Genre: Drama
Premise: A young janitor at MIT solves an impossible math equation, which leads to a unique relationship with a reclusive psychologist.
About: Good Will Hunting was originally purchased by Rob Reiner at Castle Rock for 675,000 dollars. The script at that time was a straight thriller about a math genius recruited by the government. Reiner told Damon and Affleck to cut out the thriller aspect, however, and focus on the character development. The rewrites went well, but eventually the project jumped ship to Miramax (spearheaded by Kevin Smith, which is how he got producer credit on the film). After demanding the usual suspects for the lead roles (DiCaprio and Pitt) and not getting them, Miramax begrudgingly allowed Damon and Affleck to play the leads, which would end up launching their careers. The script went on to win the best original screenplay Oscar in 1997. There was a lot of controversy behind that win, however, as many claimed William Goldman rewrote the script. Goldman repeatedly denied these claims though and told the screenwriting world they were simply jealous that a couple of good-looking kids could write a great screenplay. For an article about dialogue in GWH, go the the writer’s store.
Writers: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

When Good Will Hunting came out, I didn’t see what the big deal was. A couple of pretty boy best friends able to make their dream project seemed to be influencing the Oscar vote way more than the quality of the movie itself. I mean, the story was basically about a couple of friends hanging out in Boston, right? Give me a break.

But having watched the movie a number of times since, and maybe growing up a little as well, I’ve realized just how complicated and well-written this screenplay is. Good Will Hunting is a multi-faceted multi-character study, which places its chassis around an engine that’s never officially turned on. It’s overly melodramatic in places. The backstories are a mite cliché (oh, daddy was abusive!). And yet it’s all powerfully affecting. It works in a way that so many other character studies (Smart People, Garden State, Brothers, Pay It Forward, Finding Forrester, etc., etc.) have failed. So what’s going on here? And what is it about Good Will Hunting that’s so complicated?

As I’ve stated many times before, most of the best stories start with a character who wants something badly. That thing they want? It’s called a goal. And their pursuit of that goal is what drives the story forward. Because there’s uncertainty in whether they’ll achieve that goal or not, we want to stick around to find out what happens. That formula right there is the core of any good drama.

However, every once in awhile, a movie is based around a character without a goal. In these cases, the character is known as “passive.” They’re passive because they’re not “actively” trying to obtain a goal. Movies based around these characters can still work (The Graduate), but they’re really hard to pull off, because it’s hard to get excited about a character who doesn’t do anything just as it’s hard to like people in the real world who don’t do anything. Inactivity is boring.

However, one of the ways to make movies with passive heroes work, is to give the goal that drives the story to someone else. In almost all cases, that secondary choice would be the villain. So in Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin doesn’t have a goal. It’s Joe Pesci’s villain, who’s trying to break in, who has the goal that’s driving the story. Macaulay Culkin is just trying to survive.

To recap, we have giving your main character the story goal or giving your main villain the story goal. But if neither of these two has a goal? Now you’re stepping into dangerous territory. Because very few movies work without the two most important people in the movie driving the story. I mean, if anyone besides these two is driving the story, why aren’t they the main character??

Yet this is what Good Will Hunting does. The goal in Good Will Hunting is Professor Lambeau’s. He’s trying to help Will realize his full potential. But it doesn’t stop there. Instead of Professor Lambeau – the person with the actual goal – being the one to guide Will to his objective, he brings in ANOTHER CHARACTER – a psychologist friend – to do the job for him. This means, by association, Sean (Robin William’s character), is the character responsible for the main goal that drives the story, a goal he personally (at least initially) could care less about.

If we were to go back to the conception of this idea, I think every one of us would’ve been more comfortable making the person who cares so much about Will becoming a math genius (Professor Lambeau) being the one to “help” him. Adding a buffer character between him and Will lowers the stakes, since Sean doesn’t have as much on the line as Lambeau. It would be like Daniel coming to Mr. Miagi in The Karate Kid and Mr. Miagi saying. “I want you to be a great Karate master. Let me introduce you to my friend, Cousin Taki. He will teach you.”

