Because my original Aliens post is still somewhere in Blogger’s belly, I’m reposting it until they belch it back up. Unfortunately, that means that the previous comments won’t show up here, and any new comments you post won’t show up when I bring back the original post. But for reading purposes, here you go. :) (thank Clint Clark for getting this for me)
Aliens is, quite simply, awesome. It’s one of those movies that works if you’re 15 or you’re 35. It’s got action. It’s got mystery. It’s got emotion. And it’s in the running for best sequel ever. When I give notes, there’s no movie I reference more than this one. I’ve been known to bring up Aliens while consulting on a romantic comedy. That’s how rich it is in screenwriting advice. Now I could sit here and whine that “Studios just don’t make summer movies like this anymore.” But the truth is, they’ve never made these kinds of summer movies consistently – movies with depth, movies with thought, movies where the story takes precedence over the effects. But when they do, it’s probably the best moviegoing experience you can have. So, keeping that in mind, here are ten screenwriting lessons you can learn from one of the best summer movies of all time.
KILL YOUR BABIES
Listening in on the director’s commentary of Aliens, you find out that Aliens was originally 30 minutes longer, as it included an extra early sequence of the LV-426 colonists being attacked by the aliens. Under the gun to deliver a 2 hour and 10 minute film, Cameron reluctantly cut the sequence at the last second, and wow did it make a difference. Without it, there was more build-up to the aliens, more suspense, more anticipation. We were practically bursting with every peek around a corner, every blip of the radar. Now Cameron only figured this out AFTER he shot the unnecessary footage, but let this be a lesson to all of us screenwriters. Sometimes you gotta get rid of the things you love in order to make the story better. Always ask yourself, “Is this scene/sequence really necessary to tell the story?” You might be surprised by the answer.
NOT EVERY FILM NEEDS A LOVE STORY
There’s a temptation to insert a love story into every movie you write, especially big popcorn movies, since the studios are trying to draw from every “quadrant” possible and therefore need a female love interest to bring in the female demographic. But there are certain stories where no matter what you do, it won’t fit. And if you’ve written one of those stories, don’t try to force it, because we’ll be able to tell. I thought Cameron handled this issue perfectly in Aliens. He knew a love story in this setting wasn’t going to fly, so instead he created “love story light,” between Ripley and Hicks, where we see them flirting, where we can tell that in another situation, they might have worked. But it never goes any further than that because tonally, and story-wise, he knew we wouldn’t have accepted it.
ALWAYS MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR YOUR CHARACTERS
As I’ve stated here many times before, one of the most potent tools a screenwriter possesses is the ability to make things worse for their characters. In action movies, that usually means escalating danger whenever possible. Aliens has one of the most memorable examples of this, when our characters are moving towards the central hub of the station, looking for the colonists, and Ripley realizes that, because they’re sitting on a nuclear reactor, they can’t fire their guns. The Captain informs his Lieutenant that he needs to collect all of the soldiers’ ammo (followed by one of the greatest movie lines ever “What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?”), and now, with our marines moving towards the nest of one of the most dangerous species in the universe, they must take them on WITHOUT FIREPOWER. Always make things worse for your characters!
USE YOUR MID-POINT TO CHANGE THE GAME
Something needs to happen at your midpoint that shifts the dynamic of the story, preferably making things worse for your characters. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of your second half feeling a lot like your first half, and that’s going to lead to boredom for the reader. In Aliens, their objective, once they realize what they’re up against, is to get up to the main ship and nuke the base. The mid-point, then, is when their pick-up ship crashes, leaving them stranded on the planet. Note how this forces them to reevaluate their plan, creating a second half that’s structurally different from the first one (the first half is about going in and kicking ass, the second half is about getting out and staying alive).
GET YOUR HERO OUT THERE DOING SHIT – KEEP THEM ACTIVE
Cameron had a tough task ahead of him when he wrote this script. Ripley, his hero, is on the bottom of the ranking totem pole. How, then, do you believably prop her up to become the de facto Captain of the mission? The answer lies inside one of the most important rules in screenwriting: You need to look for any opportunity to keep your hero active. Remember, THIS IS YOUR HERO. They need to be driving the story whenever possible. Cameron does this in subtle ways at first. While watching the marines secure the base, Ripley grabs a headset and makes them check out an acid hole. She then voices her frustration when she doesn’t believe the base to be secured. Then, of course, comes the key moment, when the Captain has a meltdown and she takes control of the tank-car and saves the soldiers herself. The important thing to remember is: Always look for ways to keep your hero active. If they’re in the backseat for too long, we’ll forget about them.
