Genre: Comedy/Drama
Premise: A once-prominent public school teacher tries to get three students into college in order to win over a hot new teacher.
About: Was on the ’06 Black List with six votes. While the script is still stuck in development, Eric Gravning, the writer, used it to get assignment work on the Halle Barry project, Class Act, about a Nevada school teacher who enlists the help of her sixth-grade students in her congressional campaign (based on the true story of Tierney Cahill). He also worked on the film adaptation of Tom and Jerry.
Writer: Eric Gravning
Details: 122 pages – draft that made the Black List (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’m an unabashed fan of Mr. Holland’s Opus. I know it’s super sentimental and uses industrial sized rope to tug at your heartstrings, but in my opinion, it’s the best “inspiring teacher” movie of all time. When Mr. Holland walks into that auditorium at the end? Oh man. It never fails to get me.

Mr. Burnout isn’t that movie. In fact, I don’t know what Mr. Burnout is. It’s such a strange combination of films from this genre, you don’t know what to make of it. Is has some Mr. Holland in it. It has some “Hamlet 2” in it. It adds a dash of Alexander Payne’s “Election.” It even has a little “Bad Teacher,” in there, the Cameron Diaz project I reviewed last year.

This script’s biggest strength is also its biggest weakness, and that’s that you’re never quite sure which direction it’s going to go.

Right away you know something’s different when we’re introduced to our hero, Eddie Burnett, via a voice over from a character who doesn’t show up until halfway into the script. This character, Charity, tells us that there was a time when our hero, Eddie, used to be an idealistic young teacher, signified by his star pupil, Laura, who used Eddie’s guidance to get into Princeton.

Since then, however, schools have become overpopulated, students uninterested, and budgets cut drastically. The kids, the parents, the government…nobody cares anymore. So a decade later, Eddie’s now a disinterested drunk teacher trying to make it through the day.

His classes are populated by morons and we focus on three in particular. There’s Roberto, a Hispanic kid who may or may not be a gangbanger. There’s Rose, who spends most of her classes sleeping instead of learning. And there’s Matthew, a privileged kid with every opportunity in the world, who just doesn’t put forth the effort.

What’s so frustrating about these three is that they’re all smart. They just don’t apply themselves. And, shit, Eddie sure isn’t going to put in the extra effort to change that.

Well…until now anyways. Charity, our voice from above, replaces one of the retired teachers and when she sees Eddie’s despicable behavior, tells him that she’ll sleep with him if he gets three of his students into one of the top colleges in the country.

I confess I’ve never actually seen Dangerous Minds.

To me, this is the weakest part of the screenplay and it’s a big problem in that it’s the hook of the movie. As we talked about the other day, when you’re dealing with logic in a script, you can get away with sketchy logic in the lesser plot points, but on the single most important section of the screenplay – that which dictates the story – you can’t be wishy-washy.

First of all, as Charity points out, we’re not even sure if she’s serious about the offer. Second, he just met this girl. Or more importantly, she just met him. So her offering is absurd. It would be like if a girl approached you at the bus stop and said, “I’ll sleep with you if you get me a job at the aquarium.” It just comes out of nowhere.

Anyway, with sex on the brain, Eddie transforms into an unstoppable teaching force. He helps his three students ace their SATs. He helps them ace their final. And he starts helping them in their real lives as well. This is where Mr. Burnout becomes most interesting, when we learn about Rose’s exhausting home life (thus why she’s sleeping in class), and Matthew’s overbearing father (thus why he’s so aloof). Nothing here is quite what it seemed on the surface, including Eddie himself, who’s got his own baggage exposed in a way that makes us completely reevaluate him.

Eventually, some teachers who never liked Eddie lobby to get him fired, and just when Eddie’s finally getting that teaching spark back, it turns out to be too late.

Mr. Burnout is messy. That would be the word of the day if Eddie asked me to write one on the board. There’s a good movie in here somewhere, particularly in the way these characters are explored and the thought that went into their backstories. But there are just too many elements fighting against each other to bring it all together.

Take Charity for example. I understand the advantage of viewing Eddie through a third person. How if *he* had been doing the voice over, we would’ve learned too many things about him that we didn’t want to know yet. But Charity is like an unapologetic plot-bot, there to feed us information on command and nothing else. Even when she gets into the story, it’s to artificially influence the plot with her “sex for kid’s college” trade.

