“Writing Movies for Fun and Profit” is one of the more interesting books to come along in the screenwriting community in a while. Its authors, the writers of such movies as Night at the Museum and Herbie Fully Loaded, seem to take the opposite approach when it comes to writing than mainstays such as Robert McKee and Blake Snyder. Gone are long chapters on how to develop your characters. Absent is any in-depth look at structure. In their place is a single core piece of advice: Write big fun family “four quadrant” movies and rake in the dollars.

Despite the actual screenwriting advice being some of the worst I’ve ever encountered, the backstage insider look into the business side of screenwriting is nothing short of amazing. Basically, the book tells you what happens after you break into the club. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s interesting, but if you ever wondered what it’s really like to be a working screenwriter or you want to prepare yourself for when you finally make that big jump, this is definitely a book for you.

Before I get into some of the more interesting aspects of the book, I’d like to warn you about its biggest weakness – its unequivocally terrible advice when it comes to writing a screenplay. You see, these guys believe it’s as easy as slapping together a bunch of funny scenes and making a $1 million sale. Let me tell you why they think this and why they’re wrong. As the authors point out in their book, on most big projects there are a lot of writers. Oftentimes, new writers are brought in to beef up the weak portions of the screenplay. So if the dialogue is bad, the producers will bring in writers who are good with dialogue. Once they’re finished, the producers may realize that the structure is sloppy. So they’ll fire the dialogue guys and bring in some structure guys. What our authors seem to understand but not acknowledge is that they’re the “comedy” guys. They’re the writers you bring in when you want jokes. But the between the lines message here – and I’m not even sure our authors are aware of it – is that when the producers want people who actually know how to write a screenplay, who understand the guts, the depth, how to add heart, and all those things that actually make a story resonate with people, they bring in writers who actually know how to write. So while our authors implying that none of that “deep” stuff really matters may be true for their own specific experiences, it has nothing to do with Joe Nobody’s approach to a screenplay. Joe Nobody still has to display an intrinsic understanding of the craft to impress a reader. It would be nice if all you had to do was tell a couple of jokes to make a million bucks. But that’s simply not the case.

The good news is, none of that stuff is the focus of the book. The main focus here is the business end. And I have to give it to these guys. They taught me a hell of a lot about how things work once you’re a highly paid screenwriter. Here are some of the highlights.

OH NO
My favorite chapter (and probably the most terrifying chapter you’ll ever read if you’re a screenwriter) is the one that deals with the authors’ experience writing Herbie: Fully Loaded. Now if you ask me, I’m not jumping up and down begging somebody to let me write another Herbie movie. But hey, everybody’s got their thing. So these guys pitched Herbie to the studio president and she loved it. She thought it was the greatest idea ever and quickly made Herbie the most important movie on the studio’s slate. She then set them up with a producer who basically had zero interest in making a Herbie movie and therefore tried to make a version of what she believed a Herbie movie for people who don’t like Herbie would be like. She then proceeded to make the writers change every single aspect of their story, even though those were all the things the studio fell in love with. And they couldn’t do anything about it. When you’re the writers, you can’t just call the studio president and say, “Hey, this producer is making us change all the things you love.” There is a hierarchy. You’re not allowed to go over anybody’s head. So all they could do was stand on the deck and watch the Titanic sink.

This is what I don’t get about Hollywood. It would seem to me that one of the more important decisions you would make as a president would be to match up a project with a producer who understands and cares about that project. It sounds like a producer was just randomly assigned to these guys. I don’t see how good movies could consistently be made under that process (note to readers: the authors assure us rather proudly that that producer is no longer working in the business). But what should really tickle your noodle is that these guys also wrote Taxi – a movie in which the development process went as smoothly as newly churned butter. Now comparing Herbie to Taxi is kind of like comparing Jersey Shore to Basketball Wives. But in a close race I would still say that Herbie comes out on top. Which begs the question: How much does development really matter?