So, let’s recap again. Our main character has no goal. There’s no villain so the villain has no goal. A third person has the goal but pawns it off to someone else. And to make things as tough as they can possibly be on our writers, the goal itself is vague. They’re helping Will with his Math so he can…help the world? Sheesh, talk about a tough sell.

So then, why does Good Will Hunting still work?

Well, it starts with something not a lot of people who write character work think about – a hook. Will is a genius. He can solve impossible math equations, equations that would give Einstein fits, in a matter of seconds. So right away, you have something unique that intrigues an audience. But the writers go one step further. Will is a janitor at MIT. They’ve harnessed the power of an ironic character. A janitor at MIT who’s smarter than all the students? Who doesn’t want to go see a movie about that?

What the hook also does is it makes us like Will. Remember, audiences love characters who are talented at something. It’s no different than real life. We love people who are great at something. We look up to them. Admire them. Wish we could be like them. And so even though Will beats the shit out of people for fun (although it’s important to remember that the person he beats up is the kid who bullied him in kindergarten), we really like the guy.

Affleck and Damon then introduce the secret engine that’s driving the story. You didn’t know about the secret engine rule did you? Well pay attention, cause this is the key to why this story works. Are you ready? WILL HUNTING DOES NOT WANT TO DO ANYTHING WITH HIS TALENT. And that, my friends, is the conflict that’s driving the story.

Our character wants to be one way. **But we want him to be another way.** Conflict. We, just like Lambeau and Sean, want Will to realize his potential. We want him to realize what he can do for the world. And that’s why those therapy sessions between Sean and Will work so well. Because there’s so much at stake. If Will doesn’t open up, if he doesn’t listen to what Sean has to say, he’s going to be mopping floors and banging bricks for the rest of his life. And we can’t have that. It’s a really weird driving mechanism for a story. Because normally character goals or mysteries drive a story. In this case, it’s our desire to see this character reach his potential.

There are some other risks Affleck and Damon took in Good Will Hunting as well. Usually, in a drama like this, you don’t want to have any more than 3 central relationships for the main character to resolve. And that’s because if you spread yourself too thin, you won’t have enough time to explore those relationships on a meaningful level. So in Rocky, we have the relationship with Adrian, with Paulie, and with Mick. Here in Good Will Hunting, we have five. Will’s relationship with Chuckie (Affleck), with his group of friends, with Professor Lambeau, with Sean, and with Skylar. That’s a lot of jumping back and forth and by no means easy to juggle. Now on top of this – as if these guys weren’t making things difficult enough for themselves – we also explore Sean and Lambeau’s relationship AWAY from Will. This is a risky move because it isn’t required. They could’ve nixed it and kept the story leaner and more focused. But they did it and it paid off, because it made us understand these characters in a way we couldn’t have understood them if we had only seen them around Will.

Good Will Hunting also seems to violate the melodrama rule. Which is you don’t want to stack a bunch of really intense (yelling, crying) scenes back to back as the melodrama will overwhelm the audience and cancel itself out. Yet at the end of Good Will Hunting, we get, I believe, 5 back to back scenes with our characters breaking down, crying, or screaming. In every other instance I’ve seen this attempted, it’s failed miserably, as the audience just gets drama’d out. Yet in Good Will Hunting, it works. And it works because the characters are so unbelievably crafted. Each one of them feels like a real person so we believe that they’d really be crying and yelling at each other.

And the touches here. The touches are amazing. Making sure to keep enough humor in the script to balance out all the melodrama. Stuff like Professor Lambeau’s study aid, a character who could’ve been forgettable but Damon and Affleck gave him a jealousy storyline. The script strives to create those all important “memorable moments” (“How you like them Apples” and Chuckie’s “retainer” interview). And the dialogue. Jesus Christ the dialogue in this script is tremendous. I mean they must’ve written those scenes between Will and Sean a thousand times because none of it is cliché. Not a lick of it. They just kept pounding it out and pounding it out and pounding it out until it felt unique and infinitely organic to this world. I can’t say enough about this script. I think it’s genius. And it’s on Neflix Streaming for free. So what the hell are you waiting for?

