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!
Genre: Action
Premise: A young man sets out to uncover the truth about his life after finding his baby photo on a missing persons website.
About: Abduction represents that golden screenwriting ticket. A true spec sale that, right after selling, goes racing into production. We should all be so lucky. Former (and current?) rocker Shawn Christensen wrote one of my favorite popcorn specs, Karma Coalition, a couple of years ago, about the most important people in the world disappearing one by one. That script sold for a million bucks, and assuming his price remained consistent, I’m guessing this one sold for something similar. The script was purchased in part, no doubt, because Taylor Lautner decided to make it his first post-Twilight film. 2 Fast 2 Furious director John Singleton is helming the movie. In an unexpected connection to last month’s Comedy Week, Singleton received a “Special Thanks” on Dumb and Dumber. Lily Collins and Sigourney Weaver also star.
Writer: Shawn Christensen
Details: 108 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).
Christensen’s first spec sale, Karma Coalition, is riddled with enough plot holes to resemble a pound of swiss cheese. But that doesn’t mean I don’t LOVE ham and swiss sandwiches. Especially when the cheese is melted on top of the ham? And you throw on a little mayo. Maybe toast the bread. I could eat a couple of those a day if you let me.
What I’m saying is this. Christensen may not have the characterization skills of the Coen Brothers or the thematic mastery of Frank Darabont, but boy does he know how to create a hook. What if you found out your parents weren’t really your parents? What if you found your own missing person’s picture online? How spooky would that be? Add to that a great sales pitch: Jason Bourne in High School, and you’re off to the spec sale races.
But what about the rest of the script? Any good?
Nathan Harper is a bit of an outcast at school. Not for any glaring reason. It’s not like he’s a bad looking dude. He just seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time a lot. For example, his neighbor, popular and bitchy Karen, tapes him clumsily falling off his roof and uploads the video to Youtube (don’t you wish you were back in high school again?), making him the laughing stock of Asshole High.
But afterwards, she feels bad and decides to help Nathan on a Social Studies project, to find and do research on a missing child of their choice. Nathan and Karen grow close during the project, and then one day, while scrolling through missing children online, they find a picture of a 3 year old boy who looks EXACTLY LIKE Taylor Lautner. I mean Nathan Harper. Not only that, but he’s wearing a shirt that Nathan STILL OWNS.
This discovery sets several wheels in motion, as there are apparently people monitoring Nathan, both good and bad, during his everyday life. Soon, Nathan is watching his parents get slaughtered in his house by mysterious agents, and he and Karen are forced onto the run. In a similar setup to The Fugutive, the police believe that Taylor, I mean Nathan, is responsible for his parents’ slaughter, which means from this point on, they’ll be shooting to kill.
An old man locates Nathan and gives him the lowdown. He’s been paid to monitor Nathan’s life from afar and keep him safe. His only chance for survival now is to get on a train and find a man named Rasmus, who will tell him what this is all about and help him transition into his new life. But the police and the bad guys and the CIA all have other plans for Nathan. So if he’s going to get to this Rasmus guy, this geeky weird high school kid whose biggest problem two days ago was how to get home from soccer practice, will now need to develop government agent-like escape skills, skills that for some mysterious reason, come very easy to him.
The Jason Bourne in high school angle was a good idea. It nails that often heard screenwriting advice, “Give us something the same, but different.” The same is Bourne. The different is high school.
The script also has a solid setup. There are several goals in place to make our hero active. First, he has to find out who he is. Second, he has to find out who these people chasing him are. Third, he has to find this Rasmus guy. In these types of movies, someone’s always being chased. But if ALL that’s happening is they’re being chased, the character tends to be passive and not that interesting. By giving him a series of goals like Christensen does here, it allows the audience to experience the excitement of the chase AND the strength of an active character.
The script was also tightly written. Remember, you want to write in a style that fits with the genre you’re writing. So if you’re writing an intense spy/action/thriller? Well then your ass better be writing 2-3 line paragraphs all the way through. And that’s exactly what Christensen does. Keeps the action beats simple, easily described, stays on point ALWAYS so there’s never any unnecessary description. I’m serious. I don’t think I read a single extraneous line.
But the one problem I always see with these kinds of scripts is that they run out of juice around the 60 page mark. The writer runs out of cool ideas, runs out of twists and turns, and generally runs out of steam. One of the reasons I liked Karma Coalition so much was that the unexpected story beats kept coming. The twists didn’t end. Even as we hit the ending, there was another twist. After Nathan gets picked up by the government around the midway point, the story loses a ton of momentum. Everything is explained to us (so the mystery disappears) and the major driving force of the film (the chase) is over. So we’re kind of sitting there going, uh, what now?