Now had Charity and Eddie gone on a few dates, gotten to know each other, developed a friendship, and then she told him that, morally, she couldn’t continue a relationship with someone who didn’t care about the people he was teaching, and he then changed his ways in order to save that relationship – now that’s something I would be on board with.

Most people’s favorite “inspiring teacher” movie, Dead Poet’s Society

The problem is, we don’t have time for them to start a relationship. And the reason we don’t have time for them is we spent way too much time in the first act setting up that Eddie was a terrible teacher. We’re told again and again and again through numerous scenes that Eddie’s a lazy lousy teacher, when all we needed was one. When writers do this, overwrite their first acts, and oversell their hero’s weakness, it leaves them with less time to deal with key relationships later on, which is what you should be using your second act for. Which is exactly what happens with Eddie and Charity.

This should probably be the key relationship in the entire script. Yet it’s barely explored and only later does it turn into something real. Unfortunately by then it’s too late and we simply don’t believe it.

This carries over into the kids as well. All three kids, while having interesting backstories and interesting individual relationships with Eddie, don’t have any sort of relationship with each other. It’s almost as if Eddie is tutoring each of them on their own, since they rarely interact. In the one instance where we do see that interaction – Matthew’s crush on Rose – it starts so quickly and ends even more quickly – that it doesn’t feel real. I wouldn’t have minded a couple more students in the mix and we have more of a Breakfast Club vibe, where they actually acknowledge and deal with the issues they have with each other.

That said, there were some really nice emotional moments. Learning Eddie’s backstory was tough. It added another dimension to him that he needed, and transformed an unlikable frumplehorn into a sympathetic figure. The late reveal of Laura’s fate, Eddie’s prized pupil from the past, was also a punch in the gut. But even with these warmer goosebump-worthy touches, there was too much messiness, too much unfocused energy, to bring it all together in a satisfying way. I would love to see the version of this script with a coherent theme – specifically about the deterioration of the American school system. I don’t think that’s been done before, and seen through the filter of a dark comedy, it could really be fascinating. But since I’m not grading on potential, I probably can’t recommend this.

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

What I learned: You don’t usually need as much setup time as you think you do. We don’t need five scenes to show how much Eddie hates teaching. A lot of writers make this mistake. One strong scene or a couple of medium scenes is all you need to show your character’s big problem. Then move on. Feel free to remind us, but don’t block out full scenes to keep telling us what we already know. You’re going to need that time later to build up your characters and relationships.

As frequent readers of the site know, one of the more insightful commenters on Scriptshadow is Filmwonk (now Bohdicat). I don’t always have time to read through every comment, but he’s one commenter I always check in on, as he often points out stuff that I either didn’t have the time to get into or didn’t even think of altogether. So today Filmwonk is getting the full red carpet treatment and not just giving us a comment, but writing an entire review. Make sure to make him feel welcome.

Details: 114 pages. Dated November 2, 2006. (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).

That night, Charlie dulls his pain by returning to his old ways and getting drunk. The following day brings a meeting regarding a new project, an animated film in which he’ll voice the part of an evil sperm – yes, you heard that right – opposite Adam Sandler’s “good” sperm. Charlie knows full well that it’s a piece of crap, but it’ll probably make a fortune.

The pairing of a rich and powerful person with someone of lesser circumstances seems to be recurring theme in the Curtis universe but not here – consider Julia Roberts’ movie star with Hugh Grant’s bookshop owner in “Notting Hill,” for example, or Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister with Martine McCutcheon’s tea-tray-toting Natalie. Right or wrong, I think audiences enjoy seeing someone move beyond their station, romantically speaking, whether that person is Cinderella or a workaday London interpreter. On the other hand, the idea that one famous actor would knock boots with another requires no stretch of the imagination whatsoever – it happens all the time.

 Rachel McAdams for Helen?

Die Hard. Some people say Jaws changed the way movies were made. Others say Star Wars. But an argument can be made that Die Hard had just as much of an influence on movies as both of those films, maybe not so much culturally, but definitely in how studios approached the tent pole film. The irony, of course, is that those same studios used Die Hard as their action template without realizing what made it great. Yeah, it has splosions. Yeah, Bruce Willis was perfect casting. Yeah, the action scenes were great. But the reason Die Hard is so awesome is because of its script.