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

What I learned: Good Will Hunting is a testament to the power of rewriting. It’s well documented that they rewrote the shit out of this thing. Probably over a hundred drafts. And when you keep going back and holding every scene up to the spotlight and saying, “Is this as good as it can possibly be?” and not stopping until the answer is yes, that’s the attitude that leads to great scripts. Just remember though. These guys had some really smart people giving them notes (Rob Reiner, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Smith, Robin Williams). Getting fresh eyes on the script after every rewrite helps you identify problems in your script that aren’t working which is the key to making it better.

First of all, shame on all you people who e-mailed me months ago telling me Source Code screenings had gone terribly and the movie was bad enough to go straight to video and you never understood why I loved the script in the first place .  The movie is playing like gangbusters for critics made all the more shocking by the fact that it’s a sci-fi film! 

I’m just kidding of course.  Everybody has their own opinions and they’re all valid.  But I’m excited as hell that a great script has transferred over to the big screen, because sometimes this shit gets screwed up.  And it goes to show you that an original idea stemming from a SPEC SALE can turn into a good movie.  So keep writing!  Next Thursday, I’m going to chronicle the changes made from that initial draft to what ended up onscreen and discuss how those changes helped or hurt the story.  So go see the film this weekend and support the Source. 

Genre: Historical Epic
Premise: In 1804, before America has any cachet in the world, a rogue U.S. diplomat arrives in the savage city of Tripoli to demand the release of American prisoners.
About: Tripoli was famously about to begin production in 2003 (2004?) when at the last second the studio pulled out. Ridley Scott, the director of the project, immediately moved on to another Monahan scripted endeavor, “Kingdom Of Heaven.” Tripoli has made waves in screenwriting circles since, with many proclaiming its awesomeness. As I’ve found this to be standard practice when it comes to deserted high profile projects, I decided to read the script and decide for myself. Monahan is pretty much the go-to guy when it comes to historical-based screenplays and is one of the better writers in Hollywood overall (I really dug his underrated screenplay for Edge of Darkness). He actually sold this screenplay on spec.
Writer: William Monahan
Details: 129 pages – 4/11/02 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).

Historical-related plots are so hard to pull off. They’re always walking that line between maintaining the historical accuracy of the times and keeping things entertaining enough for a modern audience. The problem is that the speed of life back then was so damn slow, and if you violate that pace, if you try to speed it up Michael Bay style, it feels false, necessitating that you move your story along at “Sunday afternoon” speeds. This requires the writer to dig deep into his bag of tricks to keep the story moving – conflict, mystery, suspense, tension, plotting – all of them must be used to “trick” the audience into thinking things are moving faster than they actually are. The problem is, there aren’t many writers who can do this. But since Monahan is about as skilled as they come, maybe Tripoli would be different.

Or…maybe not.

I didn’t like Tripoli. In fact, I had a harder time getting through this than I did a day at Sunday school. I don’t know if this movie was built for me because it is looooooong and drawwwwwwn out and not much happens and I don’t know if the subject matter is big enough for an entire movie. It’s basically about a guy walking around for a couple of hours. Let me lay out the plot for you.

The story starts off in the Barbary Coast of Africa in 1804. America isn’t a major player yet. To the point where places like Tripoli scoff when Americans show up in their city and demand the release of American prisoners. This is exactly what happens as our hero, Eaton, an easily frightened American diplomat on his way to another country entirely, but who gets roped into Tripoli after local pirates seize his ship, sees other Americans there and asks for their release.

This was the first sign of trouble for me, that our hero wasn’t even specifically headed to Tripoli in the first place. He was going somewhere else and only upon noticing a few of his other countryman being held did he decide to make a stand. When the situation was so meaningless that our hero wasn’t even going there to address it in the first place, it just felt like a second rate problem. And indeed, the Americans aren’t in any imminent danger. They’re just sequestered to their ship in the port. So right away, the stakes feel low.

