chicago mob family who killed his wife.
About: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title). Also, it’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so that your submission stays near the top of the pile.
Writer: Erik Fredsell
Details: 104 pages

I have a feeling that this script is going to generate some interesting discussion. This is what Erik, the writer, wrote in his query letter: “I’ve asked you to review this script before-about a year ago. I thought it was the most erudite piece of writing that has ever been produced in the history of screenplay writing…I was wrong. I was forced to go back and take a look at it because a producer contacted me about it. The screenplay was filled with superfluous scenes that ate up pages and pages. The dialogue was far too pretentious, and the narrative structure was pedestrian. I spent months redrafting the script. I’ve brought it down to 104 pages from 139.”

First of all, I want to applaud Erik for making these changes. This tends to be one of the more monumental steps amateur screenwriters make in their journey. We all start off believing our scripts are worthy of being 130, 140, and 150 pages. The second we realize that we don’t need all those extra pages, all those extra scenes, and all that extraneous dialogue, is the second we become better storytellers. The problem here is that, even at 104 pages, I’m still seeing a lot of those same problems. There are still extraneous scenes. There is still extraneous dialogue. And there are still traces of pretentiousness. So while I’m guessing this is way better than the previous draft, some pretty significant changes still need to be made.

I know this because, normally, it’s easy for me to summarize a story. But when I have to stop, think about how I’m going to convey things, stumble through the points I need to make, and am constantly trying to remember the plot, that’s an indication that the story was too confusing or too muddled. I’m still not exactly sure what happens in Manchester Black, but I’m going to give it my best shot.

Michael, our main character, is mistaken for somebody involved with the mob – I believe somebody who was supposed to deliver something called a “mandori box.” So the mob takes him and his wife, tortures them to find out where the box is, but since Michael doesn’t know what they’re talking about, they end up killing his wife and leaving him for dead.

We then follow Michael through four very torturous years where he rehabilitates his body, all in preparation to get his revenge on the people who did this. The thing is, we don’t go about this linearly. Nor do we always stay with our protagonist. In fact, the movie starts with us seeing our protagonist enact his revenge, and then we go back in time, bit by bit, to see why he enacted his revenge.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Erik is a huge Quentin Tarantino fan, and I have a strong feeling that he’s going to get bashed by the commenters for it. I mean we have influences from Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill blanketing the script at almost every turn. You have to be careful when paying homage to icons, because if you do so too blatantly, you’re seen as a copycat, and people are just pissed that they have to trudge through a not-as-good version of a far better movie. That’s not to say this is straight Tarantino. I found this script to be darker and less forgiving than Tarantino’s work, sort of Tarantino by way of William Monahan. So Erik does have his own voice. But I’m not sure it shines bright enough to outweigh the clear influences in the screenplay.

Getting back on track, once Michael takes out some of the key men responsible for killing his wife, their mob boss, Vincenzo, orders some of his top hit men to take Michael out. We intermittently cut to these groups of hit men, sometimes on their way to kill Michael, and sometimes just hanging out shooting the shit. Eventually, they all fail, and Vincenzo will have to do the deed himself. Theoretically, this should be easy. He’s one of the top mob bosses is in the city. But Michael has something going for him that none of these men can touch – the desire to avenge his wife’s death.

I have so many things to say about this script, I don’t even know where to start. First of all, I already know what commenters are going to say. They’ll start with the script being overwritten. And they’re right. Here is one of the very first sentences in the screenplay: “Michael, draped in an exanimate black suit, inexorably walks past the eponymously embossed window, towards three thuggish men sitting at a table.” I’m not even sure what half of those words mean.

The reason overwriting is a problem is that it takes the reader’s focus off the screenplay and places it on the writing. Screenplays aren’t a writing contest. They’re a storytelling contest. Outside of Scriptshadow, these words will never be published anywhere. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a walking thesaurus. The goal of writing a story is to bring the reader into your world. If you try to be too flashy or too wordy, you’re constantly pushing the reader out of that world. You want to be visual with your writing, yes, but the second it looks like you’re trying too hard, you’re dead. And it feels like the writing is trying way too hard here.

