Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: A New Yorker heads back to the small liberal arts college he attended to give a speech for a retiring professor and ends up falling for one of the students while he’s there.
About: Radnor is the writer-director of one of my favorite scripts, which used to be on my Top 25, Happy Thank You More Please. This is his follow-up project, which will star him and new IT girl Lizzie Olsen after her breakout turn in Sundance hit, “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” about a girl who grows up on a hippie convent.
Writer: Josh Radnor
Details: 115 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I still can’t get over it. I still can’t handle the fact that an actor making $400,000 an episode on a silly sitcom is also one of the best screenwriters in Hollywood. Don’t agree with me? Okay, let’s narrow the playing field a little. He’s not going to write the next Heat. But there is no one who’s doing the “lost early mid-life crisis” thing better at this moment than Radnor. He’s Cameron Crowe before Elizabethtown. He’s Woody Allen before, well, his last 15 movies. He’s a way more sophisticated Zach Braff. There’s an honesty and an intelligence to his writing that you just don’t see that often. Naturally, I couldn’t wait to read his second script.

And it started off perfectly, almost like a parallel universe continuation of his last film. Jesse Aaron Fisher is 35 and works a mindless college recruitment job in New York City. High school students come in, ask questions, he gives them stock answers, they leave, repeat.

Jesse has one thing that keeps him going. Books. He looooooves books. Oh, I mean he really loves books. His ex, who just broke up with him, comes over to his place to get her stuff, and instead of taking advantage of this last opportunity to repair their relationship, he reads a really awesome book instead.

Jesse also loves college. Or loved college. It’s been 13 years since he finished his small liberal arts education, and boy does he miss it. So when one of his favorite professors and good friends calls to inform him he’s folding up the chalkboard and would like Jesse to speak at his retirement party, Jesse can’t jump in his car fast enough.

From the moment he reaches campus, Jesse is a different man. There’s a pep in his step, a smile on his lips, a life surrounding his bones. The vibe on this tiny little campus is more electric than all of New York City put together. And it’s just about to jump a few volts higher.

Jesse runs into one of the students there, the cute and way more intelligent than the average college kid, Zibby. She seems to be just what Jesse needs at the moment, someone to excite him, to remind him to loosen up, to be young again. And so when Jesse runs into her a second time at a dorm room party, so begins a very tense very sexually charged friendship.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking. I know you think you already know where this is going. I know that because I thought the same thing. But guess what? You don’t know. You don’t have a clue. In fact, we deviate quite severely from the typical garden variety older guy younger girl romance.

They don’t hook up. Instead Jesse goes back to New York. The two start writing each other, getting to know each other on a deeper level, and then, after some time has passed, he comes back to the college (spoilers), but right before he’s about to seal the deal, questions what the hell he’s doing, and starts having a mini-mental breakdown on top of his early mid-life crisis, and goes fleeing in the opposite direction, as far away from Zibby as possible.

In the end, the story becomes more about Jesse figuring himself out, rather than figuring out him and Zibby, and so for better or worse, a sort of offbeat indie romantic comedy becomes a full-blown coming-of-age film. It’s strange and unexpected and different and is the reason I’m so damn confused about how I feel about the script.

You should know me well enough by now to know that, for the most part, I like clean narratives. I like when stories have clear places to go, where we understand the direction of the plot, where we’re staying in the same general vicinity for the majority of the story (unless the genre dictates something else – like a spy or action flick). Liberal Arts doesn’t follow that template. I thought for sure that once we got to the school, we would stay at the school. And when we didn’t, I was confused but still willing to give it a go. However, we’re jumping back and forth between the school and New York so much, and we’re travelling so much and sending so many letters, that at a certain point I began to wonder if it wouldn’t have been a lot easier to go the more traditional route.

Here’s my take on it. You want your characters in the place that produces the most amount of conflict. Two characters 500 miles away? No conflict. Those same characters – who for a number of reasons shouldn’t be together (the main one being their age difference) – stuck on the same campus together? Conflict. Now I can excuse this if the concept of the movie is based around separation (Going The Distance) but the central element of conflict in this case, Jesse’s reluctance to engage in an “inappropriate” relationship, doesn’t work unless the inappropriateness is placed in front of him at all times. If you can’t reach the cookie jar, the question of whether you will isn’t a factor. But if it’s right there at eye level, always there for the taking, then the question of whether you will or won’t becomes a lot more interesting.

I’m so torn up about this script because I absolutely loved the first half. I mean I loved it. The thing with Radnor though is that he’s going to give you something different. He did it in Happy Thank You More Please when he threw a 35 year old man, a kid he found off the street, and a fuck buddy, into an impromptu family. And he does it here. Where you think this is going to be like Point A, where a guy starts dating a much younger girl. But it isn’t. It’s about a guy who’s ABOUT to date a much younger girl, then realizes it’s wrong and backs out of it.

