Genre: Action-Adventure
Premise: Indiana Jones goes in search of the famed “The Lost City Of The Gods,” which is supposed to hold inside it all the knowledge in the universe.
About: Before Spielberg’s go-to writer David Koepp wrote Crystal Skull, super screenwriter Frank Darabont worked on a draft of the script. Darabont, like many who took on this role (I think 7-8 writers in total worked on the project) expressed dissatisfaction with how unfocused Spielberg and Lucas were, and the impossibility of satisfying both. Word on the street is, Spielberg backed Darabont’s draft, but Lucas didn’t like it.
Writer: Frank Darabont
Details: 140 pages – 11/4/03 (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).
It’s baaaaaaaaack. Yay! More Indiana Jones debate! You guys wanted me to review Frank Darabont’s Indy 4 draft so here it is. The plan here is to do the usual break down and analysis. But let’s be honest. The reason to review this script is to figure out which is better, City of Gods or Crystal Skull. Did our crime-fighting beard-donning duo drop the ball by spending another four years to come up with Crystal Skull when they had a great script right under their noses? Or was Darabont’s Indy interpretation as off-target as Lucas insisted?
What’s lost in all of this is an old interview M. Night gave at the peak of his powers, when he was recruited to write a draft of Indy 4. He said that Spielberg and Lucas had all these story elements they absolutely had to have in the script, and M. Night simply couldn’t work that way. In fact, the deciding factor may have been Darabont, who said to Night that the writing of the script was basically a “wasted year of my life.” Ouch. The irony, of course, is that Night would give up his youngest child to get an Indy writing assignment from Lucas and Spielberg these days. But I digress.
Hey, what do you know, Gods starts out with cars racing in the desert. Kind of like Crystal Skull. And just like Skull, none of our main characters are in those cars. Why would they be? That would be exciting. Instead, we have Indy hanging out at desert non-spot “The Atomic Café,” pawning off pottery barn level relics to his good friend Yuri, a jovial Russian who for some reason finds value in this garbage.
Someone pointed out in the Skull comments that the opening of Gods sucked because Indy was introduced in a café doing nothing. I agree that introducing Indiana Jones in any sort of passive or reactive manner is a risky proposition. But at least here there’s a character motivation for it. Indy is retired. He’s too old to go swashbuckling for ancient treasures anymore. I liked that. It made sense in the context of where Indy was in his life. However, like most elements that hold promise in Gods, it’s forgotten soonafter, and never heard from again.
In a bafflingly clumsy segue, we cut to a few hours later where Indy is hanging out in the desert eating lunch and he spots a few military men right there in the open, lining their cars with artificial “American” insignias. And at the helm of this tomfoolery? Yuri!
Indiana decides to follow them, taking them (and him) into that AREA 51 warehouse that Skull starts with. Personally, I thought this was a better choice to open the film, since Indy DECIDES to go on this adventure instead of being roped into it. He *wants* go after Yuri, making him, and the whole warehouse sequence, more active.
We then, of course, get the whole atomic bomb sequence because Spielberg just had to have it in there. And afterwards, just like Skulls, Indy gets fired from his job. This is followed by a rather clumsy “Indy gets drunk in a museum scene,” which at first I hated, but then when I remembered he was basically responsible for getting half these relics on display, there was a poignant sadness to it that ALMOST worked.
After a fight to the death with the evil “Thin Man,” Indy gets a key to a locker at Grand Central station where he finds the Crystal Skull (yay! The Crystal Skull lives!), and is immediately mistaken for someone else who gives him a ticket to Peru to meet his “contact.” (uck. My guess is that Lucas is responsible for this choice, as he used the same painful plot device in Attack Of The Clones, when Obi-Wan was conveniently mistaken for an evil jedi at the Clone Farm).
Off we go to Peru and who’s Indy’s contact? Why Marion of course! Finally, around page 50, the plot to City Of Gods is revealed. They must find the Lost City Of The Gods, where this skull will reveal an unknown power. So Indy and Marion buddy up with an expedition team (no Mutt), head into the jungle, and try to find the mythical lost city, while two groups of baddies (I think it’s two – it’s not entirely clear) are hot on their tail.
So, let’s get to it, shall we? Which script for Indy was better? Gods or Crystal Skull? If my life was on the line and I had to choose one, I’d probably choose this one. But it wouldn’t be easy. Here’s the thing. City of Gods was more focused. Things made more sense. Once we actually get to our story (Find the Lost City Of The Gods), we actually know what’s going on. Whereas in Crystal Skull, I was constantly confused about where we were going and why we were going there.
However, Crystal Skull was just more…fun. I mean it’s hard for me to say that since that script is so damn all over the place, but the three-way dynamic between Indy, Marion, and Mutt, believe it or not, is more fun than any of the character dynamics in City Of Gods. And that’s surprising because Darabont actually comes up with a way more interesting dynamic than adding Mutt to the fold.