To the script’s credit, there is one great sequence in this opening act, and that’s when Eaton demands to speak with the city’s ruler, a barbaric man who skins people alive, pokes their eyes out, and forces them to live in cages in his throne quarters. And we thought Charlie Sheen had issues. Just the anticipation of this meeting between Eaton and the ruler was great, and when they do finally have their showdown, and Eaton stands up to him, it was easily the best moment in the script. I still had high hopes for Tripoli at this point.

Unfortunately, Monahan takes the story in another direction entirely. After the ruler denies Eaton the release of his countrymen, Eaton finds out that the king has a brother who’s been exiled to Egypt, and that this brother is a way cooler cat who doesn’t skin people alive and put them in cages. So he gets this idea that he’ll go to Egypt and convince the brother to come back and rule Tripoli.

And thus begins an endless trip where Eaton finds the brother and the two walk back to Tripoli, debating how they’re going to take over the city with so few men. As you know, for any “road trip” scenario to work, the characters have to be interesting. And both Eaton and the brother are – I hate to say it – but really boring. They sound like two college professors debating 200 year old world affairs for two hours. I mean it’s really hard to get through.

I suppose the final battle to take the city back could be epic with Ridley Scott directing, but because I didn’t care about any of the characters involved, in particular the American soldiers who I barely knew, the battle didn’t matter. To make things worse, there’s a huge anti-climactic moment that interrupts the battle at the end that basically makes everything that came before it (aka the entire movie) meaningless.

Tripoli’s faults come down to that most basic pillar of storytelling – stakes. I just didn’t feel the stakes. I didn’t really know or care about the Americans being saved. I didn’t understand why replacing the leader of Tripoli was so important. It seemed like our main character was set on it only because of principle, because the ruler was bad and his brother was good. I get principle but I don’t know if I believe that someone takes a months-long trip to Egypt to find a replacement king then goes back and tries to take over the city simply on principle. In Braveheart, if William Wallace loses any of those battles, his country loses their fucking freedom!! Now THOSE are stakes. Replacing the ruler of a mean but small group of savages who annoyingly interrupt European trade routes with their piracy? I’m not sure why I’m supposed to care about that.

Also, I didn’t like the recruiting of the replacement brother. Mainly because the CITY IS WHERE ALL THE FUN IS! Tripoli, with this barbaric insane leader who kills people for sport….THAT’S WHERE I WANT MY MOVIE TO BE. That’s where all the conflict is. When we’re in this city, we feel like Eaton could be skinned alive at any moment. When he’s off wandering around Egypt, we feel no danger for him whatsoever. Why not have Eaton stay in the city and plan his takeover there? I suppose the answer to this has something to do with that’s not how it happened in real life. So then maybe you focus the story on one of the other characters, possibly one of the Americans stuck in the city?

To be honest, this is why I get worried whenever I open a period piece. Many of them seem to be geared towards historical nerds who love the details yet aren’t that interested in telling a rip-roaring story, which I guess brings us back to Monday’s script review, Repent Harlequin. The details are definitely necessary to making a script great. But a script’s laurels can’t rest solely on historical details. It has to be based on some kind of unique entertaining hook, and I’m still struggling to figure out what the hook of Tripoli was.

So if William Monahan, one of the best writers in Hollywood, is struggling to make an historical epic work, then let that be a word to the wise for all you amateur writers out there thinking you’re going to break into the spec market with an historical/period piece yourself. It’s really damn hard!

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

What I learned: If you refuse to listen to me and still want to write your period piece, seriously consider starting your screenplay with an opening crawl that highlights the relevant details of the time. One of the reasons I had such a tough time getting into Tripoli was that I had no knowledge of this time period or this city. If there are some important details about why Tripoli is the way it is or what stage America is at right now, the reader needs to know (i.e. “In 1807, pirates out of Tripoli were wreaking havoc on the surrounding countries, severely crippling the most important trade routes in Western Europe, which in turn crippled America’s commerce…”). Set up for us why this story is relevant.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A young man about to get married to the wrong girl gets stuck down in Florida for a week, babysitting his newly widowed grandfather.
About: Hip hip hooray, the spec sale lives! This script just sold a couple of weeks ago to Universal for mid six figures. The writer, John Phillips, is a New York based comedian who was a part of the Upright Citizens Brigade.This is his first spec sale. 
Writer: John Phillips
Details: 112 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 feel like this is my fault – that I’ve clamored so loudly for a ticking time bomb in every script, that every writer is making damn well sure they have one. Which is good. The problem, however, is the blatant lack of ticking time bomb diversity, particularly in comedies. Just about everyone uses the same one – the hero is getting married in a week. I know it’s the easiest. I know it works. I know it’s the ideal frame for the story. But just keep in mind, everybody else is using it, so if you can find a different one? Please use it instead, as it will set your screenplay apart. Okay, now on to the script.