So I guess I should be rewarding Radnor for not falling victim to cliché and obviousness. Yet a part of me feels like I just spent all night flirting with a girl at a bar and then at the end of the night she went home with someone else. 70 pages have been spent setting up this relationship. To rip it out from under our feet like that is at least a little deceitful, right?

Radnor also eschews other suggested Scriptshadow practices, like giving the main character a goal. There is no goal here, and therefore nothing driving the story other than the question of, “Will Jesse and Zibby get together?” On the list of devices that can drive your story, I always rate this one pretty low, because it allows for too much wandering about. Without pursuits, the characters just sort of exist in their day to day lives, so by the time we get around to that question being answered, it’s too late, since we’ve already lost interest. I know of only one movie where that’s the ONLY thing driving the story and it’s still worked, and that’s When Harry Met Sally. So I always suggest avoiding it unless you have some unique way of making it work.

And while I liked Jesse at first, I thought it was interesting that Radnor made him less likable as the script went on (the arc of most characters is the opposite – they start off unlikeable, then we’re given reasons to like them along the way). There’s a whole sequence where Jesse finds out that Zibby’s read Twilight and literally freaks out. He’s so upset about it that he actually chastises her for even contemplating reading the book. It’s somewhat necessary in that it’s the final straw in making him realize that him and Zibby aren’t meant for each other. But I’m not sure Radnor realizes how unlikeable it makes Jesse. I mean, I hate Twilight as much as the next guy. But I think anybody who appreciates art understands that, in the end, taste is in the eye of the beholder. For him to be so cruel to Zibby after finding that book – I don’t know – it just really distanced me from the character.

I know I’m giving a lot of flak to my screenwriter crush Radnor, but I felt he made some choices in the second half that, while different, made the story less satisfying. Still, I loved all the touches, such as accidentally falling asleep on the quad lawn then waking up in the middle of the night (nothing like a random 35 year old man falling asleep in the middle of your college campus). The roommate that keeps popping in at the most inopportune times. The classic college hippy guy who’s always sharing his whacked out but not nearly as deep as he thinks they are philosophies. Radnor continues to have some of my favorite guy-girl dialogue as well. It’s not so much the kind you quote. But it’s fun and honest without being showy, never an easy line to walk.

Anyways, this was a frustrating read for me. I loved parts of it and I hated parts of it. So my final verdict falls somewhere in the middle. Should be interesting to see where it goes since, now that he has a movie under his belt, it will get a lot more attention.

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

What I learned: Remember guys. A break-up scene including your main character at the beginning of your script DOES NOT HAVE TO HAPPEN AT A RESTAURANT. In fact, it doesn’t even need to happen at all. Here, in Liberal Arts, the break-up has already happened. And the post-break-up scene takes place at  our hero’s apartment, with his ex coming by to get her stuff. I realize we’ve seen this scene before, but not nearly as much as the break-up at restaurant scene that opens 43% of all comedy specs. Please, no more break-up at restaurant scenes starting your movie! You are more original than that.  I promise you!

Genre: Action/Sci-fi
Premise: Special Agent David Marsh is recruited by a shadowy corporation to test a new game-changing computer generated amusement park.
About: Amusements is an early script written by AICN contributor Drew McWeeny (aka Moriarty) and his writing partner Scott Swan. While the script didn’t sell, it did help McWeeny and his partner start their careers, which includes a couple of spec sales, as well as writing for the TV series “Masters Of Horror.”
Writer: Drew McWeeny & Scott Swan
Details: 109 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).

Like many of you, I always enjoyed reading Moriarity’s articles on AICN during the heyday of internet movie news. At a time when there wasn’t an extensive internet film community, he was basically the first (or second, after Harry) guy to give you a nice 20 minute distraction in the middle of the day. Sure, he was a little long-winded, but it’s only because he had a lot of information and passion and opinions packed into that digital cinephile brain of his. Naturally, I was excited to read one of his early screenplays.

First thing I noticed about Amusements? How appropriate the title was. All Amusements wants to do is amuse you. It wants you to have fun. It sounds like these guys sat down and said, “What can we do to make a great summer movie?” And while that approach helps Amusements in places, it hurts it in others. Because while this script is decked to the nines with exciting cinematic set pieces, it doesn’t seem to care about character or story. And that’s what confuses me the most. I know Moriarty cares about character because I’ve heard him preach about it non-stop in review after review. So either this was written early enough in his career where he wasn’t grasping character yet, or he and his partner made the decision early on: This is a fun action flick. Forget character development.