Second is degree of difficulty. Ambition is good. Trying to do something different is good. But tackling a degree of difficulty higher than your ability level is suicide. We have two things here that make telling this story extremely difficult. The first is an endless character count. The more characters you have, the less time you have to develop your main characters, and the more likely you’re going to have a reader who’s confused as hell about who everybody is. I couldn’t remember half the people here, and even worse, I don’t think a quarter of them were necessary. We’d occasionally jump to characters who didn’t have anything to do with the story. They’d just talk. So that led to a lot of confusion.

The second problem is all the time jumping. Manipulating time is one of the coolest things film allows you to do. But conveying it on the page is way more difficult than conveying it onscreen, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to confuse the hell out of the reader. It took me about 40 pages, for example, to figure out what was going on. A big part of the problem was, I didn’t understand why we were telling this story out of order. I kept thinking to myself, would this lose anything if it were told linearly? It might be more predictable, but it’d certainly be less confusing. So the jumping around felt like a cheap manipulative trick just to make the story different. It’s a better idea to have your time jumping motivated in some way. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is a perfect example. We jump around in time there in order to take advantage of the characters’ memory loss. Stories always work better when choices are motivated.

The thing is, I can understand a guy like Erik’s frustration. There is some serious talent on display here. I’m not an authority on mob flicks, but the dialogue here was pretty damn good. When these guys spoke, I felt like they were really those people – and I don’t often see that in screenplays. Also, he’s well read and intelligent. You can see that intelligence on every page. So here’s this guy, with all this talent, looking out there and seeing scripts like the dumbed down “Nonstop” sell, and wondering, how the hell are these guys making a living at this and I’m not??

Here’s the reason. Because the story has to come before everything. You have to display storytelling skills and not an ability to write random monologues, or crazy characters, or jump around in time a lot. I don’t care how well you describe that stuff, or how different you can be. If it’s not serving the story, if it’s not easy to follow, if it isn’t building the stakes, etc., etc., then it won’t matter. There are pieces of this story that are really good. There are scenes in this story that are really good. But on the whole, it’s a garbled mess. It’s too difficult to follow and has too many unnecessary tangents. Say what you will about Nonstop, but the storyline is always clear, the stakes are always clear, and you can see it as a movie. With Manchester Black, at least in its current form, it’s too hard to follow.

So how would I fix this screenplay? I’d start by cutting the character list by half. It would force you to only use the characters you absolutely needed to tell the story. The next thing I would do is cut out any scene with a monologue in it. I don’t remember a single monologue in this script that was necessary. I’d then focus on the story elements that have the most punch. For example, this mandori box sounds interesting. But it’s essentially treated like the suitcase in Pulp Fiction (another reference people are going to kill you for). Let’s make that box a bigger part of the story. Finally, continue to focus on the components that bring out the most emotion – avenging his wife’s death for example. You do that well here. So I’d continued to feature it in the next draft. Once you strip the movie down, and we don’t have to keep track of so many people, the time jumping should be easier to follow. I’d still like it to be motivated, but I could see it working a lot better if your script were streamlined.

And finally, don’t end your mob movie at a warehouse. That’s where every mob movie ends! :-)

