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.
People have been e-mailing me asking me what I thought of Everything Must Go. To be honest, I’m terrified to see it. The movie is already perfect in my head, and I’m scared to ruin that by watching the film. But I’ll probably force myself to do it in the next couple of weeks. Also, for those following me on Facebook, I ended up seeing Fast Five instead of Thor. It was WAY better than 4, but what the hell? That Vin-Rock fight was weak as hell. That thing should’ve been epic!
Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: Imagine if the Mean Girls from high school grew up and became your bridesmaids.
About: Bachelorette started out as a play, which writer Leslye Headland turned into a screenplay, which made it onto the 2008 Black List. It was subsequently forgotten about, until the recent buzz surrounding Bridesmaids, when Will Ferrell and his team came on as producers (incidentally, I had always assumed that Bridesmaids, was, in fact, a retitled “Bachelorette”). Headland went to school at NYU, where she studied directing, then got a personal assistant job at Miramax. “I learned a lot,” she recalls. “Harvey was a great boss. He read my stuff and said, ‘Why aren’t you pursuing writing?’ It gave me the balls to go out and do it.” In 2007, she moved to California. “I thought that doing low-budget, independent theater would be easier in Los Angeles because it’s a little cheaper there,” she explains, adding: “And it’s not a theater town, so I thought, if I fail miserably, no one will notice!” The opportunity eventually led to a writing gig on the FX show, Terriers.
Writer: Leslye Headland
Details: 95 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 like the story behind Leslye’s success. It’s a great reminder that becoming a successful writer (or filmmaker or anything in this business) never happens how you think it’s going to happen. It’s not this straightforward linear journey where you send a script out, someone buys it for half a million, then you live happily ever after. It usually takes work, some diversions, different jobs, building contacts, and maybe a little luck here and there. When things didn’t happen for Lesyle right away, she said, “You know what? I’m not going to wait for my break here in New York, I’ll go produce this play in L.A.” It got her Bachelorette project noticed, which allowed her to get the screenplay version of her play out there, which ended up on the Black List, which got her notoriety. And eventually, a few years later, when another Bridesmaids flick gained some buzz, she got her shot. You just gotta keep plugging away, trying different things, until you reach your goal. You can’t sit in your basement and hope for the best.
Anyway, on to Bachelorette, which is a very…….(I’m going to choose my words carefully here) different screenplay. I say “different” because there are some great things about it, but also some really amateur things. I’ll get to those in a moment. But let’s start with the plot.
Gena Myers is a borderline waste of a human being. She’s 29 years old and she still goes out every night, drinks til she blacks out, and always wakes up with some piece of shit random dude in her bed. Her life is ten shades of pathetic, and yet she has no plans to change.
Her partner in crime is Katie Neuberg, her bff since high school. While she’s not as pathetic as Gena, she does spend a couple of hours a day on the treadmill and will throw up everything she eats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in order to stay thin and perfect.
Rounding out the trio is Regan, the “Stepford Wife” of the clan. She’s snobby, elitist, and like the other two girls, incredibly selfish. Yup, these three are real winners. And they’re all reuniting in order to be bridesmaids for an old high school acquaintance’s wedding. “Pigface Becky,” as they remember her, is finally getting married. And she doesn’t have any bridesmaids, so she’s given Regan power of attorney to find some for her. Regan, of course, picks her two buddies, both of whom spent the majority of high school making fun of the pigster.
Everyone flies to New York, and even though Becky’s not pigfaced anymore, that doesn’t prevent them from starting up the fat jokes as soon as she turns her back. There’s obviously tension here, but the girls do their best to eliminate it, and the next thing you know, it’s prep time. We have a wedding tomorrow!
Complicating things is three men from the bridesmaids’ pasts. For Gena, it’s Clyde (“John Cusack meets Vince Vaughn”), her high school sweetheart. For Katie it’s Joe, the geeky computer dork who’s always been in love with her. And for Regan, it’s Jeff, the hottie who she’s wildly attracted to but whom she must deny since she’s engaged.