Special Agent David Marsh specializes in high-tech crime assessment technology. He goes into Matrix-like virtual computer environments, makes sure all the ones and zeroes are aligned properly, then gets out. So it shouldn’t be surprising that two mysterious figures approach him and want him to assess the granddaddy of all digital environments, “The Park,” an amusement park that makes Disney World look like a North Korean jungle gym.

The Park was founded by a mysterious man named Alex Parker (Parker’s current whereabouts are unknown), who had a dream to make the perfect amusement park, one that really could make all your dreams come true. Since it’s all digital, you could go anywhere, from turn of the 20th century South Africa to a nearby alien star. I’m still a little unclear on why David is called to The Park, but I think it’s to make sure the technology has no holes.

Anyway, David brings his wife to the park to add some pleasure to what would otherwise be business, and meets a group of other park members who will be joining them in their group. And from nearly the second they get there, the party begins.

At first they hop on a South African Safari train and within minutes are attacked by a silverback gorilla and some not so friendly British soldiers. From there, they visit a zero-G restaurant. Then head into the Bayou where they meet a high priestess and a lot of zombies. And finally head into space to kill off some aliens.

Somewhere along the way, David realizes that Parker has embedded himself into the mainframe of the Park’s computer, and is planning to live there forever. A spooky ass dude named Samuel who was killed in the park tries to tell David that there are more like him. That something sinister has been going on. And so the script ends up with David taking on Parker one on one, to eliminate him and end all this park madness.

I don’t know Moriarty. But I’m going to guess that if he re-read this today, he’d be a little embarrassed. I mean, the idea itself is pretty clever. He and his partner have created a premise that basically allows them to add whatever their imagination can come up with, and it will make sense! Aliens? No problem. Zombies. Check. Heaven? You got it.

The problem is that the story is so thin and the character development so non-existent, that it’s hard to get emotionally involved in any of it. These are two things that are most responsible for adding depth to a script – three-dimensional characters and a good story – but Drew and Scott seem more intent on stringing together a bunch of set pieces. I’ll say it again, the set pieces are fun. And we’ve definitely reached a point in movies where people don’t make interesting set pieces anymore, so I’m not going to short-change these additions. But I guess what’s so confusing to me is that they don’t even attempt to dig into the characters.

Actually, let me back up a little. They didn’t add any depth to our heroes. They did put some thought into our villain, Alex Parker. Parker, a sort of deranged version of Walt Disney, had a troubled childhood, lots of people doubted he could build this park, and he’s a self-made man. So there is some legitimate backstory there. The problem is we’ve seen this character before. In fact, the KFC Colonel ruined any chance of this character working when the Wachowskis made a joke of him in their final Matrix film. We have to keep in mind, of course, that this was written around 2002, and that it wasn’t AS cliché as it would be today. But still, there was something very non-threatening about Parker. I never feared him. In fact, he seemed quite honorable, making a deal with David about leaving the park. Compound this with the fact that I was never sure why he brought David there in the first place, and I just couldn’t get on board with the guy.

And while I liked the fact that Drew and Scott just flung us right into the story – I mean when we get to the park, we’re on that South African train within a few pages – I did think that the story needed a more gradual build-up to the park turning on them. Even though it would’ve taken longer, establishing the park as safe and secure and trustworthy would’ve made the moment when it turned on them all the more impactful. Take Jurassic Park for example. When we get there, we probably spend a good 20 minutes of feeling like everything is safe and trustworthy before it all starts to go bad.

Complicating this is the uncertainty behind the rules of the park. Can our heroes be hurt? Is the park trying to hurt them? This train ride with everyone attacking them seems really intense, but if all that happens when they die is they’re sent back to their room, then how exciting is it really? Having said that, this was the same issue I had with Avatar. If our hero gets killed in his Avatar body, nothing happens to him. He just wakes up back at the lab, which makes all his 5 mile high tree climbing and dragon-rousing a lot less exciting when you think about it. And that movie went on to gross 2 billion dollars, so what do I know?

What I get from Amusements is that these guys love writing action. You can smell it in every line. The problem is, it’s all fan-boy and no heart. I would’ve liked more character depth outside of the villain, and a story with a more clearly defined goal (I’m still not sure why they go to the park in the first place).  And some clear stakes!  If you liked movies like Westworld and the The Matrix, you may want to check this out (it can be found on the net). But all in all, there’s not enough meat on the bone here.