PITCHING
One of the big changes in your life after your first sale is that you’ll now become a human pitch machine, pitching your own projects or pitching yourself as the best option for someone else’s projects. This is an element of the business that very few people talk about outside of working screenwriters. And these guys do a pretty good job of preparing you for it. Probably the most important advice they give you is that whatever movie you’re pitching should have a main character a movie star will want to play. Because no matter how much movie blogs and Hollywood insiders are trying to convince us that stars no longer matter, the easiest way to get financing and confidence behind a project is to have a movie star attached. They also point out that your idea should be different but shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. It should sound like a cross between two really successful films (they use the example “Die Hard” meets “Home Alone” but I’m pretty sure they were joking – although it’s hard to tell – these are the guys who wrote Taxi remember). The rest of their advice about pitching is rather practical – be excited about your movie, don’t be afraid to act out some of the parts, and keep it short (a typical pitch is 15 min. long). But the point is, this is the part of Hollywood that most screenwriters have no clue about until they’re thrown into the fire. It sure is nice to get a look at the logs before the match is lit.

PAGE LENGTH
One of the more amusing chapters I ran into was in regards to page count and page formatting. For everybody who thinks that the length of their screenplay doesn’t matter, wait till you start writing for a big studio. The studios are so obsessed with page length that they actually have their own specific formatting requirements. They give you specific indents and formatting rules you must enter into your screenwriting software when you write drafts for them. If you turn a script in that doesn’t follow that formatting data, they will chop off your fingers. The reason for this is, obviously, every page is roughly equal to a certain amount of screen time, usually 1 min. And each of the studios have perfected a formatting template that allows them to best measure the length of a movie based on the length of the screenplay. So for those of you freaking out about page length now, wait until you have to start formatting a studio script. That’s when shit gets real.

GETTING PAID
One of the most enlightening chapters in the book is the chapter about getting paid. I can’t tell you how many writers have asked me how much they should expect to make selling their first screenplay, and then, if the screenplay gets made, how much they should expect to make on the back end. These are the details I’ve always wanted answers to and the book goes into as much minutia as I’ve ever seen on the matter. So how much is the minimum one can make from selling a screenplay? The short answer is, the Writers Guild requires a writer be paid at least $110,000 for an original screenplay. However, you aren’t in the Writers Guild. And that means somebody could pay you 200 bucks. Where things get interesting though is on the backend. This is where the writing business gets messy. The reason that those writing credits are so coveted – even on total pieces of shit like Paul Blart 3 – is because as long as you have an official credit on the film, you’ll be getting paid for the rest of your life. All those writers who worked on the script but didn’t get credit? They don’t get diddly squat outside of their rewrite fee.

The fight for that coveted credit has created one of the most highly controversial arbitration processes in any union. Without getting into too much detail, in order to determine who gets the credit on a screenplay, a bunch of your fellow writers read all the drafts from all the people who worked on the project, and decide who to give the credit to. Each writer is also allowed to give a written argument as to why they believe they should get the credit. Oftentimes, credit is given to the writer with the most persuasive argument. So Writer A may have done a lot more work on the screenplay than Writer B, but Writer B came up with a much better argument, so he wins. This has become such an intense process, that there are actually arbiters out there that you can hire for thousands of dollars who’ll write your argument for you to give you the best chance at getting written credit on the film.

This has also led to some really shady practices in the screenwriting community, some of which actually encourage writers to sabotage a good script. If you’re hired to rewrite another writer, and you want to make as much money as possible, it’s in your best interest to rewrite as much of the story as possible, regardless of if that new story is better than the current story. If you know that the movie you’re working on is already getting made, then it’s practically demanded of you to change as much as possible so you can get final credit on the film. This is at least part of the reason why there are a lot of bad movies out there. The system is rigged to encourage writers to change what’s working. There are actually standard tricks of the trade – like changing all of the characters names – to help it look like you’ve written the majority of the story. Arbitration is one of, if not the, most heated topic amongst professional screenwriters. I can’t say I know how to fix it but from the way these guys lay it out, it’s clear that the process is broken. Maybe some savvy Scriptshadow readers have some ideas on how to fix it and can share their ideas in the comments section.