Our affable but uptight hero, Jason Kelly, is about to get married to Meredith in a week. Meredith is kind of like Ed Helms’ girlfriend in The Hangover, only slightly less mean. Unfortunately, throwing a little wrench into his plans is that Jason’s grandmother just died. And they have to fly out to the funeral a week before the big day.

Even worse, it turns out that his grandmother used to drive his grandfather around. Now that she’s, you know, DEAD, she can’t do that anymore. So Jason’s parents ask him if he can stay in town for a few days to take care of Grandpa’s driving duties until they can hire someone new. Jason reluctantly agrees while a pissed off Meredith heads back to Atlanta and, voila, that’s how our adventure begins.

Dick Kelly, Jason’s grandfather, might as well be 30 years younger he’s such a specimen of handsome macho manliness. He has a way with the ladies but hasn’t been able to use it for the past 50 years because he was, you know, married. But now that the wife is fertilizing the dirt at the local cemetery, he can finally concentrate on what he was born to do – score women!

That’s the REAL reason he asked Jason to stay behind, so he can have a wingman. Unfortunately Jason’s the worst wingman ever. He does everything by the rules and because he’s getting married, has no interest in hooking up with anyone.

But then they meet a couple of girls in town for Spring Break and in order to give Dick a shot with one of them, Jason has no other choice but to entertain the other one, a sarcastic witty unpredictable exotic girl (read: “the complete opposite of Meredith”) named Shadia.

The group finds themselves getting caught up in Spring Break activities, frat house parties, go-kart races, a fight or two. And in the process of loosening up, Jason begins to realize that maybe Meredith isn’t the girl he’s supposed to spend the rest of his life with after all. Maybe it’s Shadia. Of course, before he can figure it all out, he’ll first have to make sure his insane grandfather lives through the week.

Let me start this analysis off by asking a question. It seems to me that there’s a portion of the moviegoing public who hates the “weak” 20-something male protagonist who doesn’t have his shit together. Michael Cera. Seth Rogan. Paul Rudd. Skewing slightly older, Steve Carrell. The kind of roles that those characters play. Which is the same role that’s presented here in Dirty Grandpa.

Now here’s my question. A character needs to start from a place of weakness in order to get to a place of strength. I mean, if they’re already strong, and they already have their shit together, then why do we need to watch their story? If Jason already knows that Meredith is an overbearing bitch that controls his life, then he can get rid of her on the first page and the movie is over.

So I’m curious if you guys just hate these characters in general or if there’s a version of these characters that you like? And if so, who would that version be? Can you give me a specific movie example? Cause again, while I don’t exactly like wimpy characters who don’t stick up for themselves, such as Jason, I realize that the journey is about their growth. And they can’t grow if they’ve already learned and corrected their weaknesses. So I’m curious what the Rogan/Cera/Rudd/Segal haters have to say about this.

Okay, enough of that. What about the script? I thought Dirty Grandpa was actually pretty good. I mean, we’re not breaking any new ground here. It’s another “buddy” movie, however the pairing is unique in that it’s a guy and his grandpa, something we haven’t seen before, which gives it a fresh feel. I also thought the comedy was pretty sharp, especially the early stuff. Meredith’s dog barking like crazy during the funeral and being completely oblivious to it not only had me laughing, but set up her character perfectly as well.