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

What I learned: A couple of things. When you try to please everybody, you please nobody. I think these guys were trying to please fanboys, studio execs, audiences, everyone, and in the process they forgot to please themselves – always the most important audience member to focus on when telling your story. Also, you have to have an interesting main character. David is way too stock. There’s nothing memorable or unique about him. Even when action is the real star of the movie (ID4), your main character has to have something going on with him that makes him memorable.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A high school girl getting ready for the biggest party of the year is tasked with taking her young brother on a quick trick or treating run. But when he goes missing, the entire night is thrown into disarray.
About: Fun Size made the bottom half of the 2010 Black List and is being produced and directed by Josh Schwartz, the O.C. creator and writer of a high school script I reviewed awhile back called “Providence” that wasn’t too shabby. This is Max Werner’s first feature sale. He got his break writing on The Colbert Report, on which he won an Emmy. Victoria Justice will be playing the lead character, Wren. No, not Victoria Jackson. Victoria Justice.
Writer: Max Werner
Details: 105 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Within the “collective things that happen to a bunch of people on a single day” mini-genre, I’d have to say that Dazed and Confused is the crème-de-la-crème. That film just has an energy to it that very few films have. I think a lot of that had to do with the casting at the time.  Now all anyone wants to do is cast spray-tanned glossy Hollywood actors in these roles.  Linklater wasn’t afraid to cast people that actually looked like real people (okay, except for Ben Affleck).

I guess my first thought when someone created a Dazed and Confused for Halloween was, “Hey, why didn’t I think of that?” Halloween is a great night to center a movie around because…well because it’s inherently theatrical. Everyone’s dressed up and they’re all acting like somebody they’re not. The problem with this bite sized script (besides the title – for which I suggest an immediate change), is I’m not sure what it wants to be. Does it want to be a family film? Does it want to be a raunchy teen movie? Or does it want to be Dazed and Confused meets Sixteen Candles? I’m not sure I’ll be able to answer that by the end of the review. But I’ll try.

Wren is pale and pretty and awkward and the kind of teenager who would rather crush on her really intelligent History teacher than one of the immature douchebags she shares hall space with on a daily basis. April, her best friend, is pretty much the opposite. Described as a “future girl gone wild,” (great description!) she’d rather crush on *every* douchebag she shares hall space with. If it’s cute, chances are April wants to fuck it.

Naturally, the too-mature-for-her-age Wren can’t wait to ditch this prison and head off to her dream school, NYU. Problem is she has these dreaded loans to take care of, and can’t do anything without her mother’s support. And right now, her mother’s making a very unfair demand – to take her plump annoying little brother Albert (aka, the devil), out for Halloween trick-or-treating while she goes out to her own Halloween party with her newly minted uncomfortably younger boyfriend.

Wren’s obviously furious, particularly because super-cute emo Aaron, the only boy her age who’s actually worth the effort, just invited her to his party for the evening. And taking Albert out means missing a prime time last-minute High School make-out (or more) opportunity that, if missed, she’ll end up regretting for the rest of her life.

So Wren and April formulate a plan where they’ll loop Albert around the block once, get him back home so he can gorge himself into a diabetic coma, then run over to Aaron’s party so the macking can begin. Sweet plan, except Albert, decked out in a spider-man costume, takes all of five minutes to wander off during the trick-or-treating, and DISAPPEAR. Just like that, Albert is el-gone-o.

Luckily, Wren and April run into ultra-nerd duo Roosevelt and Peng. Roosevelt plays the flute for fun and has two moms who force him to speak Latin. Peng is from Korea and immediately makes you think of Long Duck Dong (oh the days of 80s movie stereotypes). Never in a million years would April and Wren be caught with these two, but they have a car, and a car means finding her brother faster, which means hooking up with Aaron sooner, so they join forces and away we go.

Fun Size starts off really strong. If there’s one thing that Werner has going for him, it’s dialogue. I loved lines like this, when Aaron (the guy Wren likes) says in all earnestness, “I’m writing a power ballad about you. It’s called Mystery Meat.” Or when Wren, who’s always heard Roosevelt talk about his “moms,” realizes when she finally meets them that he really has 2 MOMS. Shocked, she observes, “I thought he was just talking like Ludacris.”

But sometimes the dialogue feels too clever. Wren creates these weird lists in her spare time which allow her to do these funky play on words such as: “Bullet Points on a Fluffer’s Resume: Team player, stick-to-it-ive-ness, conceive and implement strategies for sustaining growth during periods of inactivity.” I knew all the while that someone out there was laughing at this, but it was all too heady for me.

What’s strange is that the humor seems to move further down the evolutionary chain as the script goes on. Whereas we start out with a lot of clever witty dialogue – a sort of sister script to the well-loved “Easy A,” – things become considerably more low brow after we hit the mid-point. We have bully humor, car chases, my boyfriend is still in college stuff (for the mom). It’s not that I didn’t like it. It just seemed to shift in tone, and that contributed to me struggling to find out exactly what tone Fun Size was going for.