The final sequence was especially disappointing, as it was more about building a climax around the tallest tower in the world (the CN Tower) than it was about ending the story in an organic interesting way.
Another common issue with these scripts is the tag-along character. Having a hot girl as well as a second character for your hero to talk to may allow for more variety in the plot, but it still has to make sense. Why in the world would Karen come along here? She’s putting her life in jeopardy for a guy she didn’t even know three days ago (in fact, who she hated). The concept here is strong enough so that a previously sold writer can get away with it, but for you, the unsold writer, you don’t want to be this sloppy. If the girl who hated you 3 days ago is going to now risk her life for you, you better have a good reason why, or else you have 60% of the audience whispering to their friends during the movie, “Why is she going with him?”
There are some other issues I had as well. I thought the high school situations were a mite cliché (the tape someone screwing up and upload it to Youtube thing has probably been used on over a dozen 90210 episodes alone). But overall, this is a great example of a well-conceived spec, both from a conceptual and a marketing standpoint. This is the kind of thing that sells. I’m not saying write this type of script if you hate action thrillers. You’ll embarrass yourself and waste a lot of time. But if action thrillers are in your wheelhouse, this is a perfect example of how to do it right.
Despite its second half issues and some cliché story choices, Abduction is a deliriously quick read where you can see the movie on the page. I’d recommend reading it for that reason.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: There’s a moment early on in the script, after Nathan’s discovered the missing person picture of himself, where his parents say, “We need to talk to you tomorrow.” This may seem like an innocuous line. But it’s actually a very powerful writing tool, as it creates anticipation in the reader. By setting up a seemingly important event later, you’ve given the reader a reason to keep reading. Anything you now place between that moment and that talk is going to fly by for the reader, while they anticipate that scene. If there are slow periods in your script, see if you can’t set up a later anticipatory event like this one to keep your reader engaged.
A quick note to drop by this Wednesday as I’ll be posting a review for the first script to break into my Top 10 in over a year!
Genre: Crime/Caper/Comedy
Premise: An art curator enlists the services of a Texas chicken farmer to con a wealthy collector into buying a phony Monet painting.
About: They’ve been trying to get this Gambit remake going forever. The original starred Michael Caine, and Joel and Ethan Coen’s draft of the script has been kicking around for 7 years now. They finally got financing, throwing newly minted best actor winner Colin Firth into the lead role, as well as bringing Cameron Diaz in to play the southern belle. The film is being directed by Michael Hoffman, who’s been seen by many as a talented director waiting to break out (his films include the underrated “The Emperor’s Club” and the more recent “The Last Station.”). As you’ll read a little more about in a link I provide for Wednesday’s interview, one of the practices the Coens’ use is to write their characters into a corner and leave it up to the other brother to figure out how to get them out.
Writers: Joel & Ethan Coen
Details: 129 pages – 2004 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).
Question. Can the Coens be stopped!? Long time readers know I’m not exactly public supporter numero uno for the siblings. But I will say this. Outside of maybe Tarantino, there are no other writer/filmmakers who take more chances than these two and still manage to bring in big box office. We talked about breaking the rules the other day and really, if you’re a supporter of that mantra, these guys should be your deity. Last week I was watching Fargo, my favorite of the Coen films, and there’s this scene near the end where Margie has a date with an old Asian friend of hers that has absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE. That’s, like, rule number 1 in screenwriting. Don’t include a scene that doesn’t push the story forward. Yet the scene works. It’s hilarious. You don’t think twice about it. And I couldn’t tell you why. Go figure.
Gambit starts off by introducing us to art curator Harry Deane, who’s playing the British version of Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy in Fargo), a desperate morally skewed man obsessed with money.
He’s enlisted his best friend and compatriot, a stalwart older gentleman known as “The Major,” to accompany him to Alpine, Texas to locate the owner of an extremely rare Monet painting known as “Haystacks Dusk,” which went missing half a century ago. The reason this painting is so important is that Deane’s employer, the obscenely rich English magazine magnet, Lord Shabandar, has the companion piece to Haystacks Dusk, Haystacks Dawn. Obtaining the long-missing Haystacks Dusk would complete the pair, and therefore he’ll be willing to pay a mint for it.