MOVE YOUR STORY ALONG
Beginning writers make this mistake constantly. They add numerous scenes between key plot points that don’t move the story forward. Bad move. You have to move from plot point to plot point quickly. Take a look at the first act here. We get the early boardroom scene where Ripley is informed that colonists have moved onto LV-426. In the very next scene, Burke and the Captain come to Ripley’s quarters to inform her that they’ve lost contact with LV-426. You don’t need 3 scenes of fluff between those two scenes. Just keep the story moving. Get your character(s) to where they need to be (in this case – to LV-426).
THE MORE UNLIKELY THE ACTION, THE MORE CONVINCING THE MOTIVATION MUST BE
You always have to have a reason – a motivation – for your character’s actions. If a character is super happy and loves life, it’s not going to make sense to an audience if they step in front of a bus and kill themselves. You need to motivate their actions. In addition to this, the more unlikely the action, the more convincing the motivation needs to be. So here, Burke wants Ripley to come with them to LV-426 as an advisor. Answer me this. Why the hell would Ripley put herself in jeopardy AGAIN after everything that just happened to her – what with the death of her entire crew, her almost biting it, and barely escaping a concentrated acid filled monster? The motivation here has to be pretty strong. Well, because the military holds Ripley responsible for their destroyed ship, she’s basically been relegated to peasant status for the rest of her life. Burke promises to get her job back as officer if she comes and helps them. That’s a motivation we can buy.
STRONG FATAL FLAW – RARE FOR A SUMMER MOVIE
What I loved about Aliens was that Cameron gave Ripley a fatal flaw. Usually, you don’t see this in a big summer action movie. Producers see it as too much effort for not enough payoff. But giving the main character of your action film an arc – and I’m not talking a cheap arc like alcoholism – is exactly what’s made movies like Aliens stand the test of time while all those other summer movies have faded away. So what is Ripley’s flaw? Trust. Or lack of it. Ripley doesn’t trust Burke. She doesn’t trust this mission. She doesn’t trust the marines. And she especially doesn’t trust Bishop, which is where the key sequences in this character arc play out. In the end, Ripley overcomes her flaw by trusting Bishop to come back and get them. This is why the moment when she and Newt make it to the top of the base is so powerful. For a moment, she was right. Bishop left them there. She never should’ve trusted him. Of course the ship appears at the last second and her arc is complete. She was, indeed, right to leave her trust in someone.
SEQUENCE DOMINATED MOVIE
One way to keep your movie moving is to break it down into sequences. Each sequence should act as a mini-movie. That means there should be a goal for each specific sequence. In the end, the characters either achieve their goal or fail at it, and we then move on to the next sequence. Let’s look at how Aliens does this. Once they’re on LV-426, the goal is to go in and figure out what the fuck is going on (new sequence). Once they find the colony empty, their goal shifts to finding out where the colonists are (new sequence). After that ends with them getting attacked by aliens, their goal becomes get off this rock and nuke the colony (new sequence). Once that fails, their goal becomes secure all passageways so the aliens can’t get to them (new sequence). Once that’s taken care of, the goal is to find a way back up to the ship (new sequence). Because there’s always a goal in place, the story is always moving. Our characters are always DOING SOMETHING (staying ACTIVE). The sequence approach is by no means a requirement, but I’ve found it to be pretty invaluable for action movies.
ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS (SHOW DON’T TELL!)
Aliens has one of the best climax fights in the history of cinema (“Get away from her you BITCH.”) And the reason it works so well? Because it was set up earlier, when Ripley shows the marines she’s capable of operating a loader (“Where do you want it?” she asks). Ahh, but I have a little surprise for you. Go pop Aliens in and fast-forward it to the early scene where Burke first comes to recruit Ripley. THIS is actually the first moment where the final fight is set up. “I heard you’re working the cargo docks,” Burke offers, smugly. “Running forklifts and loaders and that sort of thing?” It’s a quick line and I bring it up for an important reason. I bet none of you caught that line. Even if you’ve watched the film five or six times. That line probably slipped right by you. And the significance of it slipping by you is the point of this tip. You should always SHOW instead of TELL. When we SEE Ripley on that loader, it resonates. When we hear it in a line, it “slips right by us.” Had we never physically seen Riply on that loader, and Cameron had depended instead on Burke’s quick line of dialogue? There’s no way that final battle plays as well as it does. Always show. Never tell.