On the structural side, it passes inspection. I love the one night thing. Keeps the narrative nice and clean. We’re not questioning when it’s all supposed to end. The stakes are laid out clearly. Wren’s mom lets her know she needs to start acting more mature if she’s going to spend 40,000 a year on her. So if Wren comes home without her brother, chances are her NYU dream is kaput. Again, not mind-blowing, but that’s what you have to remember with structure. It just has to fit with the story you’re telling and be believable. It doesn’t have to be the most original thing in the world. As long as it shapes the story and doesn’t draw attention to itself, you’re in good shape.

Where I think the script falls short is in the emotional department. Near the end, we find out Wren’s father died. And it doesn’t feel natural at all, particularly because we’ve just spent the previous 60 pages drowning ourselves in wacky 80s teen humor. But as I read on, I thought, this is exactly what the script needed, only a lot sooner. We needed something to ground the craziness, and her father’s death and how that’s affected this family – had that been instituted from the get-go, I think it would’ve given this script a whole nother much-needed layer.

Dazed and Confused did this masterfully, where it had a lot of wacky moments (stealing beer and then being shot at in the car) but the story was so well grounded that instead of those moments feeling like Date Night 2, they felt like something that could’ve really happened. The trick was in how much importance Linklater placed on theme. Dazed and Confused was about “moving on,” or “moving to that next stage of your life.” Every scene was dripping with that theme, so when characters did things that they’d never normally do, it made sense, because that’s the way you act when it’s the last day before the next stage of your life. Here in Fun Size, when the car chase scene happened, it felt more like a writer trying to come up with a funny scene for a movie. Had they explored the theme of the father’s death (or – ironically – “not being able to move on”) early and often, it would’ve grounded the narrative and given Fun Size the earnestness I think it was looking for.

I like the concept here. Follow a bunch of connected people around during the craziness of one Halloween night. I’d just like more emotion and theme woven into the story, as right now it’s a little too broad and messy.

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

What I learned: Someone mentioned this in the comments of Bass Champion and I thought it was a great point. Make your stakes strong by giving your hero something to gain AND something to lose. So in Bass Champion, Tate had something to gain – the audition with Nolan – but he didn’t have a lot to lose. If he lost the championships, he just went back to his show, putting him right back where he started. Here, Wren GAINS something by finding her brother (she gets to go to the party and be with Aaron) and loses something by losing her brother (she doesn’t get to go to her dream school). Stakes can work with only something gained or only something lost, but tend to work best when there’s something to both gain and lose.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A Twilight-like actor becomes the face of Bass Fishing in a desperate attempt to get an audition for Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Old Man And The Sea.
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.
Writer: Gayne C. Young
Details: 105 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I got two words for you: colostomy bag.

If that doesn’t get your rotors revved up and ready to go, you might not want to “dive” into today’s amateur offering, Bass Champion. But if you choose not to take that leap, you’ll be missing out on one of the few worthy Amateur Friday screenplays I’ve read.

The first thing you gotta get right with a comedy is the premise.  The premise has to be funny.  And this premise passes the test.  I’m not sure why, but it’s probably due to the insane combination of the Twilight world and the Bass Fishing world, which just don’t go together at all. And yet our author, Gayne, finds a way to make it work, deftly poking fun at both the ridiculousness of tweenie vampires and the hickishness of bass fishing. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk plot.

Tate Blocker is a hot young “Robert Pattinson” like actor on a vampire TV show called “Forever Youth.” Tate takes method acting to the extreme, going to whatever lengths he needs to to become the character, including believing he’s an actual vampire. The problem is, it’s all a bag of tricks. Tate doesn’t understand what it’s really like to “get dirty” and sacrifice yourself to something.

Which is exactly why Christopher Nolan won’t even consider him for a roll in his new adaptation of The Old Man And The Sea. And it’s killing Tate. He’ll do anything to get that audition.

Halfway across the country, Bass Fishing champion and overall stupid-ass Bud Milton has made the inopportune mistake of sticking his pecker inside a fish’s mouth for a few laughs. Problem is, one of his cronies taped it, and now it’s all over Youtube, creating some really bad press for the sport, culminating in PETA swooping in and demanding nothing less than the shutdown of Bass Fishing.

Tate’s agent realizes this is the perfect opportunity to bust her client out of the TV world. If Tate can become the new face of Bass Fishing, it will refocus the media away from PETA, and in the process win over Christopher Nolan to get Tate that audition. It’s the perfect plan! Well, sorta.

If Tate is going to compete, he’s going to need a partner. And that partner comes in the form of anger-management poster child Rod Bender, a one-eyed alcoholic former Bass Fishing champion whose repeated fighting got him kicked off the tour years ago. Rod’s the only partner good enough to make up for Tate’s unsettling lack of skill.