Here, Marion has a husband, Baron Peter Belasko, a wealthy archeologist who’s in it more for the fame than the hunt, and who has numerous best-selling books about archeology. In other words, a big fat fake. Really, the PERFECT foil for Indiana Jones, made even more perfect by the fact that he’s married to the woman Indy still loves. I mean, this was just ripe for comedic conflict-packed banter. And yet…it’s barely explored. Maybe it’s because Belasko comes into the story so late but he just never becomes a big enough character to care about (we never truly believe they’re married even). This leaves Indy and Marion treading the same dialogue waters they’ve always tread, giving their relationship a “been there done that” feel.
City of Gods also suffers from a lack of interesting bad guys. Some of you pointed out how Russian Pyschic Chick from Crystal Skull sucked as a villain because she wasn’t the least bit threatening. She never killed anyone. Never did anything that bad. In retrospect, I agree. If we’re not afraid of your villain, we’re not afraid of what happens to our heroes if they get caught. Here, we have the jovial Yuri, who I’m about as afraid of as a tickle me Elmo 
The thing is, the scariest character in both movies, a tall pale Harry Potter-like villain named The Thin Man, is killed off before we even start our adventure. I mean of the 260 pages (in both scripts) of searching for ANY memorable villain, they actually had one and they killed him off BEFORE the plot started!!
There is one aspect I really liked about Gods, and that’s an ambitious and well-crafted airplane chase sequence. It was the only scene in both Gods and Crystal Skull that brought something new to the Indiana Jones franchise, and yet felt like it was steeped in what made the original movie so fun. You have our characters walking along the wings of bi-planes, moving from one plane to the other, all while fighting off baddies. It was quite clever, and my favorite part of the script.
As for the silly stuff, there’s no vine-swinging in Gods. Oxley is WAAAAAAAAAAAAY less annoying in this one (although he is kept in a cage like an animal, lol). A giant snake eats Indy in this one (The power of the Lost City has affected the growth of animals in the area so all the animals are bigger – I seriously doubt Darabont had anything to do with this idea). And there’s still a spaceship in the end.
But what’s different is the entire final act has way more purpose in Gods. You actually feel like their exploration of the city is structured. That there’s a point and plan when they go inside (return the skull, which will result in the City showing them all the knowledge in the universe). In Crystal Skull, I had no idea why we were in that cave at any point.
All this brings about a question I can’t help but ask. There’s a lot of people on this board who would die for the opportunity to write an Indy film. So let me ask you, if you were to write Indiana Jones 5, what would your plot be? Let’s see if you can outdo Lucas and Spielberg at their own creation.
Script link: This script is out there in several places via a google search.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: We all get attached to scenes/characters/and moments in our screenplays. But over time, screenplays change. They take on a new direction, and many of the elements in that original version you conceived no longer apply. If you try and hold onto those elements (even your favorite ones), they may prevent your story from reaching its potential. It’s clear that Spielberg and Lucas had a list of “must-haves” they included with every Indiana Jones 4 writing assignment, and that those elements weren’t working. I mean, if you give your script to 7-8 of the best screenwriters in the business and all the scripts come back sucking, chances are, it’s not their fault. I find that, sometimes, getting rid of that scene you love so much from the original draft can open the door to a million new story possibilities. In other words, don’t be afraid to get rid of something you love if it means improving the overall script.
Genre: Drama
Premise: The real life story of a vacationing family’s struggle to find each other after the infamous 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.
About: Thought this script was somewhat relevant considering Friday’s horrible events in Japan. I’m also reviewing it as a reminder to help out if you can. Please donate to a relief fund if possible. — The Impossible made the lower half of 2010’s Black List. Sergio Sanchez, the writer, is also the writer of one of the best horror films I’ve seen in the last five years, The Orphanage
Writer: Sergio G. Sanchez
Details: 102 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).
In the eternal battle to determine just how important structure is to screenwriting, I’m tackling a couple of screenplays this week where it can be argued that neither adheres to the three-act structure, starting with today’s script, The Impossible, and then a breakdown of the well-known classic, The Breakfast Club
Maria and her husband Henry, two Brits by way of Japan, are taking their three children, Simon (5), Thomas (7) and Lucas (11) on vacation to Thailand for Christmas. Like a lot of family vacations with young kids, the work load of organizing everything makes the vacation more work than fun. Maria and Henry are simply trying to manage each problem as it comes up until they can get onto one of those pristine Phuket beaches and relax for an hour or two.