IN SUMMARY
What I’ve highlighted above is just scratching the surface. There are a ton of other topics that the book covers (including how to take notes from Martin Lawrence – well kinda). Despite some of the worst pure screenwriting advice I’ve ever read (please, don’t listen to anything these guys say when it comes to the actual writing), I have to admit that I’ve never seen this kind of insight into the professional plight of a working screenwriter. Not all of us are going to hang on long enough to become screenwriting superstars, but for those of you who are in this for the long haul and expect to be looking at real estate in the Hollywood Hills at some point in your life, you’ll definitely want to read this book. For those who have already bought it, feel free to offer your opinions in the comments section.

Genre: Slow Burn Drama/Thriller/Comedy

Genre: Thriller
Premise: As a pianist readies to play his concert, he is told that if he misses a single note, he will be killed.
About: Chazelle optioned a script last year titled “The Claim.” He went out wide with this spec in June but it didn’t sell (for those counting, roughly 25% of specs that have OFFICIALLY gone out this year have sold). Still, a longtime Scriptshadow reader highly recommended it to me so I thought I’d give it a shot. It’s always interesting to take a look at the professional stuff that *doesn’t* sell, so you can try and determine why.
Writer: Damian Chazelle
Details: 119 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).

When I see ‘thriller’ and I see 120 pages, I don’t immediately think, “Good.” I think “Uh-oh, what’s going on here?” Thrillers are supposed to be taut. They’re supposed to move fast. So why would you create a thriller with all those extra pages? It makes me skeptical. It makes me suspicious. So I went into this one with my guard up.

27-year-old Tom Selznick is flying into Chicago. He’s not doing too well because Tom is a terrified flyer. At least that’s what we think at first. It turns out, however, that Tom is more terrified of what happens after the flight, not during.

Putting together the pieces, we learn that Tom is a pianist. But not just any pianist. One of the top pianists in the entire world. And tonight he’s going to give a concert that will define him for the rest of his life. You see five years ago Tom was at the top of his game. Nobody could touch him. But Tom had a big weakness. Stage fright. At any moment, he could crumble like an old Chips Ahoy cookie. Eventually he couldn’t take the pressure anymore, so he retired and planned on never performing again. But recently, his teacher and mentor died, forcing him out of retirement to give one last concert.

So Tom sets up with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and prepares to perform. Naturally, he’s terrified out of his mind. His girlfriend, Emma, is in the audience, cheering him on. The word around town is not so much, will Tom be great? But will he screw up?

Well Tom’s about to realize that stage fright is the last thing he’ll need to worry about. As he’s getting ready, somebody whispers into his headset, “Play one wrong note and you die.” At first, Tom thinks this is a joke. But our mysterious hidden killer offers a few visual cues which make it clear that this is anything but a joke.

With no time to figure out what the hell is going on, Tom must begin the concert. To make matters worse, our mysterious killer in the shadows is threatening to kill Emma if Tom tries anything funny. So not only must Tom play a piece that’s already impossible and not miss a single note, he must save his girlfriend.

Also of note, is that Tom is playing on his mentor’s old piano. And his mentor was like a billionaire or something. I don’t think I need to put two and two together for you. Clearly, there’s likely something very important inside that piano that our mysterious killer wants.

Okay.

I want to make clear that I have nothing against the writer here. But Grand Piano didn’t work for me on pretty much any level. And it all came back to the concept. If your concept is flawed, it doesn’t matter what you write afterwards, because the audience already doesn’t believe in your story. The concept here is preposterous. I don’t know any other way to put it. We are to believe (spoilers) that, first of all, a man would lock his money inside of a grand piano, then set up a complicated locking system in which the only way to get the money would be to play the most impossible to play piano piece in the world.

That alone is difficult to buy. But then we’re also to believe, that in order to steal this money, a man would hide in the shadows of a concert and hold the piano player at gunpoint, telling him if he messes up he will be killed.

So let me get this straight. In order to coerce someone who’s notorious for screwing up under pressure into playing the perfect piece, you tell him that if he screws up, he’ll die? I don’t know how that makes sense.