Script link: Manchester Black

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

What I learned: I’m gonna say this again. A scene where all that’s happening is one person giving another person their theory on life is a scene of death. Here’s a monologue from one of the characters on page 49. It happens as two characters we don’t know very well are randomly driving their car somewhere: “You’re talking about evil like it has any inherit meaning beyond its limited definition. My view is that if God is truly omniscient, he can see things from all perspectives. He knows why I do what I do just as well I do. And what is evil but perspective. It isn’t tangible, and there’s always a reason behind it, even if it can’t be seen. Look at it with total honesty-this whole argument. How do we weigh a man’s actions? He provides for his family, gives to charities, volunteers, but one day he murders his wife. You don’t even need to examine his reasoning. Just look at it like this: He built up a lifetime of goodwill, and does one moment negate all he has done throughout his life and make him evil? Same thing goes for terrorists. They’re freedom fighters and liberators to many people. Serial killers-sufferers from severe psychosis. Child molesters, rapists-an outgrowth from years of sexual abuse. There is no evil my friend just perspective.” Well-written? Sure. Does the story lose anything if the scene is erased? No. And that’s the problem. If the scene can be erased and absolutely nothing is lost, you don’t need the scene. Does that mean you should never have a monologue in your screenplay? No. Of course not. But you have to find a way to weave them into the story – to make them matter. Now I didn’t love this scene in The Matrix, but it’s adequate enough to make my point. There’s a scene where Agent Smith has Morpheus chained up to a chair and is trying to get him to give him the codes to Zion. He goes on a rather long monologue about how humans are actually a virus. Let’s apply the same test here. Does the story lose anything if the scene is erased? Yes. One character is trying to obtain highly important information from another character before his friends come and save him. Drop the scene and the movie doesn’t make sense. So you can have monologues in your screenplay. They can even contain philosophical meanderings. But they have to be an essential part of the story to work.

So as you know, I was reading Magic Mike earlier this week and I had a big problem with the lack of conflict. Then came The Insane Laws, which also seemed to miss out on a big opportunity for conflict when it made the competing families too chummy with each other. It reminded me that so few writers remember to add a sufficient amount of conflict or even know how to generate enough conflict in the first place.

That’s partly because the definition of conflict as it pertains to storytelling is misunderstood. Many people think it means two people arguing with each other. That’s one form of conflict. But conflict comes in many shapes and sizes. Skepticism is a form of conflict. Secrets are a form of conflict. Passive aggressiveness is a form of conflict. Differing philosophies is a form of conflict. The definition of conflict in the dictionary is “to come into collision or disagreement; be contradictory, at variance, or in opposition; clash.”

I would expand that to include two opposing forces clashing with one another, trying to resolve themselves. The idea then, is to look for as many places in your script as you can to add those clashing forces. There are three areas where you should be focusing. The first is within the character. Every character becomes more interesting if they’re battling something from within. The second is an interpersonal conflict – a conflict going on between the main two characters in the story. The third is external conflict. That would be any conflict pressuring your character from the outside. So what I decided to do was look at 10 movies, and see how they incorporated these types of conflict. Let’s get started.

Movie: Titanic
Inner Conflict: Rose’s inner conflict is that she hates the life she’s living. She feels trapped. She wants out. This conflict is what drives her to Jack, and ultimately what drives her to change.
Interpersonal conflict: There are several layers of conflict in the central relationship here. The first is class. The two characters belong to different classes, which makes being together impossible. This alone would be sufficient enough conflict, but James Cameron doesn’t stop there. The next element is a difference in philosophies. Jack believes in living in the moment. Rose believes in being prudent and careful about her choices. The next element of conflict is that Rose is engaged. She’s getting married and her husband is right there on the ship. This means that every moment the two characters share with each other must be in secret.
External Conflict: Obviously, you have a ship that’s going to sink. You also have the fiancé constantly trying to separate them. And depending on how you look at it, you can also say that class is an external conflict.

Movie: The King’s Speech
Inner Conflict: The King here doesn’t want to be King. He’s scared of it. He doesn’t believe he’s worthy of wearing the crown.
Interpersonal Conflict: Just like Titanic, the first element of conflict is class. Lionel is just a peasant. The King is, well, the King of England. The reason this conflict is so interesting is because the peasant, in this case, is in charge, the exact opposite of the way this relationship would normally work. On top of that, The King is very regimented and uptight whereas Lionel is relaxed and unorthodox. And finally, The King doesn’t trust Lionel’s methods. So the two are constantly butting heads about his teaching philosophy.
External Conflict: The external conflict here is Hitler threatening to wage war on Europe. This is what forces our main character to act. He has to learn how to speak without a stutter, so he can convince his people as well as the rest of the world to stand up to Germany. Also, there’s the ongoing uncertainty about the throne that’s constantly weighing on our hero.