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT
I actually had 15 more tips, but contrary to popular belief, I do have a life, so those will have to wait for another day. I do have a question for all Aliens nerds out there though. How do they pull off the Loader special effects? I know in some cases it’s stop motion. And in other cases, Cameron says there’s a really strong person behind the loader, moving it. But there are certain shots when you can see the loader from the side that aren’t stop motion and nobody’s behind it. So how the hell does it still look so real? I mean, these are 1986 special effects we’re talking about here! Tune in next week where I give you 10 tips on what NOT to do via the disaster that was Alien 3.
Because my original Aliens post is still somewhere in Blogger’s belly, I’m reposting it until they belch it back up. Unfortunately, that means that the previous comments won’t show up here, and any new comments you post won’t show up when I bring back the original post. But for reading purposes, here you go. :) (thank Clint Clark for getting this for me)
Aliens is, quite simply, awesome. It’s one of those movies that works if you’re 15 or you’re 35. It’s got action. It’s got mystery. It’s got emotion. And it’s in the running for best sequel ever. When I give notes, there’s no movie I reference more than this one. I’ve been known to bring up Aliens while consulting on a romantic comedy. That’s how rich it is in screenwriting advice. Now I could sit here and whine that “Studios just don’t make summer movies like this anymore.” But the truth is, they’ve never made these kinds of summer movies consistently – movies with depth, movies with thought, movies where the story takes precedence over the effects. But when they do, it’s probably the best moviegoing experience you can have. So, keeping that in mind, here are ten screenwriting lessons you can learn from one of the best summer movies of all time.
KILL YOUR BABIES
Listening in on the director’s commentary of Aliens, you find out that Aliens was originally 30 minutes longer, as it included an extra early sequence of the LV-426 colonists being attacked by the aliens. Under the gun to deliver a 2 hour and 10 minute film, Cameron reluctantly cut the sequence at the last second, and wow did it make a difference. Without it, there was more build-up to the aliens, more suspense, more anticipation. We were practically bursting with every peek around a corner, every blip of the radar. Now Cameron only figured this out AFTER he shot the unnecessary footage, but let this be a lesson to all of us screenwriters. Sometimes you gotta get rid of the things you love in order to make the story better. Always ask yourself, “Is this scene/sequence really necessary to tell the story?” You might be surprised by the answer.
NOT EVERY FILM NEEDS A LOVE STORY
There’s a temptation to insert a love story into every movie you write, especially big popcorn movies, since the studios are trying to draw from every “quadrant” possible and therefore need a female love interest to bring in the female demographic. But there are certain stories where no matter what you do, it won’t fit. And if you’ve written one of those stories, don’t try to force it, because we’ll be able to tell. I thought Cameron handled this issue perfectly in Aliens. He knew a love story in this setting wasn’t going to fly, so instead he created “love story light,” between Ripley and Hicks, where we see them flirting, where we can tell that in another situation, they might have worked. But it never goes any further than that because tonally, and story-wise, he knew we wouldn’t have accepted it.
ALWAYS MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR YOUR CHARACTERS
As I’ve stated here many times before, one of the most potent tools a screenwriter possesses is the ability to make things worse for their characters. In action movies, that usually means escalating danger whenever possible. Aliens has one of the most memorable examples of this, when our characters are moving towards the central hub of the station, looking for the colonists, and Ripley realizes that, because they’re sitting on a nuclear reactor, they can’t fire their guns. The Captain informs his Lieutenant that he needs to collect all of the soldiers’ ammo (followed by one of the greatest movie lines ever “What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?”), and now, with our marines moving towards the nest of one of the most dangerous species in the universe, they must take them on WITHOUT FIREPOWER. Always make things worse for your characters!
USE YOUR MID-POINT TO CHANGE THE GAME
Something needs to happen at your midpoint that shifts the dynamic of the story, preferably making things worse for your characters. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of your second half feeling a lot like your first half, and that’s going to lead to boredom for the reader. In Aliens, their objective, once they realize what they’re up against, is to get up to the main ship and nuke the base. The mid-point, then, is when their pick-up ship crashes, leaving them stranded on the planet. Note how this forces them to reevaluate their plan, creating a second half that’s structurally different from the first one (the first half is about going in and kicking ass, the second half is about getting out and staying alive).