How this painting ended up in an Alpine, Texas trailer is another story. Through meticulous research and a few lucky breaks, Deane was able to trace the origins of the painting back to the trailer owner’s great grandfather. The current owner of said trailer, chicken herder and minimum wage earner PJ Puznowski, isn’t even aware that the painting’s a Monet.
Oh, there’s one thing I’m forgetting to tell you. This is all a lie. Deane has fabricated the lineage and the connection and, of course, the painting itself. He’s going to Texas to find a pretend PJ Puznowski, someone to play the part, who will meet Shabandar, pretend to be the owner of the Monet, sell it to him for 10 million dollars, of which Harry will take all of and give PJ 50 grand for her help.
Perfect plan right?
Of course not. Once PJ comes to England and meets Shabandar, the two hit it off, and soon they’re spending time at restaurants and balls, with Deane being pushed further and further out of the picture (so to speak) with each successive date. PJ’s rascally straight-forward personality delights the more buttoned up Shabandar, and before she knows it, she’s feeling bad about deceiving him. Maybe she won’t sell him this fake painting after all.
In the meantime, Deane, who’s put every last penny of his into this scam, is being nickel and dimed by PJ’s expensive lodging tastes, someone who extorts him once he leans about the scam, and is eventually fired by Shabandar for, not surprisingly, a lack of trustworthiness. Deane must find a way against all ways to reign PJ in, keep her on track, and somehow pull this all off. Can it be done?
First thing you gotta talk about whenever you read a Coen Brother’s script is the complete disregard for standard formatting. These guys don’t use Courier when they write. They use Times New Roman. Why would this matter? Well, the truth is, Times New Roman is much easier to read than Courier. So in reality, it would make more sense if we all used it. But we can’t, because Times New Roman takes up less space, giving an incorrect page count, screwing up the precious 1 page of script = 1 minute of screentime rule. This script is 129 pages. It’s probably closer to 140 or 145 if it were in Courier. Unless you’ve had a few Oscar wins under your belt, producers don’t like when you fudge the page count, so this is not advised.
Next, the guys don’t use sluglines. Instead, they use “faux lines,” mini slugs without all the technical jibber-jabber. This is another one of those things that actually makes more sense. It’s a lot easier to read, “A GAS STATION” than “INT. GAS STATION – NIGHT.” And you would think that with scripts becoming more reader-friendly over the years, that this practice might have caught on, but the Coens have been doing it forever, and it still hasn’t changed, so I guess it’s not going to anytime soon.
On the story side of things, there’s a lot of good here. First of all, I’ve been thinking a lot about “voice.” Personally, I’m sick of when people say this or that writer has a distinct “voice.” I guess what annoys me is that it’s too broad, and kind of lets the person get away with saying they liked something without being able to verbalize why they liked it. “Oh I LOVED that script.” “Really? Why?” “Because of the writer’s voice. Such a unique voice.” “What else? Anything specific?” “Oh, just the voice. The voice was so uniquely theirs.” “What about the characters?’ “Oh the characters. They all had such an original voice.”
Well, I think I have a better understanding of voice after this script. “Voice” encompasses a script that nobody in the world could’ve written outside of that writer (or writers). Yes, I know this is a remake, but when you read this script, you just know that nobody else in the world could’ve written this story the way the Coen Brothers did.
Look at how the characters speak for instance. First, you have this line from a British Lord: “I knew a Koznowski once, charming man, no relation I suppose, Baron Koznowski, Janusz, related to the emperor Franz Josef on one side, also quite the equestrian, man had horseblood in his veins. Mixed Cossack descent, stuck to a horse like a burr on a dog’s arse. Assassinated in the early nineties, sadly enough. By the Ossetians, the swine…This was, please.” Contrast that with this line from Southern belle PJ: “Well hey-ho there, friend, I wouldn’t recommend it. Yeah your nose’ll roll with the punches but Merle snores like a sawmill without that reinforced septum. Course I snore too on account of the sleep apnea, or maybe that’s just Mama puttin’ me on since in other respects I’m dainty.”
I mean, who the hell is able to pull off two distinctly different dialects like that in a single screenplay!?? You have to understand, I read a couple dozen scripts a month where the disparity in the character’s dialogue amounts to, “Hey essay, I’m going to the supermarket” and “Sounds good bro. Pick me up some cheese.” I could be wrong and this dialogue is plucked right out of the original, but the Coens past work tells me that they’re responsible for this incredible ability to write unique characters each with unique ways of speaking.