How ironic, then, what will happen on that beach once they get there. Like a lot of people on that fateful day, Maria’s family was simply enjoying a relaxing day on the water when they looked up and saw a terrifying black wall coming towards them. Scattered about with no time to react, all they could do was brace themselves, and the next thing they knew they were pushed out into the streets grasping for any lifeline they could find.
Maria and Lucas get separated from Henry, Thomas, and Simon, and they’re who we start with. Battling currents so strong, cars are whipping by, Maria and Lucas are able to survive the initial wave, but barely. Maria is a wreck, with cuts so deep, pieces of flesh are hanging off her body. Lucas is horrified to see his mother in this condition, but must focus on the task at hand. Find a hospital.
When they finally do get to a hospital, it’s chaos. People with wounds or ailments that would usually get immediate priority are staggering around aimlessly while nurses and doctors ignore them. It’s chaos of the highest magnitude. Which is trouble, as Maria is fading fast. A doctor herself, she knows she doesn’t have long to live. Yet she and her oldest son must sit around and hope amongst hope that sooner or later, someone will give her the medical attention she needs.
Eventually Lucas goes off to find help on his own, but is horrified (spoiler) when he comes back to find out his mother has died. Now Lucas, an 11 year old boy, must hunt across this flooded wasteland, to try and find his father. If, that is, he’s still alive.
The Impossible is an emotionally draining read. And a strange one when compared against traditional storytelling practices. In the first 20 pages alone, nothing happens. And I mean nothing. The family lands in Thailand. They give each other Christmas gifts. But we don’t learn ANYTHING about these people. No problems, no issues, no eccentricities, no personality traits. It would be like getting a real-life snapshot of a family for a few hours. Chances are their interactions would be directionless and boring.
However, this does help The Impossible maintain an essence of realism. The writer’s goal here is not to give you character flaws or a complex plot. It’s simply: Normal family going about their business. Something extraordinary happens. And just like that, this normal family, which could have been yours or mine, is stuck in a life or death situation impossible to prepare for. This is why the lack of three acts doesn’t matter. Because the forces driving the story are so strong. Survive and find the people you love.That’s all we care about.
But don’t be fooled. It’s not like all storytelling has been abandoned here. If you pay close attention, there are character goals at every corner, driving us forward one sequence at a time. The first goal is: Survive. Lucas and Maria are stuck on a tree. And they must survive that initial wave. After that, the goal becomes get to higher ground. After that, the goal becomes getting up on another tree before the next wave comes. After that, the goal becomes finding a hospital. After that, the goal becomes finding a nurse who will help them. After that, Lucas must help others. So while the story’s strength is its sort of “realistic directionless narrative,” one of the reasons we don’t get bored is because the characters are always going after something.
Not surprisingly, the only artificial element here is the attempt to give Lucas a fatal flaw. There’s this whole thing where Lucas feels like he’s not brave, and each situation they find themselves in tests that flaw. But whenever these moments appear, it was like a Hollywood crew showed up to remind the actor playing Lucas of his character arc, and to convey the flaw as aggressively as possible. If I were Sanchez, I would just drop this. The rest of the movie is raw and real. You might as well keep all the character motivations raw and real as well.
Just on a visceral level, The Impossible sticks with you. It’s a reminder that unless you’ve lived something or done a ton of research on something, you won’t be able to convey a truly realistic vision of what you’re writing about. I mean here we get these horrifying images of Maria with half her breast cut off. We have our characters watch hopelessly as cars float past with babies still strapped in the back seat. People stand in shocked daze as big spiders crawl over their faces, unseen, uncared about. It’s very specific stuff that I don’t think a fictionalized account of this tragedy could’ve captured.
The Impossible is a different kind of script. It has big strengths and big weaknesses and is messy and frightening and challenging all at the same time. The dialogue is all on the nose and relatively boring. Yet I didn’t care for some reason. I just wanted to see these characters survive. Ultimately, the determining factor for a screenplay is: “Do I want to keep reading?” If I had the chance to stop, would I? For a large majority of the screenplays I read, the answer to that question would be “Yes, I want to stop.” But for The Impossible, despite all of its faults, I wanted to get to the end. So if you want to read something that breaks the rules and study why it still holds your interest, this is a good screenplay to check out.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’m torn about the opening 20 pages of The Impossible. During this time, NOTHING HAPPENS. No plot to speak of. The characters don’t have any issues to be resolved. It’s a very mundane boring snapshot of a family. However, this realism is required to sell the moment when the tsunami arrives, as Sanchez is trying to convey that this could be any family, including your own. BUT, Sanchez wrote a popular highly acclaimed movie before this with The Orphanage
Genre: Period/Drama/Thriller
Premise: A young drifter infiltrates a married couple’s home, roping them into an insurance scam that results in disaster.