GET YOUR HERO OUT THERE DOING SHIT – KEEP THEM ACTIVE
Cameron had a tough task ahead of him when he wrote this script. Ripley, his hero, is on the bottom of the ranking totem pole. How, then, do you believably prop her up to become the de facto Captain of the mission? The answer lies inside one of the most important rules in screenwriting: You need to look for any opportunity to keep your hero active. Remember, THIS IS YOUR HERO. They need to be driving the story whenever possible. Cameron does this in subtle ways at first. While watching the marines secure the base, Ripley grabs a headset and makes them check out an acid hole. She then voices her frustration when she doesn’t believe the base to be secured. Then, of course, comes the key moment, when the Captain has a meltdown and she takes control of the tank-car and saves the soldiers herself. The important thing to remember is: Always look for ways to keep your hero active. If they’re in the backseat for too long, we’ll forget about them.
MOVE YOUR STORY ALONG
Beginning writers make this mistake constantly. They add numerous scenes between key plot points that don’t move the story forward. Bad move. You have to move from plot point to plot point quickly. Take a look at the first act here. We get the early boardroom scene where Ripley is informed that colonists have moved onto LV-426. In the very next scene, Burke and the Captain come to Ripley’s quarters to inform her that they’ve lost contact with LV-426. You don’t need 3 scenes of fluff between those two scenes. Just keep the story moving. Get your character(s) to where they need to be (in this case – to LV-426).
THE MORE UNLIKELY THE ACTION, THE MORE CONVINCING THE MOTIVATION MUST BE
You always have to have a reason – a motivation – for your character’s actions. If a character is super happy and loves life, it’s not going to make sense to an audience if they step in front of a bus and kill themselves. You need to motivate their actions. In addition to this, the more unlikely the action, the more convincing the motivation needs to be. So here, Burke wants Ripley to come with them to LV-426 as an advisor. Answer me this. Why the hell would Ripley put herself in jeopardy AGAIN after everything that just happened to her – what with the death of her entire crew, her almost biting it, and barely escaping a concentrated acid filled monster? The motivation here has to be pretty strong. Well, because the military holds Ripley responsible for their destroyed ship, she’s basically been relegated to peasant status for the rest of her life. Burke promises to get her job back as officer if she comes and helps them. That’s a motivation we can buy.
STRONG FATAL FLAW – RARE FOR A SUMMER MOVIE
What I loved about Aliens was that Cameron gave Ripley a fatal flaw. Usually, you don’t see this in a big summer action movie. Producers see it as too much effort for not enough payoff. But giving the main character of your action film an arc – and I’m not talking a cheap arc like alcoholism – is exactly what’s made movies like Aliens stand the test of time while all those other summer movies have faded away. So what is Ripley’s flaw? Trust. Or lack of it. Ripley doesn’t trust Burke. She doesn’t trust this mission. She doesn’t trust the marines. And she especially doesn’t trust Bishop, which is where the key sequences in this character arc play out. In the end, Ripley overcomes her flaw by trusting Bishop to come back and get them. This is why the moment when she and Newt make it to the top of the base is so powerful. For a moment, she was right. Bishop left them there. She never should’ve trusted him. Of course the ship appears at the last second and her arc is complete. She was, indeed, right to leave her trust in someone.
SEQUENCE DOMINATED MOVIE
One way to keep your movie moving is to break it down into sequences. Each sequence should act as a mini-movie. That means there should be a goal for each specific sequence. In the end, the characters either achieve their goal or fail at it, and we then move on to the next sequence. Let’s look at how Aliens does this. Once they’re on LV-426, the goal is to go in and figure out what the fuck is going on (new sequence). Once they find the colony empty, their goal shifts to finding out where the colonists are (new sequence). After that ends with them getting attacked by aliens, their goal becomes get off this rock and nuke the colony (new sequence). Once that fails, their goal becomes secure all passageways so the aliens can’t get to them (new sequence). Once that’s taken care of, the goal is to find a way back up to the ship (new sequence). Because there’s always a goal in place, the story is always moving. Our characters are always DOING SOMETHING (staying ACTIVE). The sequence approach is by no means a requirement, but I’ve found it to be pretty invaluable for action movies.
ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS (SHOW DON’T TELL!)
Aliens has one of the best climax fights in the history of cinema (“Get away from her you BITCH.”) And the reason it works so well? Because it was set up earlier, when Ripley shows the marines she’s capable of operating a loader (“Where do you want it?” she asks). Ahh, but I have a little surprise for you. Go pop Aliens in and fast-forward it to the early scene where Burke first comes to recruit Ripley. THIS is actually the first moment where the final fight is set up. “I heard you’re working the cargo docks,” Burke offers, smugly. “Running forklifts and loaders and that sort of thing?” It’s a quick line and I bring it up for an important reason. I bet none of you caught that line. Even if you’ve watched the film five or six times. That line probably slipped right by you. And the significance of it slipping by you is the point of this tip. You should always SHOW instead of TELL. When we SEE Ripley on that loader, it resonates. When we hear it in a line, it “slips right by us.” Had we never physically seen Riply on that loader, and Cameron had depended instead on Burke’s quick line of dialogue? There’s no way that final battle plays as well as it does. Always show. Never tell.