The problem is that Bud, our oral fishing friend, is dead set on making sure Vampire Boy doesn’t win jack shit, and he’ll do anything to make him and his washed up partner disappear. And to make things worse, Hark Herald, who plays Tate’s werewolf co-star on Forever Youth, is pulling his own publicity stunt to win over the lead role in Christopher Nolan’s film. With escalating pressure from PETA, Rod’s physically abusive teaching methods, backstabbing from his female co-star at Comic-Con, and Bud’s never-ending dirty tricks, does Tate stand a chance of becoming the ultimate Bass Champion and winning the role of Santiago in The Old Man And The Sea?

So, is Bass Fishing perfect? No. Gayne is clearly still learning the craft and maybe leans a little too heavily on cheap humor (colostomy bags in two of three scripts this week!). But what I like about this week’s comedy script is that finally we have an amateur writer who’s put his story on the same priority level as his comedy.

You can see that in how deftly he’s structured his script. We have a main character with a clear goal (get an audition with Christopher Nolan). We have high stakes (Bass Fishing gets shut down and Tate loses the role of a lifetime if he loses). We have a ticking time bomb (Nolan choosing Santiago soon). We have a great central relationship in Rod and Tate, two completely opposite characters who must learn to work together to achieve their ultimate goal. Every character here is properly motivated. Rod wants back on the tour. Bud has to win or his career will be over. Tate’s agent wants to leave behind her soul-sucking child-actor agency. Everything that happens in this comedy has a reason for happening. Structurally, this is one of the best amateur Friday screenplays we’ve had.

Another thing Gayne’s got going for him is he understands his material. He gets these two competing worlds (the vain-ness of Hollywood and the trashiness of the South) so well that when he brings them together, you feel like you’re reading a script that you haven’t read before. True there are some familiar elements, but who the hell places a Twilight actor in the middle of the deep south?? I just haven’t seen anything close to that idea explored before. And everything here is like that – existing in that coveted “familiar but different” bullseye territory that every screenwriter should be aiming for.

I also loved the little touches in the story like Hark and Tate going after the same role. And the Comic-Con stuff had me dying (guys wearing “I’m a Tate-o-Sexual” shirts and Rod beating the shit out of a girl in a wheelchair after being mistaken for a homeless person from one of Tate’s Forever Youth episodes). Tate’s dedication to researching his roles, like going to a castle and living with roaches for a week. I really felt like Gayne pushed the comedy limits and never got bogged down in the obvious (well, almost never).

On the downside, I can tell he’s still learning some things. The opening of the script doesn’t move us into the story as smoothly as I would like. Setting up a story is deceptively hard because it’s when you introduce all the artificial elements (the goal, the ticking time bomb, etc.) that make the car go. Introducing these elements in a manner that’s not herky jerky and doesn’t draw attention to itself isn’t easy to do. If you’re too lazy about it, the reader quickly becomes aware that he’s reading a script. For instance, when Rod is being recruited from Outdoor Empire, we’re very aware that this is the “recruit the crazy partner” scene. It doesn’t “flow.” It doesn’t just “happen.” You have to keep writing these scenes to death until they feel effortless, until they feel like a natural extension of everything around them, because if the audience doesn’t believe your setup, it’s going to be hard for them to believe everything that follows.

The other stuff I wasn’t so hot on was the crass-ness of the humor. But I’m torn about it. On the one hand, a lot of it stemmed from the characters. The word “fuck” is used in Hollywood and the South a lot, so it makes sense that it’s used a lot here (and I mean A LOT). As for the shit jokes. Well…hmmm. This seems to divide audiences. But for me, now that I’m no longer in high school, it doesn’t really make me laugh anymore, so when we basically extend a 15 second scene to 3 minutes so we can draw out a shit joke where the wheelbound president of Bass Champions dumps his colostomy bag into a urinal, I’m inclined to say, “Lose it and move on.” Then again, one of the funniest jokes ever onscreen was a shit joke, that being the blanket flinging scene in Trainspotting. I think the lesson here is that you do have to listen to other people when they say you’ve gone too far with a joke. But in the end, because humor is so subjective and comes down to personal taste, you gotta stick with something if you believe it’s funny. So in that sense I respect Gayne’s choices.

In the end, I just love this premise (Did I mention I love this premise?). And the fact that Gayne actually built a story around it as opposed to stringing together a bunch of one-off sketches, puts him in a league above other aspiring comedy scriptwriters. Bass Champion still needs some work. I’d like the setup to be smoother and it gets a teensy bit repetitive in the middle. But concept wise, story wise, and execution of the premise wise, it does a really solid job. I’m thinking Gayne has a shot in this crazy business.