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: David H. Littleton
Details: 101 pages
This Friday I wanted to read something different. I was tired of fantasy and sci-fi and big bubbly rom-coms. I wanted something that challenged me, that treated its subject matter a little more maturely, something like The Brigands of Rattleborge. Perhaps that’s why I took a chance on Vortex, which had the makings of a good old fashioned character piece, wrapped inside a thriller.
The year is 1947. Brittle but hard-nosed beauty Evelyn Abbott is being questioned by a detective regarding a recent event that, for right now, will remain a mystery. All we know is that a handsome young drifter named Nick Driscoll keeps coming up in conversation and is therefore a central component to whatever interrogation-worthy event that just happened.
Evelyn explains that it all started when her clumsy husband, Nathaniel, nearly ran into Nick on his way home from work. Feeling terrible about the near catastrophic accident, Nathaniel insisted that Nick come to his home and spend the night to recover.
Uptight Evelyn disagreed with this, but as her husband was notoriously philanthropic, she realized she had no say in the matter. Of course one night quickly became two, two three, and before Evelyn knew it, Nathaniel was asking Nick to work at the family General Store.
Evelyn avoided the pesky Nick whenever she could, but soon began to fall for him. Not long after, they started having an affair. Somewhere around this time we finally learn what the investigation is about. This store of theirs recently burned down, and the authorities believe the reason for this to be arson, an attempt by the couple to collect on insurance.
When Evelyn denies any such tomfoolery, the detective moves on to Nathaniel, her husband, and we get his side of the tale. Surprisingly, their stories match up identically, expect for one key difference. (Spoiler) Nathaniel and Nick were having an affair as well! Nick was actually playing both sides of the fence, and it was HE who had come up with the idea to commit arson so they could collect the insurance. However, ever since the store burned down, Nick is nowhere to be found. And both Evelyn and Nathaniel swear that while they initially considered the plan, they both backed out at the last second. This would imply, of course, that Nick went through with the fire himself. However why is it, then, that he’s nowhere to be found. He can’t collect a check if nobody knows where he is. This, of course, leads to an even deeper question. Who is Nick Driscoll?
Vortex is a funky script. It’s got some good things going for it. The writing feels very professional. The prose and dialogue unwind satisfactorily. But the story itself isn’t constructed in a way that best takes advantage of the dramatic situation at hand.
My first issue is one of confusion. Nobody tells us what’s happened when the movie starts. We don’t know why we’re in this interrogation room or what our characters are talking about. There are brief allusions to events, but we don’t know where or what or how any of these things have to do with Evelyn. Contrast this with the opening of the similarly constructed Nautica, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. We open on an exciting rescue of a barely-alive man in a nearly sunken yacht, who’s charged with the murder of another man found 500 miles away in the sea. So right away we know what our story is about and the sense of mystery has us asking a lot of questions we want to know the answers for.
In Vortex, we don’t know anything, so the introduction of flashbacks feels unnecessary. Why flash back to see what happened when we haven’t been given a reason to be curious about what happened in the first place?
This leads to one of the biggest problems with Vortex: Stakes. In Nautica, the stakes are a murder charge! That’s a huge freaking deal. You get charged for murder and you’re either getting the chair or spending the rest of your life in jail. Here, the stakes are…arson? Which gets you…what? With a good lawyer, maybe a year in jail? Possibly community service if you’re lucky. As a result, we never feel any true danger for our protagonists.
Incidentally (spoiler) much later on, we find out there was a body in the fire, but for whatever reason, this is treated as an insignificant development compared to the arson itself. What Littleton probably should’ve done was make that dead body the hook of the story. They meant to burn this place down for the insurance, but instead, someone was found inside, and now both of them are being charged with murder. Now we have ourselves some stakes. Now we have ourselves a story.
Speaking of story, there isn’t enough story density in Vortex. Very little happens in this movie. When we flash back, we get scene after scene of characters getting to know each other. We have a few arguments. A couple of minor run-ins at the General Store. Some reluctant flirting. Overall, the relationship takes forever to move along. Contrast that with Nautica, where one scene we’re on the island with two old friends recognizing each other, next we’re on the boat where the girlfriend is flirting with our hero, next they’re making out down below with the boyfriend ten feet away, later there’s a fight and they’re thrown off the boat, then we’re flashing back to New York to figure out how they got here. I mean every scene is yanking a Titanic sized ship of story along with it, whereas in Vortex, it feels like we never leave the island. You have to *pack* story into your script. If you inch along, you’re going to lose your audience. When a reader or a development exec calls a story “thin,” this is usually what they’re referring to. Not enough happens.