Movie: Drive
Inner Conflict: Driver doesn’t get close to anybody. He always keeps his distance. You can see this just in the way he operates his getaways. He doesn’t get to know the people. He only drives them. And after that, they never talk again. But where this really starts to affect him is when he starts his relationship with Irene. Caring about somebody is not something he’s used to, so he’s constantly waging a battle within himself.
Interpersonal Conflict: The first element of conflict is that Irene is married. As I’ve already mentioned, this is a common and easy way to add conflict to a relationship. Another element of conflict is that she has a kid. This complicates every decision she makes. If she was alone, she could run off with Driver. But she’s forced to be more prudent, and respect the fact that her child has a father.
External Conflict: The central source of external conflict is the mob, specifically once he obtains the money.

Movie: The Social Network
Inner Conflict: Mark has an unhealthy desire to be liked. This is why he gets jealous when Eduardo gets invited into a fraternity. This is why he’s so conflicted about the breakup with his girlfriend. And this is eventually why he starts Facebook.
Interpersonal Conflict: Mark is unpredictable. Eduardo is practical. Mark wants to do something revolutionary. Eduardo wants to experience college and live life. Mark can be mean. Eduardo is nice. Mark doesn’t want to monetize Facebook. Eduardo thinks it’s essential. Eduardo’s money is what’s funding the operation, causing a slow build of tension beneath the relationship (money owed between friends is always a good source of conflict). Mark wants to move the operation to California. Eduardo doesn’t think it’s a good idea. As you can see, there’s a ton of conflict here.
External Conflict: The duo also has to deal with the Winkelvoss twins suing them, Sean Parker coming between them, and the out-of-control growth of the site.

Movie: The Hangover
Inner Conflict: This is really a three headed protagonist but I would say Stu has the most going on. So for him, his inner conflict is one that’s very familiar in comedies. He doesn’t stand up for himself. He always looks for the path of least resistance. So he’s constantly battling that when everything that happens in this movie pulls him in the opposite direction (getting married to a stripper for example).
Interpersonal Conflict: As a straight comedy, it’s practically required that you make all of your characters different in a way where they conflict with one another. So you have Stu, who’s super careful and practical. You have Phil, who’s reckless and has no morals. And you have the wildcard character, Alan, who’s socially unaware to the point where he’s a danger to both characters. This is also a good time to bring up that conflict is one of the most important components for creating good dialogue. So the reason the dialogue is so fun here is that each character’s personality conflicts with the other characters. This makes every conversation a battle – nothing is easy. If the conversation between characters is too easy for too long in any movie, there’s a good chance that that dialogue is boring.
External Conflict: Needing to find their friend in time for his wedding. Trying to escape a killer who they owe money to. Not being able to remember anything.

Movie: Source Code
Inner Conflict: Colter’s inner conflict is trying to find out what’s happened to him. That’s the unresolved issue here. He needs to find out why he’s on this train.
Interpersonal Conflict: The interpersonal conflict here is pretty unique. Colter is inadvertently impersonating someone Christina knows. This means she’s talking to him as if he’s a good friend of hers, whereas he’s talking to her like he’s never seen her in his life. But the cool thing about Source Code is that the conflict keeps changing every time the train sequence resets. For example, in the next round, he might not bother explaining who he is, since it wastes time. That’s why I love this script so much. The relationship is always out of balance due to how Ben Ripley constructed the conflict.
External conflict: They’re on a train that’s going to blow up in 8 minutes. Colter has to find the bomber. He needs to find out what this mysterious chamber he keeps ending up in is. Tons of conflict in this one.