Script link: Bass Champion 

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

What I learned: All of your characters – not just your main character – should have something at stake. So here, the central stakes are for Tate to get an audition for Santiago. But his agent also has something at stake. If her client doesn’t get the role, she’s stuck in a shitty agency forever. For Rod, this is his last shot to get back into the sport he loves. For Bud, losing to Tate means he’ll lose the only thing he cares about, his fame. Even the sport itself has stakes attached to it. If Tate doesn’t win and squash PETA’s media attention, then the entire sport could close down. So add stakes wherever you can in your script, not just to your main character.

Am I upset that Source Code only made 15 million dollars on opening weekend and finished behind an irritating poorly animated bunny? Of course! I wanted the movie to make a bajillion dollars and prove to Hollywood that spec scripts can make good movies too, especially spec scripts as good as this one. It didn’t happen but I can still take comfort in the fact that critics enjoyed it, which is by no means a guarantee with sci-fi.

But that’s not why I’m writing today’s article. I’m writing today’s article because you guys have said you want more script-to-screen comparisons, an examination of the changes made from the original spec to the final shooting script, so we can try and discern what happens during the development process and if that process ends up helping the script or hurting it. Since there’s no script I know better than this one, I thought it’d be a great script to start with.

Before I get into the specific changes, however, let me give you my general reaction to the film. I liked it. Quite a bit actually. I thought Jake was solid. He has a strange quality as a leading man in that he definitely FEELS like a movie star but is missing that – I don’t know what it is – but I guess “swagger” describes it – the thing that separates guys like DiCaprio from the rest of the pack. You want to hang out with Jake. I’m not sure you want him to save the world for you. Still, I thought he worked. As for Jeffrey Wright – look – I know he totally overplayed the part. But I loved it. I love him as an actor and think he has such an interesting delivery that even when he’s hamming it up, I still believe it.

As for director Duncan Jones, I thought he made some good choices and some not so good choices. Someone else pointed out that the movie starts with sweeping shots of Chicago and the train Colter wakes up in. These shots are beautiful to look at but they were totally wrong for the opening, which is supposed to be our character waking up in a strange place with no idea how he got there. If we’re to feel the same way, shouldn’t that be our first shot? Him waking up? Not a $50,000 helicopter shot? It would be like in Buried if we showed sweeping shots of Iraq for three minutes before cutting to Ryan Reynolds in a coffin. Also, I’m not sure I liked the bright bubbly feel of the train sequences and was hoping for more of a cold steely tint, like that of Inception. I understand Jones wanted to clash the train scenes with the dark dreary feel of the source code chamber but that vibrant look just didn’t mesh with the tone of the story.

Having said that, Jones really kept the story moving and, even with the script changes, was dedicated to the spirit of the script. This was close to what I read on the page. And that doesn’t happen all the time. Anyway, here are five key script changes made from the spec script to the shooting draft and how I feel they affected the final product.

CHANGE #1 – 17 MINUTES TO 8 MINUTES
In the script Colter has 17 minutes on the train. In the movie he has 8. At first I didn’t like this change. It felt like too tight of a time-crunch. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. On the page, 17 minutes can be fudged to seem like it’s going a lot faster. You just cut out the boring parts. Onscreen, in this particular situation where we’re staying with Jake the whole time, that’s harder to do. Therefore, 17 minutes would’ve felt like a lifetime. 8 minutes is still a little too short for me. 11 minutes would have been perfect. But overall, I think the change worked.

CHANGE # 2 – THE GIRL
By far, the biggest change in the script was making Christina someone Colter knew of ahead of time, as opposed to someone he’d never talked to before. When I first read this change in Billy Ray’s rewrite, I was so pissed off I actually threw the script down and stopped reading. I feared that they’d completely ruined the story with this needless change. Here’s my problem with it. I’m of the belief that you want to make things as difficult as possible for your main character. If things are easy, you don’t have a movie. So for her to just be in his back pocket from the second he wakes up….it’s too easy. I got the feeling that if he’d asked her to marry him right then and there, she would’ve said yes. And how interesting of a relationship is that? That said, I think I know why they did it. And it goes back to the aforementioned time change. In the script, when he had 17 minutes, winning over a girl who doesn’t know you is somewhat conceivable. In the film, when he had 8 minutes, that conceit becomes infinitely harder to believe. He would’ve had to use every single second of those eight minutes before she trusted him enough to do the things he needed her to do. Therefore their only choice was to make it so that she already knew him, so he doesn’t have to use that time to convince her who he is every time he goes back into the train. He can just jump straight into the action. I don’t like it as much as the way the script handled it, but I understand the change.