Unfortunately, the humor in the rest of the script never quite lives up to those first 20 pages and now that I think about it, this happens in a LOT of the comedies I read these days. And I don’t know why that is. Maybe it’s because when you first conceive of an idea, the easiest scenes to think of are the ones that happen right around the story’s hook (which always comes early), or maybe it’s because writers obsess over those first 20 pages way more than they do the last 80. But I’ve been seeing this in a TON of comedies lately so please comedy writers, make sure to keep the jokes going the whole way through, not just in the beginning!

I also thought the comedy could’ve been pushed more. We’re warned that Grandpa is unpredictable and racist, yet I don’t remember one racist joke in the movie. Actually, the script plays it pretty “P.C.” with Grandpa coming to the rescue of a gay character at a key moment in the movie that might as well have been a P.S.A for GLADD.

I will say this though. I thought Dirty Grandpa was better than El Presidente. That script was pure shenanigans with zero story. This at least tries to have a structure, albeit one that ends with the dreaded “run to the airport” scene – noooooo!

I actually had an idea after reading this ending. If Jason had to instead chase his GRANDFATHER to the airport and not a girl – like every other romantic comedy in existence – I think it could’ve worked, because it would’ve been a new spin on an old idea. But chasing the girl to the plane terminal just CANNOT BE DONE anymore. You can’t do it. And no, it’s not okay if you’re self-referencing it either (“This is so cliché! Us ending up at the airport!”). That’s becoming almost as cliché as the run to the airport in the first place (I say as Phillips is padding his pocket with a 500,000 dollar check).

As it stands, Dirty Grandpa isn’t bad. And not bad is pretty solid for a comedy these days.

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

What I learned: Always give your characters goals in scenes. Remember, scenes are just mini-movies. They, like movies, should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the beginning starts with a character who needs something (a goal). So in the middle of Dirty Grandpa, there’s a scene where they go go-karting. Now even though the temptation is to just have a wacky wily shenanigan-filled go-kart scene, you need a reason for the scene to exist. The character goal here becomes Grandpa wanting to take out the two muscle-bound stooges that are cock-blocking them from getting the girls. It’s thin and in the grand scheme of things, kinda silly, but at least it gives the scene a purpose. So make sure there’s always a character goal in every scene you write.

Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Premise: In the future, where every minute is kept track of by a time dictator known as the Ticktockman, one man decides to fight the system and help the public seize back their lives.
About: J. Michael Straczynski, through the blessing of his friend Harlan Ellison, who wrote the original short story which won the Hugo Award in 1966, has adapted Harlequin in spec screenplay form. He went out with it recently and to be honest, I don’t know if it sold or not, but I don’t think it did as I can’t find any information that definitively claims it did. J. Michael Straczynski is, of course, the screenwriter of the recently reviewed World War Z.
Writer: J. Michael Straczynski (based on the short story by Harlan Ellison)
Details: 106 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).

What an odd little screenplay this was. I must admit, despite learning that “Repent, Harlequin Said The Ticktockman,” was one of the most famous sci-fi short stories ever written, I had never heard of it up until now. And upon hearing what it was about, I have to say I was pretty excited. Time rationing is a cool science fiction idea. So I was curious to see what Straczynski had done with it.

It’s an unspecified future. In this future, time is valued above all else. You see, in the interim between 2011 and…whenever it is now, the world has become more and more obsessed with time. Every single second must be squeezed out from every single person and that means people can’t be late…ever. Time abuse is not permitted. In fact, the ruling government has become so strict in their efforts to keep everything moving on schedule that they’ve built a mechanism into your heart whereby every minute you’re late, they take away one minute of your life. Try to escape these constraints, they simply press a button and stop your heart altogether.

The ruler of this time-obsessed world is the Ticktockman, an elusive Kim Jong-Il like leader who only emerges when he has to, and is feared by all. He makes sure that there is no one who takes advantage of his OCD-esque scheduled world, and if they do, it’s OFF WITH THEIR HEARTS.

Enter Everett C. Marm, a storage space cleaner who doesn’t abide by the system. Well, he abides by it when he’s being watched, but Everett steals minutes of relaxation and fun whenever he can. He actually ENJOYS himself in those moments, something that isn’t accepted in this world.