Structurally speaking, the script is good. The Coens follow a very simple formula in most of their movies. They put money in the middle of a room (the goal) and watch all of their characters try to get it (strong motivation). In this case, the money is the painting (or at least it pretends to be), and I actually liked that better, because money is so…generic. A painting, on the other hand, is romantic, intriguing, unique. And no, I don’ think it’s a coincidence that the Coens simply swapped out the last letter of money and replaced it with a “t.” This is what they do. Throw money out there and see what characters will do to get it.
My one problem with Gambit was that it started out so clever, and we’re led to believe this will continue, with double crosses, neat twists, and a reversal or two. But the second half of this script feels more like a Pink Panther film, with Deane turning into a stooge, scaling buildings naked and hiding behind curtains in Shabadar’s quarters before he and PJ get it on. I don’t know, I guess the humor devolved into juvenile tomfoolery, and that’s too bad, cause I really liked the first half. Luckily, there’s enough good stuff here to still recommend it. Not a bad script at all.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Stop writing boring characters! I implore you to rent 5 Coen Brothers films this weekend and study how different and unique all the characters are. I know that we don’t all write in this kooky exaggerated reality that the Coens have perfected, where every character is a little off his rocker. But you can learn so much from how different they make each of their characters. Throwing “essay” or “bro” into a character’s dialogue is not enough to make them stand out.
Genre: Comedy
Premise: After receiving panicked messages from a girl he’s been Facebook-stalking, a meek agoraphobe wrangles together his closest internet friends and journeys into the real world to find her.
About: Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted.
Writers: Clint & Donnie Clark
Details: 110 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 Think My Facebook Friend Is Dead is one of those titles that pops out at you, that makes you think, regardless of your interest in comedy, “That sounds like it could be good.” I always say, when writing comedies, if you can convey exactly what your movie is about in your title, you’re in good shape. And it’s hard not to envision this movie after reading the title.
Now it’s been awhile since I really liked a comedy, since I actually got that charge you get when you’re reading something great. The last one may have been Crazy, Stupid, Love, and I don’t know how long ago that was but it certainly wasn’t yesterday. A big reason for the low quality in comedies is that not enough writers take them seriously. They focus on the gags, on the set pieces, and forget to build interesting likable characters that we want to be around. The comedy almost becomes like the special fx of a blockbuster, where the effects become the focus, and the story and characters are an afterthought. Well, suffice it to say, I was hoping Facebook Friend would break that trend. It had a great title, a solid premise, and sounded fun. So, did I like Facebook Friend?
25 year old agoraphobe Owen Dietz spends every spare moment on the internet. He even has a job as a web designer, allowing him to never leave the house (the life!). It only makes sense, then, that he’s fallen in love with Jessica Henessy, his sweet and cute Farmville neighbor, whose field he plows every day. The only thing keeping them apart is Jessica’s mysterious boyfriend, a boyfriend who on this day, she breaks up with. Which means that FINALLY, Owen can be together with the love of his life!
However, later that day, Jessica pops up on IM, scream-writing that someone’s coming, and that she’s in grave danger. Before Owen can do anything, she signs off. He sits there in silence, coming to terms with the reality. Someone’s attacked Jessica. A call to arms is needed. One that will require him to, gulp, actually go outside, and like, interact with the real world. Owen can’t do this alone so he calls his internet best friend, Rishi Rao, the only person on the planet more addicted to computers than he is, and his manic blogger buddy Jeff Pants, who makes Dwight Shrute
The four burn rubber to Ohio, where Owen has mapped out Jessica’s most frequently visited spots via her Foursquare footprints. The first of these locations is an internet café, the second a recording studio, and the third, a raucous nightclub where Youtube internet celebrities such as Techno Viking hang out.
Things get complicated when they realize Jessica’s associated with some sketchy players, most notably her on-again off-again fiance, D’Mario. D’Mario met Jessica when she was an aspiring singer and proceeded to exploit and take advantage of her, leading to a marriage proposal that Jessica probably felt forced to say yes to. When she called the wedding off, D’Mario went apeshit, and that’s where we find ourselves now, with D’Mario unwilling to let Jessica leave him.
Owen and his rag-tag group of buddies, all of whom are having a hell of a time adapting to the real world, will not only have to find Jessica, but learn to overcome their dependency on a medium that’s shut them off from real life. Regardless of what happens, this experience will surely change them forever.
Okay, so first the good. I love the setup here. I love the idea of a technology dependent agoraphobe being forced into the real world – his biggest fear. You can already imagine the hundreds of comedic possibilities with that setup. The structure here is solid as well. We have a clear goal (find and save Jessica). The stakes are high (the life of Jessica). We have plenty of urgency (they’re running out of time). And the plot is focused (due to the foursquare locations, we always know where we are in the journey).