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT
I actually had 15 more tips, but contrary to popular belief, I do have a life, so those will have to wait for another day. I do have a question for all Aliens nerds out there though. How do they pull off the Loader special effects? I know in some cases it’s stop motion. And in other cases, Cameron says there’s a really strong person behind the loader, moving it. But there are certain shots when you can see the loader from the side that aren’t stop motion and nobody’s behind it. So how the hell does it still look so real? I mean, these are 1986 special effects we’re talking about here! Tune in next week where I give you 10 tips on what NOT to do via the disaster that was Alien 3.
Note: Apparently Blogger’s gone nuts. They’re supposed to have things figured out soon (or so they say) but until then, yesterday’s Aliens post will remain an enigma. Which begs the question: Did it really happen? Did it?
Genre: Thriller
Premise: Days away from his execution, the most notorious man in America awakens with amnesia and quickly discovers that his condition might be the result of more than a seizure induced head injury.
About: E. Joshua recently moved to L.A. where he’s secured an unpaid internship to write script coverage for a small production house. — 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.
Writer: E. Joshua Eanes
Details: 96 page – April 27, 2011 draft.
The last ten days have been pretty incredible. After going months without reading anything that even sniffed the Top 25, I’ve now read three Top 25ers in the last week and a half alone. In general, the quality of scripts being reviewed has gone up. That’s due in part to adding a fifth script read every week, so I can throw out the worst one. Just did that with The Dictator, Sacha Baron Cohen’s next movie. I don’t know how they’re going to film that thing – if it’s going to be Borat 2 or a more traditional comedy – but holy shit is the script bad. I mean there wasn’t even the barest sense of story present. Basically a guy comes to America and sits around all day doing nothing. (edit – I’ve been informed that I may have read a separate but similar project)
There’s a point to all this, that being that I didn’t expect my luck to extend to Amateur Friday. That would be asking too much, right? Especially since I picked this week’s script at random. But as I turned each page in my read of “Elijah Harden,” my confidence in the writing grew, and it wasn’t long before I realized, “Whoa. This guy knows what he’s doing.” That doesn’t mean “Elijah Harden” should be mistaken for a pro script. Eanes is a little rough around the fingertips, and the script is a teensy bit dense, but this is the kind of script I could see getting purchased. It has a very marketable hook.
81 year old Elijah Harden is a Nazi sympathizer. He’s a racist. He’s a harbinger of hate. If you thought Jimmy Flynn from Wednesday was a bad person, take a Sunday stroll with this guy. Elijah’s also the murderer of a young girl (whose body was never found) and on death row with 2 weeks to spare. He’s going through the normal last-second appeals process but things aren’t looking good. Elijah Harden is going to finally pay for his crime.
However, a strange thing happens. One night in his cell, Elijah cuts himself and uses his blood to draw a large triangle on the floor. Afterwards he passes out and when he wakes up the next morning, he seems to have obtained amnesia. Not only has he forgotten his crimes, but he doesn’t remember who he is.
Phoebe Gabler, the young defense attorney appointed to Elijah in his final days, is suspicious of this convenient timing but after a few meetings with him, she becomes curious enough to look into it. Even if it’s just a simple case of amnesia, is it right to send a person to death who has no recollection of the murder they committed?
In a desperate attempt to buy more time so she can figure things out, Phoebe makes a deal with Governor Charlotte Ackermann (who she happens to be in a salacious relationship with) that if Elijah gives them the location of his victim’s body, he gets a stay of execution for another five months. The problem is, Elijah, or at least this Elijah, doesn’t know the location of the body. So he’s forced to wade through Elijah’s journals, all of which are written in jibberish, to find the answer. With time ticking away, and his execution just around the corner, will Elijah be able to figure out the location of his victim’s body in time to save his own life?
Summarizing this script wasn’t easy. In fact, this is a way simplified breakdown of the story. “Elijah Harden” is packed to the gills with characters, story threads, and plot developments. So much so that they began to overwhelm the story. For example, we have Elijah’s original prosecutor, Henry Gabler, who got rich off of Elijah’s trial, and who also happens to be Phoebe’s brother, holed up in a mansion writing a book about Elijah. Then we have the relationship between Phoebe and Charlotte, the Governor, which felt a little too extensive and contrived for my taste. It also led to too many questions. If she’s got the Governor in her pocket, why does she need to do this “find the victim’s body” dance? Have the Governor make up some other reason for the stay. This is par for the course as we have numerous other players with major stakes in the outcome, but who pop up so infrequently that it’s hard to gauge just how important they’re supposed to be.