I mean, wouldn’t the far easier method be to get the piano alone, break it open, and steal the makeshift safe that’s inside? Then you could have a month, two months, six months, however long you wanted, to break the thing open. If you have the resources to break in to an auditorium and set up a gun in a hiding place, I’m sure getting the piano alone wouldn’t be too difficult.

The thing is, even if you buy into this, the events that follow become even more absurd. At one point, the red targeting laser from the killer’s gun is plastered on Tom’s forehead. Nobody seems to notice. At another point, Tom is playing with his right hand while texting on his phone with his left hand. Not only does the audience not seem to notice this, but the person who is obsessively watching his every move doesn’t seem to see it either. Finally, during the entire concert, Tom is talking back and forth with the killer into his headset microphone, and nobody in the audience seems to notice. I don’t see how these logic problems can just be swept under the rug and treated as if they’re not happening. There’s no way any of this goes unnoticed.

When you write a story, there are going to be leaps of logic, sure, but if those leaps are too big and too numerous, it becomes impossible to believe in the story. It seems like every choice here is a choice that would never happen in the real world. And I couldn’t ignore that.

I don’t think the characters were well thought through either. For example, if Tom is known for his extreme choking, how is he the most famous pianist in the world? It seems like the writer is trying to have it both ways. He needs the pianist to be great so that the concert can be big, but he also needs him to be a bumbling moron to add tension to his goal. I just don’t know how you can be one of the top three pianists in the world and also be blatantly incapable.

The friend characters were also a problem. They weren’t even Tom’s friends. They were Emma’s friends. So when Tom sends out a text to these non-friends for help, we feel like we’re jumping into another story. We don’t even know these guys. They don’t even know our hero. So we have no feelings towards them one way or another as they sort of try to save Tom.

Topping this all off, I’m going to jump back to my first concern, the length of the screenplay itself. No thriller. None. Should be 120 pages. Of all the genres you can write, the one that you cannot come up with a legitimate excuse for needing 120 pages to tell is the thriller. A thriller is supposed to thrill. It needs to move. If it’s a sentence over 105 pages, you’re probably doing something wrong. Either you’re including scenes you don’t need to include, or you’re repeating beats that don’t need to be repeated. The only reason for a thriller to be a bit on the meaty side is if you’re adding character development. And there isn’t any character development here in Grand Piano.

I’m probably beating up Grand Piano too much. The thing is, I can see why an agent or manager in theory would go out with this script. It does have something happening. There is a story here. It’s intense. This isn’t some self-indulgent semi-autobiographical piece about a twentysomething trying to figure out his life. At least there’s a story.

But I just don’t think the concept, in its current form, is believable enough for people to suspend their disbelief. Maybe if you create a more traditional story throughout the first two thirds of the screenplay and then make the concert, which we’ve been leading up to, the climax, there might be something there. But you have to totally rethink this idea that a man has to play a perfect concert in order to unlock a secret piano safe. I just don’t see how that works.

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

What I learned: It’s very important you put yourself in your villain’s shoes and ask the question, “If I was this person, would this be my plan?” Ask yourself if the plan makes sense. Ask yourself if there are better options. If there are better options, then why would you use this option? If you don’t have a good enough reason for using the least efficient option, then you probably need to rework your story. Because you can bet that the reader and the audience are going to be asking that same question. “Why wouldn’t he just do this instead?” The closer your plan mirrors reality, the more likely it is that the audience will buy into it.

Genre: Drama/Serial Killer
Premise: A small town serial killer accidentally becomes a hero when he saves the sheriff.
About: This script has not sold. I’m not even sure it’s gone out to anyone yet. The writer is new. I don’t know much more about it.
Writer: Dan Southard
Details: 105 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).

This one came to me mysteriously and without much information. I can only say that the person who sent it to me had previously sent me one of my favorite scripts. So I knew at the very least it would be solid.

But before I get to the review, a little trip down memory lane first. Take note of today’s genre. Serial killer. Serial killer falls within the group of genres that you absolutely HAVE to do something different with if you want your spec to survive in the spec jungle. Seven was a great movie but it also seemed to collectively destroy every ounce of writer creativity when it came to serial killer flicks. You need to find another angle into your story if you’re going to write one of these.