Well one day, while cleaning out a storage locker, he finds a room filled with old toys. It’s a revelation to him, as toys (signifying an age where people enjoyed “leisure time”) aren’t made anymore. Specifically, he finds an old harlequin costume (one of those costumes that makes you look like a court jester) and formulates an idea. What if he could become a “super hero,” a man who reminds the lemmings what it’s like to enjoy themselves again?

So that’s exactly what he does. He pops on the costume, starts running around the city, and causes all sorts of mayhem, which results in people being late for work or late for appointments. This forces them, for the first time, to just….enjoy the moment. These moments of enjoyment begin to spread, and soon the population is starting to wonder if the time-constricted world they’re a part of is really the best thing for them.

The Ticktockman, realizing his grip on the people is slipping, dedicates all of his efforts to find and expose the Harlequin, in order to save his dictatorship.

So, how was it?

Okay, I feel very strongly about this even though I know some hardcore sci-fi lovers share the opposite opinion. I believe that you entertain FIRST and do your social commentary SECOND when writing a movie. I get that sci-fi, in particular, is a great venue to bring to light modern day socio-political problems. District 9 brought to light how we treated the less fortunate in Johannesburg.

But for any of that to actually rub off on your viewer, you need to make sure you’re entertaining them first. Or else you might as well plop them in front of a CNN broadcast. That was my big problem with Harlequin. It’s geared so extensively to deliver a message, that it’s never that entertaining. “Enjoy yourself. Smell the roses,” is what the story keeps telling us.  The irony being that we’re not enjoying ourselves. I wanted a story.  Instead I got a moral.

This is also a tonally strange screenplay. On the one hand we’re living in this technologically superior futuristic city. But on the other, our main character is dressed up in an 18th century harlequin costume bouncing around town like a court jester. I had a really hard time bringing those two visuals together. I don’t know, it felt like Charlie Chaplin dressed up in a clown costume doing pratfalls in front of a Minority Report skyscraper. For example, in one of the central set pieces, the Harlequin unloads thousands of jellybeans onto the city to bring it to a halt. Jellybeans? Really?

I guess the movie it reminded me of the most was V for Vendetta. And I really disliked that movie. But I realize that a lot of people *did* like that movie, so I’m thinking those same people might like Harlequin. Still, it’s hard to argue that this didn’t feel like the year 2100 imagined by someone living in 1783. For example, there’s no mention of the internet at all here. It’s as if it doesn’t exist. And, of course, that’s because it if it did exist, the story couldn’t exist, because people don’t act like the people in this story if they have the internet. That then makes the future of Repent Harlequin an alternate reality and boy do I hate alternate reality futures because they eliminate the suspension of disbelief. If you don’t believe that this could really happen, if you’re not truly worried that this is the direction the world is headed in, then why should you care?

Still, I feel like some of you will like this. It reminded me in many ways of Frank Darabont’s Farenheit 451, and as many of you remember, I so did not like that script either (also because it was set in an alternate reality).

I guess in the end this is a stylized interpretation of an alternate reality future. It’s highly conceptual and so you need to buy into a lot of things to suspend your disbelief. If you can make that happen, or if the alternate reality vibe doesn’t bother you, hey, you very well might love it.  I couldn’t unfortunately. I will give it this though. It’s unlike anything that’s coming out in the theaters today. And that’s always a good thing.

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

What I learned: The funny thing is, most writers have the opposite problem. They have no theme. They have nothing they’re trying to say. As a result, their story is thin and forgettable. But the deep-thinkers, the people who use film to say something about the world, their problem is that sometimes they get a little too wrapped up in their message. And they need to be reminded: First and foremost, people go to the movies to be entertained. They want a story first and to be preached to second. If you mix up the order of those two things, if you get too heady on them and they feel like you’re teaching them something, you’re dead. This is especially true with a sci-fi audience, as they want to be entertained more than any audience out there. I think time-rationing is a cool idea. But Harlequin made me feel like I was back in college English debating philosophy. It was too much.