CHANGE #3 – 120 pages to 90 pages
(note: I don’t know the actual page length of the shooting draft. I’m just going by the 1 page = 1 minute of screen time rule). Now you know me. I’m Mister “Keep your script to 110 pages MAX” Guy. The reason the 120 pages in Source Code never bothered me though was because each section of Source Code is its own ticking time bomb. It’s always a race. So you never feel time dragging. That said, there are a lot of advantages to cutting the script down to 90 pages. The most obvious is that less pages equals a lower budget. Each day you shoot is tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. So cutting even a single page saves a lot of money. Yet another reason to keep your screenplay lean. Also, thrillers just play better at shorter lengths, especially contained thrillers like this one. Finally, this particular format of movie, where you’re repeating actions, can grate on the viewer if not done right. Go watch the movie “Vantage Point” to see what I mean. People don’t like to go backwards in a story so it’s best to err on the side of caution and keep things as lean as possible. This movie is supposed to move so they made sure it moved. So overall, I think it was a good change.

CHANGE #4 – MORE UPBEAT
I heard Duncan Jones talk about this in an interview – how he wanted to add more humor and a generally upbeat tone to Source Code. I’m usually okay with this. Too many writers drown their scripts in hopelessness and despair, squeezing the life out of their story page by endlessly depressing page. But Source Code’s thriller elements were all perfectly plotted, keeping our focus away from the fact that this was, indeed, a dark story, and instead on the main character’s tasks, which were to find the bomber and find out who Beleagured Castle was. Also, the relationship between him and the girl provided that necessary spark to offset the darkness. That was our “upbeat” storyline. Where I really had an issue with this “happier” approach was the “Here’s ten bucks now go do your comedy routine” scene at the end. You can always tell when an idea hasn’t been fully integrated into a script. The writer tries to squeeze a thin setup for it in early (“You know that guy. He’s a comedian!”) then a full 90 minutes later with no other insight into that character or that situation, we get his Last Comic Standing climax. It’s a total cheat and it felt forced as hell. I’m not saying it couldn’t have worked. It just needed a lot more setup. Overall, I would’ve preferred a darker feel on the train, like the script, so I wasn’t thrilled by this choice.

CHANGE #5 – THE ENDING
Personally, I thought the ending in the original draft was perfect. There’s a couple of reasons for that. First, the images that Colter keeps seeing between the train and the chamber are discussed in the dialogue so as to cue the reader in that they’re an important plot point. Colter asks Goodwin “What am I seeing? I’m seeing something after the train blows up.” This “middle time” is what helps us buy into the ending where they walk into the real world. But in the movie, we only SEE these images. We’re never informed that they’re supposed to be important. As a result, they just come off as a cool visual thing. Second, the ending in the spec draft was simple. They walk off the train, he checks his watch, it’s past 8 minutes, and he’s still alive. In this new ending, there was too much going on, four endings to be precise. We have the comedy freeze, which I admit would’ve been a dark cool way to end the film. Then we have the post freeze, where they realize they’re still alive. Then we have the real world text, where Colter informs Goodwin that he’s still alive in the Source Code. Then we have the “fate” finale, where Colter and Christina go to Grant Park and look at the mirror bubble exhibit. The thing is, I thought each of these endings worked in their own way. I enjoyed all of them. I just didn’t think they worked together. It had a bit of a Steven Spielberg “too many endings” effect that gave you that uncomfortable, “Shouldn’t this be over already?” feeling. So for that reason, I don’t think the ending in the movie worked as well as the ending in the spec script.

So what can we take from all this? Well, changes are going to happen in any script. But you know, they really didn’t change that much in Source Code. And that’s a testament to how well the script was written. This was more “rearranging the deck chairs” than “building a new ship.” And I think that’s why it ultimately worked – because the core elements of the script were always in place. Guy must keep going back in time to find a terrorist bomber before he sets off a much bigger attack. Complications ensue when he starts falling for the girl who helps him. The pace moved. The acting was good. Yeah I liked Goth Christina (from the spec) better than Peppy Christina but Michelle Monaghan is so beautiful that I quickly forgot about her. I really liked the added scene where they go out to the van and (spoiler) Derek kills them. Made him so much more evil and his downfall so much more satisfying. Is it the movie that the original script promised? No. But it was close enough.

What I learned: Whenever you rewrite a script, you’re adding new elements to each draft. Remember though, that while you may be on the 7th or 8th draft of your script, that new element you just added? It’s only on its 1st draft. If you don’t rewrite the script a few more times to get that element into its 4th or 5th draft, it’s going to stick out like a sore thumb. And that’s what happened here with the “Last Comic Standing” ending. It needed a few more beats during the story to really sell it. But they squeezed the element in at the last second and were unable to put it through any drafts. Hence the forced feeling of that ending.