The reason this didn’t bother me too much, however, was that “Elijah Harden” kept the wheels in the attic turning. Sure I had a hard time keeping up with all the characters, but the puzzle at the center of it all was so exciting that I barreled through in hopes of solving it. The central question here: “Is Elijah telling the truth?” is not only captivating, but it leads to other questions, such as “What would you do if you woke up in a jail cell and were told that you were being executed in 2 weeks?” What if you believed you weren’t that person? That you weren’t the killer? But you couldn’t remember anything and therefore couldn’t prove it? The fear I had thinking about that situation made me fear for Elijah.
Not to mention this is an ideal structural setup for a spec script. There’s a tight time frame – two weeks – which gives the story the appropriate amount of urgency. There’s a lot at stake (potentially an innocent man’s life). There’s a lot of mystery (the aforementioned: Is he lying or not? If so, will he be able to get away with it?). Despite the Governor issue, I liked the development of finding the body. It gives our character a strong goal (find the location of the victim’s body and his execution is pushed back). I liked that the goal was realistic as well (there was no silly unrealistic scenario where he’d go free). So the mechanics here were solid all the way around.
Now if only we can hammer out these details. One thing you have to be careful of in any script, is making too many people related to one another. I didn’t like that Phoebe was related to the lead prosecutor on Elijah’s original case. I didn’t like that she was having an affair with the Governor. These weren’t script killers by any means, but they were such tidy connections that I was always aware that they’d been written. The goal when you write a movie is to make the audience FORGET that they’re watching a fictional story. And I felt these things reminded them that they were.
Also, as I already mentioned, we needed to cut down the number of characters. Someone named Zora became a big deal late in the script, but I couldn’t remember who Zora was. Same deal with Hosea. He gets a big finale, but all I kept thinking was, “Who the hell is Hosea?” One thing writers forget is that the more information they pack into a reader’s head, the harder it is for readers to follow threads (and characters) that only pop up every once in awhile. If I’ve been forced to keep track of six subplots and a dozen characters and then you write a scene with a guy who hasn’t been mentioned in 40 pages, how am I supposed to remember that?
There’s no real rule-set for getting this right. You just have to be conscious of it. Maybe, for example, you find a way to get that absent character into a couple of more scenes so we don’t forget them.
Speaking of, I would’ve loved to have seen more of Henry, the prosecutor and Elijah’s nemesis. This guy is a huge player in the story, yet he’s kept behind the walls of his mansion, unseen by us, for 98% of the script! Our only insights into his life come from other characters talking about him. That’s not enough. We need to see the guy. We need to get to know him. Especially because of his connection to the ending.
Before I go, I want to deal with some major SPOILERS, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the ending. There’s one huge coincidence that we have to buy into in order for this to work. And that’s that right when Henry is thrown into Elijah’s body, he gets amnesia, which is of course required for the story and the final twist to work. Is it explained anywhere why this happens? If not, I would consider addressing it in the next draft. I think it’s a great finale and I believe it works, but the fact that he doesn’t remember as soon as he arrives in Elijah’s body, then remembers RIGHT BEFORE his death is kinda convenient. I’d like that to be ironed out.
Despite these criticisms, I think this is a strong piece of writing. This kind of movie hasn’t hit the market in a awhile so its timing is perfect. Yeah it’s a little confusing in its current state. But even with the shortcomings I mentioned, it’s easily worth the read.
Script Link: The Black Soul Of Elijah Harden
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Please, if you do nothing else, make sure there are no spelling or grammar or punctuation errors on the first page of your script. I saw “it’s” instead of “its” on the ninth line (the very first paragraph!) and just cringed. Professional writers don’t make these mistakes. If you want to be taken seriously, you can’t make them either.
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: After a cruel heartless efficiency expert gets fired, he meets a strange 16 year old girl who unexpectedly helps him turn his life around.
About: The writer of today’s script is the same writer of the recently sold (and in production) Seeking A Friend At The End Of The World, which I loved. The Mighty Flynn is one of her early scripts, sold way back in 2005. The script had trouble getting into production because of its “tweener” status. This is the term the industry uses to describe scripts that are too small to be studio films but too big to be independent films. However, another tweener script tackling similar subject matter did make it into production, Jason Reitman’s 2009 film Up In The Air, which seemingly killed any chance of The Mighty Flynn getting made. Well, I think that would be a shame. Not only is this a great fucking script, but it’s everything Up In The Air should’ve been and more. You can learn more about Lorene Scafaria in this interview she did with Done Deal back in 2005. In short, even though she’s relatively young, she’s been writing scripts forever.