One way to go about that is to tell the story through the serial killer’s eyes, as Company does here. Stan is a lonely farmer approaching middle age, just minding his own business and trying to farm his own land. He lost both of his parents awhile back and that’s made this lightning rod of social awkwardness even more socially awkward. You’d have a better chance striking up a conversation with a pot of coffee than you would old Stan.

Stan also has a secret. He’s a killer. His victims of choice are hookers, who he finds in the nearby city. He brings them home, entertains them for awhile, and then he kills them. As if that isn’t bad enough, he preps the bodies, clothes them, and keeps them around so they can keep him “company.” The conversations are noticeably one-sided, but you get the feeling that’s okay with Stan.

After awhile, Stan realizes that the half life for a decaying body isn’t very long and therefore enrolls in some taxidermy lessons. It’s there where he meets Sandra Laird, the daughter of the taxidermist who’s quite beautiful except for the fact that half her face is paralyzed. Hey, beggars can’t be choosers. At first Stan resists Sandra’s approaches, but after awhile they start spending time together.

In the meantime, there’s some really nasty bank robber tearing through the state, leaving a bit of a body count in his wake. Definitely not a guy you’d accept a Facebook friend request from. By chance, before raiding Stan’s town, he runs into Stan, and is kind of a dick to him. Bad move. Stan follows him into town, and when the guy gets the upper hand on the town sheriff and is preparing to kill him, Stan flies out of nowhere to take him out.

Yay!

Or wait. Yay?

Word spreads quickly of Stan’s heroics. But of course when you’ve got three dead hookers stashed in your basement, the last thing you want is attention. So Stan tries to downplay the whole ordeal, but soon he’s got the mayor himself at his doorstep asking if he’ll accept an award in front of the town. Combined with the escalating relationship with Sandra, the violently private Stan is going to have to make a big decision about whether he’s going to move on from the secret life he’s been living or go back to his very unique form of “company.”

I liked Company. I hope I don’t find myself in Stan’s company anytime soon, but I liked this script. Here’s the cool thing about it. Southard puts you in the company of a killer. That’s your protagonist. So from the very first page, you’re being challenged. We’ve been in this position before, most notably with Norman Bates, but Norman was at least charming. I’m not sure Stan would recognize charm if Robert Pattinson himself showed up at his door.

Still, Southard manages to pepper Stan with little sympathetic traits here and there. He’s all alone. He lost his parents. He’s been an outcast since he was a kid. So you’re being pulled both ways. You know you should hate the guy, but in the weirdest way, you’re sorta rooting for him.

A clever trick Southard uses to help you get over the fact that our hero is a killer is actually the opposite of what I recommend doing under normal circumstances. Normally, you’d want your audience to know as much as possible about the killer’s victims. The more we know about them, the more we’ll want them to be saved. But here, since the sympathy lies with the killer, Southard doesn’t let us know anything about the victims. This way, we’re not really torn up when Stan kills them.

But the script’s biggest strengths are obviously the two dilemmas it puts its main character in. First in Stan’s relationship with Sandra, and then when he saves the sheriff. I bring it up all the time, but irony is one of your best friends in a screenplay. It’s hard to wrap your head around a heroic serial killer. Those two things don’t go together. So you’re compelled to see where it goes. Likewise with Sandra. What happens when someone with three dead girlfriends gets a real one?

The drama then comes from these two entities pushing Stan further and further out of his comfort zone to a decision he doesn’t want to make. Our interest comes from knowing that sooner or later, those two worlds (his secret world and the real one) will have to collide. And because each world is so extreme, it’s going to be quite an explosion.

The script’s biggest weakness and the reason it’s only getting a worth the read though is its ending. That big explosion I was just talking about? The one that was driving my interest for a good 80 pages? It didn’t happen. In fact, I’m not sure what happened. Sometimes writers just try and get too clever and I think that’s what happened here because not only did the ending not live up to everything that came before it, but it wasn’t even clearly stated. That was frustrating.