So I decided to go back to the granddaddy of contained (action) thrillers and see if I couldn’t learn a few things from it. It didn’t take long. Die Hard is chock full of screenwriting tips if you pay attention, and I’m happy to highlight ten of them for you here.

BE CREATIVE WITH YOUR TICKING TIME BOMB
Every action movie should have a ticking time bomb. But that doesn’t mean incorporating one of those cheap digital timers with a big flashing “120 minutes” on it. Instead – just like every element in your screenplay – you should look for a fresh alternative. Here, the ticking time bomb is the seven locks to the safe the computer expert is hacking. It’s a clever countdown device we’ve never quite seen before (or since) and that’s why it works so well.

SMART INCORPORATION OF EXPOSITION
Most action writers think that the blood-soaked testosterone-fueled action genre gives them license to unload exposition onto the page like a garbage truck does garbage. “The audience won’t care,” they argue. “They just want to see explosions.” Errrr…wrong! Bad exposition eliminates suspension of disbelief, which in turn makes all those “explosion” scenes less exciting. So don’t fall into this trap. Be smooth in the way you unveil exposition. Take the scene in Die Hard where McClane is in the limo. We have to get some key exposition out about John’s on-the-rocks marriage before we get to the building. A lazy writer might’ve had an unprovoked McClane start rambling on about his broken marriage. Instead, the Die Hard writers make McClane resistant, practically “forced” into giving up details to his overly nosey limo driver. In fact, the limo driver is revealing (with his guesses) almost as much about McClane’s marriage as McClane is. “You mean you thought she wouldn’t make it out here and she’d come crawling on back, so why bother to pack?.” “Like I said Argyle, you’re fast.” It’s little details like this that elevate an action script.

ONE-LINERS
Ahhh, the snappy action one-liner. An 80s film staple. But no film has ever approached Die Hard in this category. In fact, 95% of one-liners you hear in action movies these days are groan-worthy. So how does Die Hard still hold up? Simple. McClane’s one-liners stem from his situation, NOT from a writer wanting to add a funny line. When you watch Die Hard and hear McClane say, “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker,” you genuinely get the sense that he’s trying to add levity to the situation. He’s using humor to deflect the seriousness of his predicament. In other words, he’s not a mouthpiece for a clever line thought up by a writer, which is what every single one of these one-liners has been since Die Hard came out (please see The Expendables for numerous examples).

THE BAD GUY IS A WORTHY ADVERSERY
Hans is one of the greatest bad guys of all time. How can we learn from him to make our own bad guys memorable? The key to Hans working is that he’s a worthy adversary to John McClane. He isn’t some paint-by-the-numbers thug. Die Hard is one of the few action films I can remember where they made the villain as smart as the hero. Not just on paper. But you actually SEE IT. We see the FBI cutting the last lock to the safe, the only lock Hans didn’t have access to – all part of his plan. We see Hans pretending to be a hostage when he runs into McClane. By doing this, the audience has real doubts about whether our hero can outsmart this guy, which in turn pulls us in even more.

SOMETIMES THE STORY DICTATES WE DO THINGS WE DON’T WANT TO DO
Ideally, especially in an action movie, you’d want to introduce your main character with some sort of action scene that gives us insight into who they are. Unfortunately, the direction of the story may not afford you this opportunity. In Die Hard, a lot of the key things we learn about McClane early on are through dialogue. On the plane with the other passenger, in the limo with Argyle, on his conversation with his wife when he gets there. Sure, it would have been nicer if we could’ve *shown* these things instead of been *told* about them. But the situation is what it is. You need to get your main character to the building and you need the audience to know some things before he gets there. If a similar setup is required in your movie, embrace it and do the best you can with the situation. Forced to tell something through dialogue? Make it as seamless and interesting as you possibly can and move on.

DON’T FORGET TO SHOW WHAT YOUR HERO IS FIGHTING FOR
In 110 pages of story, it’s easy to forget what your hero is fighting for. In this case, McClane is trying to save his wife. If, then, we don’t see his wife for sixty minutes, we start to forget what his ultimate motivation is. In Die Hard, around the mid-point, Holly goes to Hans and asks him if she can get a couch for her pregnant friend and bathroom breaks for the rest of the hostages. It’s a small and seemingly insignificant scene, but it reminds us and reignites our passion for why John McClane must succeed.