Writer: Lorene Scafaria
Details: 115 pages – 2005 draft (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 loved this script.
I’m hard pressed to find a single thing wrong with it. Well, that’s not true. It has a few problems. But the great things are so great that they completely overwhelm the bad things. This is the kind of script that makes you excited to be a writer. It gives you hope, it reminds you that passion matters, it gives you the inspiration to figure out that long-standing problem in your latest spec. Let’s hurry up and get to the plot before I explode into a double rainbow.
38 year old Jimmy Flynn is a selfish prick who takes pride in his job. Jimmy is an efficiency expert. That means he comes into your company, evaluates where you’re paying people you shouldn’t be paying, then gets rid of the excess fat. But the real perk of his job? Firing people. And Jimmy loves every second of it. This isn’t puppy-dog eyed George Clooney who gives you a big warm hug along with a huge severance package, an inspiring quote, and 20 new job leads. Flynn comes in there cold and hard. He doesn’t care if you have six kids and missed your last three mortgage payments. If a company has hired him to let you go, you’re getting let go.
Well unfortunately Jimmy gets a little carried away one day and fires a boss from a huge company on ‘BRING YOUR DAUGHTER TO WORK DAY.’ Jimmy may be the best, but his employers are sick of keeping up with the legal costs of defending his actions. In the biggest shock of his life, Jimmy, the headhunter, loses his head.
Jimmy is a worker. He’s one of those people who maximizes every second of every day. So when he wakes up one morning with nowhere to be, it’s the equivalent of being dropped into a desert. What do you do now? After a quick pity-party, Jimmy gets back on track by printing out his resume for the first first time in a decade and sending it to a hundred potential employers. Problem is, in this economy? No one’s hiring.
To make matters way worse, the stupid phone company has mixed up his phone number with a suicide hotline. So every ten minutes Jimmy gets a call from some sad sack ready to pour a bottle of vicoden down his throat. And Jimmy is so impersonal, so devoid of human emotion, that he basically tells these people to fuck off.
That is until a 16 year old girl named Boaty calls him, desperately needing someone to talk to. He tries to get rid of her, but ends up pissing her off so much that she actually finds out where he lives and storms over to let him know what an asshole he is. Boaty is about as teenagery as teenagers come, cycling through mood swings faster than a Bravo Real Houswife.
But the script flips when Boaty feels sorry for Jimmy (as if he needs her pity) and makes it a point to help him find a job (he doesn’t want her help finding a job). Jimmy sort of allows her to hang around, but looks for ways to ditch her at every turn. That is until he learns why Boaty called him in the first place. Boaty’s father committed suicide a year ago. But not only that. He committed suicide after being fired from his job.
Fear rushes through Jimmy. He wonders, is he the one who fired her father? Unable to move forward with this weighing on his mind, Jimmy inconspicuously digs for details on Boaty’s dad so he can find out if he, indeed, is responsible. The idea is, once he learns he’s free and clear of blame, he can boot this annoying girl out of his life. But a strange thing happens. Jimmy actually begins to enjoy Boaty’s company. He’d never admit this to her, of course (or to himself for that matter) but there’s no doubt he’s made a connection. Ironically, this raises the stakes of his investigation. The closer he gets to her, the harder it will be to tell her the truth. Which is all the more reason to hope that the truth is he didn’t kill her father. And that, in a nutshell, is Mighty Flynn.
Oh man, where do I start with this one? So many good things to talk about.
I’m guessing one of the reasons this hasn’t been made yet is because the hook is a little soft. But what you find out while reading Mighty Flynn is that it actually has several mini-hooks. The first is an efficiency expert who gets fired. You’re always looking for irony in the premise, and we get that here. The next hook is that his number gets mixed up with a suicide hotline. At first this seems random, but when you consider that Jimmy is the most heartless person in the world, and now he’s been tasked with saving people’s lives, it’s another nice drop in the irony pool. Finally, we have Jimmy finding out that he may be responsible for Boaty’s father’s suicide.
This is the hook that drives the story, cause without it, all you have is a fired guy hanging out with a 16 year old girl. Jimmy’s goal is to find out if he killed Boaty’s father so he can leave Boaty and get on with his life. Of course, one of the reasons this script is so awesome is that for every extra bit of time he spends with Boaty, he grows closer to her, raising the stakes of his journey. That’s because there’s more to lose if he finds out he killed her dad.