When the guys go to a strip club, the girls decide to join them, and that’s when all hell breaks loose. The girls do a flour bag sized mountain of coke, drink more alcohol than is imported to the state of Utah, and engage in every unspeakable activity one can think of. It all comes to a crashing halt though when they accidentally rip Pigface Becky’s wedding dress and drip blood all over it. Instead of fixing the dress, however, they decide to party instead, and naturally, this has major implications the next morning, when the wedding finally takes place.
Bachelorette should lead to some interesting discussion. Just the other day I was talking about Jimmy’s asshole character in the Mighty Flynn, and how his assholeness didn’t turn me off. Well here, we have three of the nastiest meanest most horrible women you can imagine. They’re inappropriate (going into the gory details of giving guys blowjobs to complete strangers). They’re cruel (openly making fun of Pigface Becky at every turn). They’re off-putting (nothing like watching a bunch of slutty whores dive head first into a mountain of coke). But most of all they’re just bad people.
Someone brought this up a few months ago – how audiences will accept a male asshole protagonist but they won’t accept a female asshole protagonist. I don’t know how true that is (I liked Bad Teacher), but it sure was true in this case. As much as I tried, I couldn’t root for these characters, or care about them, or support them. They didn’t possess a single redeemable trait, and almost everything that came out of their mouths was heartless, hurtful, or disgusting. As they pull out Becky’s wedding dress while coked up to Scarface proportions, rip it, laugh, and then decide to go out instead of fix it, all I could think was, “God do I hate all of you.”
Also, the script has a huge logic hump the audience has to get over. Why the hell would our sweet innocent pleasant bride agree to have the three bitchiest most terrible popular girls who haunted her in high school as her bridesmaids??? In comedy, we’re supposed to be more forgiving of logic holes, but as I’ve pointed out before, you want to keep those holes as far away from your premise as possible. And this hole is smack dab in the middle of the premise. This movie is about three bitches becoming a woman’s bridesmaids. So it should make sense why they’re her bridesmaids. There’s an attempt at an explanation later on (Regan was given carte blanche to pick the bridesmaids so she picked Gena and Katie). But come on. I refuse to accept that Becky has no real friends in life. It’s just impossible to buy into.
There are some other things that bothered me as well. Remember, you want every scene you write to push the story forward. But scenes in Bachelorette would appear for no reason. For example, we have this totally needless scene with Gena flying to New York where she gives a 5 minute monologue about how to give a great blowjob to the random guy sitting next to her. There is not only no reason to include this scene (the movie wouldn’t have changed had they just cut to her landing in New York) but there’s no logical reason for why she even talks to this guy. It’s clearly there just to squeeze in the blowjob monologue.
What saves this script though, and what makes you battle with whether you like it or not, is that the writing and the dialogue are really strong. As I open the script now to a random page, I read, “Text me later. I bet you could take a poke at one of the bridemaids. They’re easy like Sunday morning.” Or on another page I found this description, where Katie is wearing a green face mask, “Katie, on the treadmill, looking like an out-of-breath Gremlin after midnight.” That descriptive imaginative writing can be found on almost every page. There’s definitely a manic energy here, even if it’s being siphoned through these three nasty human beings, that you have no choice but to admire.
But the reason I can’t recommend this is best described by my mood afterwards. After finishing Bachelorette I felt spent, dirty, sad, and depressed. There’s so much bitterness in the writing, so much hate, that I just wanted to get away from this script and forget about it. It had nothing to do with talent, as the writer clearly has plenty. It was just my personal reaction to the characters, the kind of people I would cut my arm off for to avoid in real life. It bothers me, however, that I can’t articulate why I liked reading Jimmy Flynn or why I liked reading the main character in Bad Teacher, yet hated these three. Maybe it’s because they’re ten times worse than either of those characters? I don’t know. If anyone feels the same way, I’d be interested to hear your opinion. Anyway, I’m going to go take a bath. After this review, I need one.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ }worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Another reminder to stay away from current events/popular references in your screenplays. References to Zach Braff and Lost are all but meaningless now (though they probably read like gangbusters back in 2007). You never know how many years down the line someone might read your script. Best to stay away from these time-capsule references.
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.