The Clarks have also put a lot of effort into exploiting their premise, which is essential with any comedy. We cut away to scenes in the Farmville universe to establish Owen and Jessica’s relationship. Our characters have trouble operating in the real world (when given a real map, the characters try to “pinch-zoom” it a la an iphone). And locations like the Bumblebee Internet Café exploit this theme of real world vs. “the internet world.”
Finally, in one of the most critical components to making a comedy work, the main character is strong and likable, an underdog character whom we want to see succeed.
So everything here is set up for success. Everything is in place for a gangbusters script. Why then, doesn’t Facebook Friend deliver?
The other day we were talking about choices and making sure every choice was interesting and right for your story. I’m aware that this comes down to my opinion and my opinion only, but I thought many of the choices here were uninspired, starting with the set-pieces. In the cases of the Bumblebee Café, Dreamz, and finally The Library, nothing really funny or memorable happens. They just didn’t seem – I don’t know – inspired. With the exception of Dreamz, it felt like any one of these places could’ve been anywhere (a hardware store, a high school gym, a flower shop), because the characters would simply show up, talk to some people, and leave. The locations were functional. But they weren’t funny. And that sucked a lot of life out of the screenplay.
That problem may have stemmed from a geography issue. I realized that while reading Facebook Friend, I never had a sense of where they were or where anything was in proximity to anything else. In The Hangover
But I think the real problem here – at least for me – is that Jessica and D’Mario don’t feel right as story choices. And I’m not sure why. My first thought was that they were too broad. They didn’t feel grounded enough. But then The Hangover has a naked Chinese guy leaping out of a car trunk and attacking our main characters. That’s about as broad as you can get. So I don’t know. But as Jessica’s sketchy past and sketchy association with D’Mario began to reveal itself, I found myself less and less interested in Owen finding and saving her. I don’t have some magical screenplay adjustment to fix that. It just felt like the wrong way to go.
Another problem Facebook Friend runs into is it feels sloppy. Despite the structure being laid out so nicely, there are too many moments that felt random and unnecessary. For example, while I appreciated the attempts to add depth to the characters, stuff like Rishi’s backstory with his ex-girlfriend only seemed to get in the way of the story, instead of enhance it. Stopping the script to go back and see him experience an embarrassing situation with his ex wasn’t necessary. This script needs to be streamlined, kept on track, simplified. Each page was packed with so much going on that I kind of got exhausted.
And probably my least favorite part of the script was Jeff Pants. I understand that this is a broad comedy, but he was just so random and out there, he ruined almost every scene he was in for me. There’s a moment in particular, where he reveals that he’s gay, that embodied why I had such a hard time with his character. There wasn’t a single occasion, either before that admission or after, that would indicate that Jeff Pants was gay. And that made me believe it was added solely for shock value. If you’re adding things for a laugh at the expense of your characters, those characters cease to be real in the eyes of the reader. Stuff like a character’s sexual preference, even in a broad comedy, need to stem from an organic place.
Having said all that, Facebook Friend is a script I want to try and figure out, that I want to try and fix. I feel with the right execution, it could be really good. But as I sit here, I’m having a hard time figuring out how I would recommend doing that. I know I’d axe Jeff Pants. I’d definitely get rid of the whole D’Mario thing as well. I don’t think that works. I’d personally like Jessica to be more normal, more innocent. There’s something about her shady association with this sketchy underworld that makes me not want Owen to be with her.
Unfortunately, I think the main problem is one that would require a complete overhaul of the story, and that’s rethinking their destination. A seedy city in Ohio feels…I don’t’ know…like it doesn’t carry the weight required to live up to this high concept premise. Should their destination be more internet related? Maybe a big tech CEO in Silicon Valley is holding Jessica hostage? I really don’t know, but my instinct tells me it should be something different from what it is now. What do you guys think? Any ideas?
All in all, I like Clint and Donnie as writers. I think they have potential. They just need to reign their premise in and make better choices. Maybe there’s a producer who likes this idea and is willing to develop it with them. I think it might be worth it.
Script link: I Think My Facebook Friend Is Dead
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Facebook Friend suffered in part from trying to make every single second onscreen funny. It’s exhausting reading a script where every line is trying to make you laugh. Don’t be afraid to use 2-3 slower scenes to set up some bigger laughs later on. Watch how they did this in Meet The Parents