You also can’t discuss Mighty Flynn without mentioning what a flat-out horrible person our main character is. Usually when I run into a character who’s this much of a dick, I shake my head and say, “Why the hell would you think I’d care about this guy?” And yet I was fascinated by Jimmy. I think it’s because I wanted him to see the error of his ways. I wanted to see him change. Still, Jimmy does not fit into the “likable” protagonist mold at all. He makes Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day feel like a saint. So I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on why this doesn’t seem to be a problem.
I loved the attention to detail here. For example, I talk about choices a lot. I’ve read 8741 scenes with people smoking pot in screenplays. I have never once read a scene where characters smoked opium. It’s a tiny subtle detail but it’s all these little details added together that make this script so unique.
I loved the dialogue, which is pitch-perfect and funny and offbeat all the way through. For example, when Boaty meets Jimmy’s sister for the first time, she’s clearly shocked. “Interesting,” she says. “Why is that interesting?” Jimmy replies. “I’m just surprised that there’s more of you.”
I love how the offbeat older guy/younger girl dynamic doesn’t devolve into anything inappropriate or romantic.
I love how Scafaria is never on-the-nose, how she finds different ways to give you the information you need. For example, an important piece of information is that Jimmy is divorced. A lesser writer may have thrown out the not-so-casual line, “Well before I got divorced…” to get this across. Here, not only does Scafaria find a unique way to tell us Jimmy is divorced, but the scene doubles in telling us exactly who Jimmy is. In it, Jimmy explains to Boaty that, in his endless pursuit to be more efficient, he used to ask his wife why she would walk back and forth in the kitchen so many times when she fixed him his breakfast. It would save so much more time, he pointed out, if she carried the stuff all at once. Boaty asks him, “Did it work?” He replies, “Yeah, it took her 20 minutes. Now it only takes me 7.” In that moment we know exactly why Jimmy lost his wife, what kind of person he is, AND that he’s now divorced, without ever having to directly say so.
I can also tell how thought through this script is. I read way too many a script where the writers haven’t looked at each scene from every angle possible, allowing too many implausibilities or just plain lazy screw-ups to leak through. For example, while Jimmy may not be able to change the suicide number, what’s to stop him from changing his own number so he doesn’t receive 20 suicide calls a day? Well, before he finds out about the mix-up, he’s just sent out 100 resumes with his current phone number on them. He has no choice but to keep his number. Lesser writers would’ve never bothered with this detail.
There were only three small things that bothered me with Mighty Flynn. The first is Boaty’s motivation. While Jimmy’s motivation to keep Boaty around makes sense, it’s not always clear why she stays around Jimmy (though the need for a father figure is adequate). The second thing is (spoiler) the Drano toddler revelation towards the end. It was nice to finally hear why Jimmy had become this hardened heartless soul, but it was Scafaria’s only miscalculation in tone, as I thought it was kind of over the top. The third is the “twist” at the end, when we find out why Jimmy’s number got mixed up with the suicide number. It was a fun cute moment, but the more I thought about it, the less it made sense.
Still, the characters and the dialogue and the story more than make up for this. This one really left an impact on me and as I place it in my Top 10, I hope they send the Hollywood script angels down to drag this out of development hell. It needs to be made. Easily one of the best undproduced screenplays in town.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 10!)
[ ] genius
What I learned: A good hook is going to increase the chances of your script getting read. And these two Scafaria scripts are proof positive of that. Seeking A Friend, which has the hook of an asteroid heading towards earth, was a script I sought out immediately. A Mighty Flynn, which I had always heard was “the efficiency expert script,” is something that, idea wise, didn’t excite me enough to pick it up. There’s no denying that a big hook will increase the number of reads that you get.
So the other day I was thinking about my Top 25, and I realized something. Many of the scripts in my Top 10 were scripts I’d read a thousand scripts ago. I was holding onto them mainly because they were already in the Top 10, and I was too much of a wimp to place anything above them. I also realized that a lot of them were comedies, and while I definitely love laughing, the scripts themselves hadn’t stayed with me the way many of these other scripts have stayed with me. For that reason, I decided to completely revamp my list, starting from the top, and favor those scripts that still resonated with me today, whose scenes I could still imagine, whose characters I still remembered as if I’d just read them yesterday. So, if you look over to the right there, you’ll see my brand new Top 25 list. This is also a good reminder that I’ll be revamping the Reader Top 25 as well. So catch up on your reading and get prepared to vote!