Company also suffers the effects of having such an introverted protagonist. When your hero doesn’t talk much, the writer has to work overtime to come up with ANY sort of interesting dialogue when the hero’s involved. Predictably then, Stan’s one and two word responses get old fast, and the Sandra scenes sort of get stuck in limbo as a result. It’s tough because you have to stay true to the character but it is at the expense of the scenes. That’s why I always say, if you’re going to use an introverted hero, know what you’re getting into. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Norman Bates is so charming and talkative. They knew that his scenes would be a lot more interesting for it. Again, I’m not saying this was a script-killing decision. There was enough conflict here to overcome Stan’s quiet personality. It just made for some stale scenes is all.

However, there’s still enough good here to celebrate both the script and the arrival of Dan Southard. I see this making the lower half of this year’s Black List easy.

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

What I learned: When sizing up a romantic interest for your main character, always be realistic. Yes, in the world of movies, everyone looks like a male or female version of Zac Efron. But in reality, the chilling socially awkward ogre-looking guy probably isn’t going to end up with Megan Fox. Southard does a good job here of mixing Sandra’s beauty with a slight deformity, making it a lot more realistic that she would gravitate towards Stan. Your characters’ appearance, just like everything in a screenplay, needs to be in service to the story.

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: When a male skeleton holding a gun is found inside the fossilized remains of a T-Rex, a young paleontologist must get to the bottom of how it happened.
HOW TO SUBMIT: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted in the review (feel free to keep your identity and script title private by providing an alias and fake title).
Writer: Darren Howell
Details: 115 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).

Finally! We get some high concept action up in this joint!

Strap on your jetpacks tadpoles. This is about to get loopy.

Paleontologist or fossil-seeker (whatever you call them) Dr. Rosy Kean, has just made a major discovery. An entire T-Rex fossil buried in the ground. But that’s not all. This T-Rex has inside of its “stomach” a skeleton – a skeleton of a man. A skeleton of a man with a GUN. Uh-huh. Yeah. Things just got interesting.

So Rosy calls up her old flame – used to be FBI agent, now a security guard – Danny Wallace, to get a match on the gun. Danny looks up the serial number and guess what? It’s the same serial number as HIS CURRENT GUN. Naturally, Danny thinks this is all a joke and doesn’t really pay attention to it. Especially because there are other things going on in the world. Like in Iran where a 9.2 earthquake just rocked one of their nuclear facilities.

Anyway, Rosy gets a call from her old friend Cassandra Wallace, the richest woman in the world (who also happens to be Danny’s mother) who wants her to come back to the U.S. ASAP. She’s got something she wants to tell her.

Rosy does, but in the meantime, all over the world, there are these strange “gravity bumps” where everything jolts out of place. Certainly there’s gotta be something going on here. And Danny wants to get to the bottom of it. But when an oil tanker falls out of the sky into the middle of New York, that’s when it gets really bad. People need answers now.

Danny does some digging and eventually finds out that the government has some sort of secret new weapon they’re working on that creates controllable black holes. I mean, screw nuclear weapons. That’s old school. If you can control black holes, you could decimate anything. Then afterwards you just close them back up. The question is, where do these black holes end? Where are they sending this stuff back to?

Eventually Rosy, Danny, and Cassandra all meet up and – and this is where my understanding of what happens gets a little shaky – decide that Danny’s going to go back in time where these black holes are sending all this stuff to. He does (spoilers), which is where he meets his fate with the dinosaur. We then jump forward to 1960, where we find out the truth behind who Cassandra really is, and the mystery behind her tremendous wealth.

Whoa. First Man On Earth indeed.

Initial thoughts on this one? Intriguing. Exciting. But messy. I mean, this script explores a TON of ideas. But it makes a mistake a lot of writers make early on. Trying to throw everything and the kitchen sink into their story. A looming world war isn’t enough. It has to be a world war with wormholes and time travel and ships falling out of the sky. I actually liked some of this stuff because it was unique. But the truth is, there was too much going on.