Motivation is another issue here. Whenever your characters put together a dangerous plan, they need to have a good reason to do it. Or else why risk it? Normally, this motivation is money. Someone’s in over their head and their only way out is [the big risky plan with the big financial payoff]. Here, I couldn’t figure out why Evelyn and Nathanial needed this money so badly. They occasionally bring up the notion of “starting over,” but we’re never sure what they need to start over from. Granted they’re not the Rockefellers, but it seems like they’re doing just fine financially. This is compounded by the fact that on the verge of the big fire, they still don’t even know what they’re going to do with the money. If your characters don’t desperately NEED whatever it is they’re going after, then we the audience are thinking, “Why are we supposed to care about this?”
This stems from a much bigger issue, however, which is that Nathaniel and Evelyn’s relationship is never defined. We don’t know what their relationship used to be like, when it got bad, why it got bad, what their central issues are, what they loved about each other, what they hate about each other, what caused their downfall. All we know is that there’s some distance between them. That’s it. This vague interpretation of their relationship makes it impossible for us to get interested when Nick comes along and breaks them up. Cause he’s not really breaking anything up. For all we know, these two are living two completely separate lives anyway. If we don’t sense that there are consequences to them getting caught, then there’s no tension to either of these devious affairs.
I know Nautica wasn’t perfect, but it got all those story elements right. And I’m not knocking Littleton. I think Vortex has a ton of potential. But these are the differences between most pro and amateur scripts. Amateur scripts have good ideas, a few nice scenes, and lots of potential, but the story elements that actually mine the drama aren’t realized yet. Sometimes that’s because the writer doesn’t want to put in the effort and sometimes it’s because he just doesn’t know how important these things are yet. But for Vortex to exist on the same level as Nautica, it’s going to need to address things like stakes, clarity, and character exploration.
As a writer, I like Littleton’s vision, but let’s infuse more drama into this situation. Vortex has the potential to be a solid thriller if he puts the work in.
Script link: Vortex
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You can’t have a relationship/marriage at the center of your screenplay and not explore that relationship/marriage. And for that to happen, you have to figure out who your couple is. You have to know how they met, why they fell in love with each other, important moments that shaped their lives, when it went wrong, why it went wrong, what the central issue is in their relationship right now. I had a friend who had the perfect marriage, and then one day his wife was incorrectly accused of stealing money from the company she worked for and got fired. This was a devastating blow to her confidence. The problem was, my friend traveled a lot for his own job so he wasn’t there for her during this critical time. She held that against him, started pulling away, found someone else who was sympathetic to her situation, and badaboom badabing, marriage over. All in a matter of six months. My point is, there are *real things* that pull people apart. There are real reasons behind people’s actions. If you don’t know the history behind the couples you’re exploring, you can’t explore them, and both the relationship and the story will feel thin as a result.
Whoa, I’m not usually nervous while writing up Scriptshadow posts but this one’s got me a little jittery. Outside of the prequels, I don’t think there’s been a more documented breakdown of a film’s failure to deliver on an audience’s expectations than that of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
This allowed me to approach Skull with super-low expectations, and ironically, enjoy the film for what it was – a sloppily constructed summer tentpole film. The movie was clunky and awkward and weird – like a lot of those films tend to be – and seemed to spend most of its running time trying to figure out what it wanted to be rather than just…be.
And I think that’s the ultimate failure of Indiana Jones 4. Clearly, Lucas and Spielberg wanted to make two different movies, and a handful of unfortunate writers were assembled to balance those opposing visions and turn them into a cohesive story.
Now it’s important to know that my goal here is not to rip this movie apart. Millions of internet nerds took care of that long ago. I want to identify the poor screenwriting choices Skull made so we can learn from them and avoid those mistakes in our own writing. So, I give you the opposite of my previous Raiders article: Ten screenwriting no-nos you can learn from Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull.
THE PROTAGONIST ISN’T ACTIVE
Remember Raiders of The Lost Ark? Remember my very first observation about that movie? Indiana Jones was ACTIVE! In the very first scene, the man is risking his life to secure a golden idol from a trap-filled cave with death at every corner. When he hears about the Ark’s possible resting place, he’s on the first plane to Nepal, obsessed with locating the mythical relic. In this film? You wanna know what happens in the first scene? Indy’s been captured. Indy is REACTING to everyone else. Indy is doing WHAT OTHERS TELL HIM TO DO. It sets the tone for who Indy will be for the next 2 hours (or is it 3 hours?). He will be a REACTIVE character. He will be following Mutt around on this quest for the crystal skull. And because someone else is driving the story besides our main character, everything seems…less important. Think long and hard if you want to have a reactive hero in your action script. Chances are, it ain’t going to work.
MOVIE TAKES FOREVER TO GET GOING
Remember how quickly Raiders moved? Remember how there wasn’t an ounce of fat on it? A big reason for that was that the story knew what it wanted to be so it was able to get there right away. 15 pages in (FIFTEEN PAGES!) we’re given our goal: Get the Ark Of The Covenant. Contrast that with the bumbling, stumbling, mumbling Skull. Do you know when the plot is revealed to us in this film? Page 30! That’s when Mutt tells Indy about the coded Mayan message. Do you know when we actually START our adventure? Page 38! That’s over 20 pages further along than when Raiders got going. And people wonder why Skull feels like it drags.