Movie: Avatar
Inner Conflict: Jake is in a constant tug of war with which side he’s on. Is his alliance to the humans or the Na’vi?
Interpersonal Conflict: Jake is lying to the woman he’s falling for, secretly learning about her people to help the Marines attack them. Jake is dumb and takes everything at face value whereas Neytiri is smart and has a deep understanding of the world around her. Jake is attracted to Neytiri but Neytiri is not attracted to him (at first). Jake is a human and Neytiri is a Na’vi. There’s a tribe member who likes Neytiri, and is jealous of her relationship with Jake. Neytiri is only around Jake because she’s ordered to by her mother. This is why this movie rises above your typical summer action fare. There’s a lot going on with the characters.
External Conflict: The impending war between the humans and the Na’vi. The Marines’ constant pressure to speed up the diplomatic approach. And there’s the planet itself, which is quite dangerous.

Movie: Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Inner Conflict: Joel has ongoing issues with self-doubt and self-worth.
Interpersonal Conflict: Joel is reserved and rational. Clementine is impulsive and a little nuts. Joel wants a stable relationship. Clementine is terrified of stability. The most interesting element of conflict, though, is the one that’s unique to this premise. That comes when Clementine doesn’t know who Joel is anymore. Or when Joel doesn’t know who Clementine is. Or when they don’t know who each other are. This is why this movie is beloved by so many people. Because of its unique and ever-changing conflict (similar in some ways to the way the conflict keeps changing in Source Code).
External Conflict: The interpersonal conflict bleeds into the external conflict here (which as you can see from other examples, sometimes happens) in that the external conflict is each other. Because they’re trying to forget one another, they’re the main exterior antagonizing force. Then later, their fading memories become the main source of external conflict, as they race through their own experiences to try and remember each other.

Movie: Juno
Inner Conflict: Unless I’m missing something, Juno doesn’t have a very strong inner conflict. There are times when she struggles with what she wants to do with the baby, but for the majority of the film, she knows exactly what she wants to do. Maybe this is why some people don’t like this character, because she’s so simplistic.
Interpersonal Conflict: There are a couple of relationships you could choose from here, but I think the most interesting one is Juno and Mark (Jason Bateman). First of all, he’s married. Second of all, he’s twice her age (not to mention she’s underage). She’s naïve whereas he knows what he’s doing. She wishes she were older. He wishes he were younger. She wishes she had his stability He wishes he didn’t have any responsibility. All these tentacles sort of overlap with one another to create an interesting dynamic between the two.
External conflict: The main external source of conflict comes from being a pregnant teenager. Teenagers aren’t supposed to be pregnant. It forces a child to make an adult decision. And because of that, the entire world judges you. Therefore, Juno encounters conflict at almost every turn, albeit through the quirky harmless sensibilities of Diablo Cody.

Movie: Meet The Parents
Inner Conflict: Most of Greg’s internal struggle revolves around honesty – determining whether to tell the truth or not. It’s funny because no matter which route he takes, he always seems to get into more trouble. And because the man he’s trying to impress puts honesty above everything, the stakes of that inner struggle are extremely high.
Interpersonal Conflict: The main relationship here is Greg and Jack. The biggest element of conflict is that Jack doesn’t think Greg is good enough for his daughter. He will go to any length to prove this. Greg, on the other hand, loves Jack’s daughter more than anything. So he will go to any length to make Jack like him. This is the best way to create conflict in a relationship. You put two forces on opposite ends of the spectrum, then have them go at each other. The more in contrast they are, the more entertaining their relationship tends to be.
External conflict: The external conflict is the wedding. That’s what puts Greg in a variety of situations he doesn’t want to be in, which makes achieving his goal that much more difficult.

What I’ve listed for these films aren’t the only forces of conflict – they’re just the most obvious ones. You can find conflict anywhere. For example, you don’t just look to create conflict in the main relationship. You want to create conflict in every relationship the main character has. In Titanic, for example, Rose has a whole different set of conflicts going on with her fiancé. And I didn’t even get into how each scene should have its own element of conflict. The idea is that whatever situation your characters are put in, there needs to be something that’s unresolved – there needs to be two things that are fighting against each other. If you set that up correctly, we’ll be eager to see that sequence get resolved. In the end, it’s important to remember that conflict is a huge part of what keeps a story interesting. Without it, you don’t have much of a shot at entertaining your audience.

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.