I’m reminded of what happened with Good Will Hunting’s development. The original script for that had Will Hunting on the run with the government chasing him and a bunch of thriller craziness. But the producers told them, “Whoa, let’s slow this down. It looks like you have some better characters here than you’re giving yourself credit for.” Subsequent drafts concentrated more on the relationships between the characters and the movie went on to win a screenwriting Oscar.

I would suggest some of that here, but maybe not to the degree that they did it. I think the time travel stuff is intriguing and reveals an interesting final twist. But I’m not sure I like all the wormhole this and wormhole that and quantum physics breakdown and boats falling out of skies and Russia and China joining forces and U.S. secret weapons. That stuff is cool if you’re making a Roland Emmerich movie, but I think this has the potential to be more. The strange triangle relationship between Danny, Rosy, and Cassandra can be mined for more drama. Then build a simpler story around that. You don’t lose much because you still have your high concept (time travel). Yet now your story doesn’t seem like it’s cluttered or trying too hard. I mean, I’m still not sure why the hell we started this movie in Iran.

I’m also not sure the FBI angle works. I would stay consistent with the movie’s hook. Make Danny some kind of scientist, like Rosy.

This script had other issues as well. Sometimes we can be so focused on giving our characters problems and flaws, that we just throw something in there cause it checks the box. Danny hating his mother because she gives him “too much love” may be the dumbest reason for a relationship disconnect ever. Even if it were realistic, the fact that Danny’s droning on about how difficult it is to have someone love him so much is not only stupid, but it makes him look like a total asshole. I can somewhat understand why this was used after the twist was revealed, but it creates too much frustration for the reader in the 90-some pages leading up to the twist to justify its use.

I also thought the Mallinson storyline (Mallinson is a character who tries to take credit for the T-Rex discovery) was too on-the-nose, had no story value, and crumbled under the weight of how “cliché bad guy” Mallinson was. I couldn’t understand why we were spending so much time with him. Our villains needed to be direct adversaries of Rosy and Danny. Not 10,000 miles away.

Speaking of, the fact that the T-Rex discovery was off in a different place than was the rest of the story gave me the uncomfortablies. Almost like the writer wanted to get the dinosaur hook in, then get to the U.S. as soon as possible. If there’s any way to keep the story more centralized, I’d recommend that. For example, if Danny and Cassandra were flown over there as opposed to the other way around, and everything took place in a nearby foreign city, sort of like how the bulk of Raiders takes place in Cairo, I’d recommend that. I just don’t like jumping all over the world unless it’s absolutely necessary. And these characters didn’t absolutely need to be in the U.S. Especially if you get rid of all that FBI stuff.

Another big issue here is over-information. And this often happens when you’re throwing everything and the kitchen sink at your story. At a certain point, there’s just too much to explain. And that this script felt part Quantum Physics course was not a good omen for a story that already had to explain the connection between current black holes and the extinction of the dinosaurs, as well as why China and Russia were turning into one big super-country.

Here’s the thing. Sometimes we feel like we have to “prove” to the reader that we’ve researched this or know what we’re talking about, so we dedicate pages upon pages of characters spouting out boring exposition as to how the whole thing works. It’s good to do research, but always remember that you’re entertaining your audience first. Tell them what they need to know but nothing more – ESPECIALLY if you already have a ton of other crazy shit you have to explain.

I can’t give this script a “worth the read” because it’s too sloppy and there’s too much going on and I’m not sure all the parts fit together. But I will say this is a great concept to be working with for a spec script. It’s going to get the writer reads. And if Darren can find the story somewhere inside of all this madness, First Man On Earth has a chance of becoming something really good. I believe that.

Script link: First Man On Earth

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me (very close to worth the read)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Beware of the residual effects of an exposition heavy movie. You become so satisfied with making everything make sense, that you don’t realize you’re having to jam character backstory in all the way down on page 84 (with Rosy). This is a direct result of not having anywhere to put this stuff earlier, where it should be. This is the same reason why we know nothing about any of the characters in Inception besides Cobb, and thus why they feel so empty. So much time needed to be spent on explaining the never-ending rules of dream-navigation that there wasn’t any time left for character development. Only give us the information/explanation we need and nothing more.