PLOT IS UNCLEAR
Clarity in your main character’s central objective is crucial to the audience’s enjoyment of the movie. It’s the key to everything else working in the script. If, for example, in Raiders, we didn’t know that Indiana was looking for the Ark, we wouldn’t have cared nearly as much as we did. Yet that’s exactly how Skull tells its story. We’re never exactly sure what we’re looking for. I mean, the title mentions a crystal skull, but we only find out about the skull once Indy and Mutt locate it. Then what’s the movie about? We’re never sure! Indy’s double-agent buddy mumbles something about a city of gold. Russian Psychic Chick talks about plugging the skull in somewhere. But all this jibber-jabber is incredibly vague and we’re constantly wondering what the endgame is. The point is, the audience is never clear what the characters are going after in Skull and the second we’re unclear about your characters’ objectives, your movie is dead.
DON’T BE TOO ‘WRITERLY’
Someone gave me a note on a script once that I’d never heard before, yet I understood exactly what he meant as soon as I read it. He said my scene was too “writerly”. It’s tricky to define this word, but essentially it’s when you’re too clever for you own good, when a scene seems original and interesting as you write it, but feels false when it’s read. The magnet bullet scene in the beginning of Indy 4 is a “writerly” scene. I’m sure it felt inventive when it was conceived. (“And, like, these bullets will be dancing down the warehouse and we’ll be like, ‘Where is it taking them???’”) But man does it feel awkward when you watch it. Another “writerly” moment is the “family holds hands on top of car with baby monitor to get the alien signal” scene in M. Night’s “Signs.” 
DON’T PUT GAGS BEFORE YOUR STORY
The reason people got so worked up about the infamous “nuke the fridge” scene in Skull actually had nothing to do with nuking the fridge. The problem was that the scene shouldn’t have existed in the first place. We could’ve easily cut straight from the warehouse to Indy’s classroom. So why, then, was this scene included? Because Spielberg (or Lucas) liked the gag. That’s the only reason it was there. And boy did they pay the price for it, because by holding the movie up for an entire 8 minutes for a silly gag that added nothing to the story and did nothing to push the plot forward, it allowed the audience to focus their attention on the absurdity of surviving a nuclear blast in a fridge. Except in rare circumstances, avoid putting anything in your screenplay that isn’t pushing the plot forward. Didn’t Spielberg learn this after his buddy’s whole fish-dragon sequence in Phantom Menace?
FORCED PLOT POINTS
Don’t force unnatural plot points on your audience. After the opening warehouse sequence, the FBI – for no logical reason – thinks Indy is a commie, which leads to an embarrassingly forced scene where Indy gets fired. If you need your hero to get fired for story purposes, GIVE US A REALISTIC REASON THEY’D BE FIRED. Don’t make up something that takes us out of the story. I’d easily buy Indiana Jones being forced into retirement because of his age (he is 65). Any time you insert a nonsensical plot piont in your story, you run the risk of breaking the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Keeping that suspension intact is essential to making the story work.
UNCLEAR ACTION SCENES
Remember how much I praised Raiders Of The Lost Ark’s action scenes. Do you remember why? Because the main character always had a clear objective! Here, action scenes are given out like past due Halloween Candy, none more random than the university motorcycle chase. On the one hand, we know Indy and Mutt are trying to escape. The problem is, we don’t know why. What do these men want? Are they killers? Are they kidnappers? Do they want the scribbled note? Do they want Jones to explain it? Is it okay to kill Indy and Mutt? Or do they need them alive? There’s an overwhelming lack of clarity in this chase, which is why it feels so pointless. To make an action scene work, make sure everyone’s motivation in the scene is clear. (as a side note: Compare how much Indiana is BEING CHASED in Skull to how much he was DOING THE CHASING in Raiders. Coincidence that the first film was more fun and exciting? Hmmm…)
EXPOSITION EXPOSITION EXPOSITION
I’m starting to think Christopher Nolan did a rewrite on Indiana Jones 4. The exposition in this script is so abundant and so lazy it’s embarrassing. How many pure exposition scenes do you remember in Raiders? Me? I remember one. The scene where they discuss going after the Ark. Here we have an exposition scene with the CIA agents after the Nuke The Fridge scene. We have one with Mutt in the cafe. We have another Mutt-Indy exposition scene after the motorcycle chase. Then we fly to the Amazon and get ANOTHER exposition/backstory scene as Indy and Mutt walk through the market. We then have another exposition scene down in the haunted cave. Usually when you have that much explaining to do in your story, it’s because you haven’t figured everything out beforehand, and are therefore forced to work it out during your script, resulting in…..you guessed: lazy overly abundant exposition.
LONG SCENES IN ROOMS IN ACTION MOVIES
This is an action movie. So can someone please tell me why there is a 15 minute scene in the middle of the movie that takes place in a tent? Putting your characters in a room for too long in any movie is a bad idea. But in an action movie, where the audience is expecting…ACTION?, a scene like this is deadly. And here’s the thing. WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE PURPOSE OF THIS SCENE IS! CIA Double Agent Buddy comes in and yells at Indy about a city of gold or something. Russian Chick comes in afterwards (as if she was waiting for her turn – GOD THE LAZINESS IN THIS SCRIPT!) and tries to read Indy’s mind for…some reason. Then Rickshaw Jim The Mental Moron shows up to write something on a piece of paper. How many “people in a room” scenes were in Indy that went over 3 minutes? The Marion-Belloq scene maybe. But that scene actually had a purpose. Marion was trying to escape. This is just a big fat tent of non-stop exposition (and what’s even more baffling is that the point of exposition is to CLARIFY things for the audience. After this scene, we’re actually MORE confused than we were before it). The lesson here? Don’t place your action hero in a room for any extended period of time unless there’s a strong plot-related reason for it.
NEVER MAKE THINGS CONVENIENT OR EASY FOR YOUR CHARACTERS
You remember the truck chase in Raiders? Remember how Indy had to use every ounce of strength, every punch, every kick, every last brain cell (cleverly sliding underneath the truck so as not to get smushed). He worked his tail off to get control of that truck. Here? Everything, from fights to escapes are just HANDED OUT to our heroes. That 15 minute long tent scene I mentioned above? How did they get away? Shia KNOCKS OVER A TABLE! Are you kidding me? When Indy is shot into the desert with the Russian after the warehouse scene, what happens when he comes to a stop? The Russian has fallen asleep! In the back of the truck arguing with Marion? Indy KICKS the guard in the ass when he’s not looking, resulting in him passing out! But the worst is when our characters accidentally fall into a river, get dumped down three successive waterfalls, and miraculously happen to end up RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE MYSTERIOUS CAVE THEY’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR! This is a huge reason why the Indy 4 experience feels so unsatisfying. Our characters don’t earn anything. They’re HANDED everything. So please, always make things difficult for you characters. And make sure they earn their way.
So, I guess the only question left to ask is…did Indy 4 do anything right? Barely. While the goals are weak, the stakes are low, the urgency isn’t there, the plot’s unclear, there’s too much exposition, the villains suck, and the characters are barely developed, I will admit that the last 40 minutes or so were pretty exciting. Unfortunately, the reason for this had little to do with the screenplay. We, as an audience, simply knew that the story was coming to an end, and this finality, while artificially generated, gave the story some much-needed purpose. I’m disappointed with Spielberg and Lucas. I understand that there were a lot of factors at play in making this movie happen, but you’d think they’d at least put together a COMPREHENSIBLE screenplay, one where we actually understood what was going on. For some odd reason, when directors get older, they get lazier, and we got the result of that laziness here. Oh well, I heard they’re making a fifth film. Maybe someone actually plans to write a screenplay for that one?
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: After a woman spills her secrets to a stranger during a turbulent plane ride, she shows up at work to discover that he is the recently returned CEO of her company.
About: Can You Keep A Secret landed on the bottom half of the 2010 Black List and is an adaptation of a novel by Sophie Kinsella
Writer: Megan Martin (Based on the novel by Sophie Kinsella
Details: 114 pages – 10/04/10 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).
Oh boy, I’m already anticipating some blowback from this one. I feel the readers descending upon me, chastising me for endorsing a seemingly straightforward romantic comedy. But here’s the thing with romantic comedies: Even if they follow the traditional clichéd romantic comedy path, if you can create two characters that we fall in love with, the predictable plot elements can be excused (TO A POINT! – I am NOT saying that plot isn’t important). And the truth is, I loved both of these characters, starting with our heroine, Emma.
Emma Corrigan is living a lie. Well, aren’t we all living a lie? But Emma’s living lie is one that makes life quite difficult – she’s lying to her parents. She pretends to be a big corporate hotshot on the express elevator to the top when in reality she’s barely holding on to her assistant marketing job at a dying energy drink corporation, a job she hates with a passion and yet, like many of us, is too terrified to leave.
A big reason for Emma’s fakery is her beloved golden child cousin, Kerry, who is the apple of her parents’ eye. Kerry really *is* living the high-class corporate lifestyle, making Emma’s lack of success look more embarrassing at every turn. Of course after a couple of fibs, it’s all even again, to the point where Emma’s parents believe she’s living the exact opposite life that she actually is.
On her way back to the West Coast, Emma experiences one of her few fortuitous moments, finding herself upgraded to first class. Her seat-mate must have gotten bumped up as well because with his five-o’clock shadow and grubby outfit, he’d be lucky to be accepted on a Greyhound bus, much less the first class cabin of an airplane.
Somewhere during that five hour flight, the plane starts careening out of control, and it looks like they’re going down. A terrified Emma responds by barking out an endless closet of secrets she’s never told anyone, starting, of course, with how much she hates her job, moving on to how she made up a charity organization she volunteered for to get the job in the first place, and going into her deepest darkest sexual secrets that she’s never been able to act out (which include, amongst other things, dressing up like a nurse and being taken advantage of by a doctor).
Well wouldn’t you know it, the captain regains control of the ship, and an embarrassed Emma realizes she just told her whole life to a complete stranger. AWK-WARD. But it’s about to get a lot more awkward honey. You see, Panther Cola’s elusive CEO shows up for the first time in forever at the company. And wouldn’t you know it? It’s Airplane Guy. Who will henceforth be known as Jack Harper.
Emma assumes she’s screwed nine ways to Tuesday but is shocked when Jack calls her in and tells her she’s inspired him. Panther Cola has been down in the dumps and he’s been frantically searching for a new marketing campaign. Unleashing who you truly are, in essence, all your secrets, is the inspiration behind the campaign. And since she inspired it, he wants her to head it up.
Emma is re-energized, in both her work and her personal life, charging up those around her in ways that nobody ever expected. But as Emma and Jack’s professional relationship becomes personal, it becomes unclear if Emma is really earning all these accolades on her own, or they’re being handed to her because she’s – let’s not mince words here – “banging the boss.” When the truth finally comes out, Emma’s credibility is called into question, and all this success she’s finally been able to achieve, very well may come crumbling down.
I’ll get to the characters in a second, but what I really liked about Can You Keep A Secret was the uniformity of the theme. This romantic comedy is about something: Lying and/or the omission of truth. There’s the life we project to everyone else, and there’s the life we actually live. The distance between those worlds is usually wider than we’d prefer. Emma must lie to her parents to live up to their lofty expectations. Jack omits the truth in his relationship with Emma. Emma can’t tell her co-workers the truth about her relationship with Jack. The manipulation of truth is one of the most relatable themes out there, and I thought Can You Keep A Secret explored this in a wonderful way.
That’s why I liked Emma. I could relate to her plight. We all exaggerate things (especially us storytellers!) in order to impress the people we love, even though we know there will be consequences to those actions. And I think that’s what makes her situation so fun to watch, is that we know that, sooner or later, the consequences are coming. You can’t keep doing something “bad” forever and not have to pay for it. Just ask Bernie Madoff.
The care and attention to Jack was what really set this apart though. Usually writers will put all this work into their rom-com lead, then maybe half or three-quarters of that same work into the romantic interest. But Jack is not the typical happy-go-lucky “everything is peachy, I’m going to turn your life around” mate you usually see in these films. He’s got some pretty big problems of his own, and although it takes a while before we’re let in on those problems, we can see that they’re weighing on him.
That’s why this script got to me. Despite a lot of the formulaic plot choices (the company that NO real person ever works for – a protagonist with a marketing job), I thought the relationship itself felt realistic, with each person having real problems and real obstacles keeping them from being together.
In fact, I was all set to give this a double worth the read, but then, unfortunately, we get a huge plot contrivance late in the story, and it’s one of those contrivances you can’t make in your rom-com. In every romantic comedy, you need the “guy and girl break up” scene late in the second act. That way, they can get back together in the third act. But the break up in “Secret” is so manufactured (it involves Jack doing a CNN interview and revealing all of Emma’s secrets in a way that would never happen in real life), that it really hurt what was, up until that point, a fun romantic comedy about two people you liked.
That was a bummer, cause otherwise I would’ve given this a huge thumbs up. Unfortunately it will have to stand as a solid recommendation, a smart if predictable entry into the romantic comedy genre that WILL NOT be converting any non-rom-com fans, but should be plenty satisfying for the Notting Hill and Pretty Woman fan clubs. Just goes to show. Work on your characters first. Figure out what makes them tick. You do that and the rest of the story will come.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The late rom-com break up scene people. IT HAS TO BE BELIEVABLE. It has to be realistic! I can’t tell you how many writers I see fudge their way through this. They believe that because it’s part of the convention of the genre, that the audience will accept any version of it you vomit onto the page. Here, Jack gives up the details on Emma’s deepest darkest secrets on national TV completely unprovoked!!! There’s no way in a million years he would do this. Look at how this convention is handled in When Harry Met Sally