ONE OF THE BEST SCENES YOU CAN WRITE
One might argue that the most memorable scene in Die Hard is when Hans pretends to be a hostage. Part of the reason we love this scene so much is because it’s such a clever move by our villain. But this is actually a setup for a scene that works almost every time you use it in a screenplay: We the audience know something that our main character doesn’t – that he’s in danger – and there’s nothing we can do to help him. The tension this creates in a scene – the helplessness we feel – works on an audience almost every time, so if you have the opportunity to use it, do so. Just make sure we like your hero. Obviously, if we don’t, we won’t be too worried when he’s seconds away from getting a bullet in the chest.

CHARACTER GOALS UP THE WAZOO
There are numerous character goals in Die Hard driving the story. That’s why, even though this is just a contained action film, it feels a lot more complicated and elaborate. McClane is trying to save his wife. McClane is trying to contact the police. Hans is trying to open the safe. Hans is trying to kill McClane. Hans is trying to find the detonators. The reporter’s trying to get the story. The FBI is trying to stop the terrorists. Al is trying to help McClane get out alive. Everybody’s got something to do in this movie and whenever they achieve what they’re trying to do, the writers give them something new to do. If too many characters run out of pressing things to do in an action script, put a fork in your screenplay, cause it’s done.

THINGS GET WORSE FOR OUR HERO AS THE SCRIPT GOES ON
In every action script, you want it to get tougher on your hero the closer he gets to the finish line. McClane’s feet are heavily cut, making it difficult for him to walk. Hans figures out that Holly is John’s wife and takes her hostage, making it more difficult to save her. In the final confrontation, McClane’s only got two bullets left, making his escape unlikely. Keep stacking the odds against your hero as he gets closer to achieving his goal.

DON’T PUSH YOUR LUCK
I’ve been slurping the Die Hard kool-aid all article. In parting, I have to take one shot at the film. There’s a famous line in a Kenny Rogers song that goes, “Know when to fold’em.” At a certain point, you’ve gotten everything you’ve needed out of your screenplay. When that happens, it’s time to say “The End.” In Die Hard, there’s a really cheesy forced moment in the final scene where Terrorist #1 bursts out of the building and Sergeant Al shoots him. It was one beat too many and almost ruined an extremely satisfying ending. You always want to leave your audience wanting more. Resist that “one last unnecessary moment” and type “The End” instead.

And that’s that. Now before I leave, I want to pose a question to you guys, cause the truth is, I’m not sure what the answer is. Die Hard has one of the most cliché moments in all of action films in its finale. Bruce Willis points a gun at our villain who’s pointing a gun at our damsel in distress. Could you ask for a more obvious final scenario? And yet, I was riveted. I was terrified for Holly and I was scared that Willis wouldn’t be able to save her. Outside of the obvious, “We liked the characters,” can you explain why this moment, despite being the very definition of cliché, still worked?

And tune in next Thursday where I break down Die Hard 2 and give you 10 examples of what NOT to do in an action film.

Genre: Comedy/Sci-Fi
Premise: A pair of Beatles fans stumble upon a time machine and seize the opportunity to go back in time and prevent Yoko Ono from meeting John Lennon.
About: Chris McCoy hasn’t broken into the “produced credit” category just yet, but he’s been pretty busy since he debuted on the 2007 Black List with this screenplay, doing lots of assignment work and having a bucket of projects in development. Get Back has garnered some heat lately with Mark Waters (Mean Girls, The Spiderwick Chronicles) attaching himself as director and setting a tentative start date of June, 2011.
Writer: Chris McCoy
Details: 115 pages – the Black List 2007 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I took note of Get Back a couple of years ago when I read the premise. Could it be? Let it be? A time travel comedy that actually sounded worthy of taking on Back To The Future? My hopes were quickly dashed though when I saw the writer. McCoy had written one of my least favorite scripts of that year, Good Looking. Although an original concept, the execution made me feel like the walrus. From what I’d read of his, I just didn’t see him being able to explore this concept in an original way.

But I decided to take a chance on Get Back anyway and boy am I glad I did. It looks like this is the same situation we were discussing last week. The difference in quality between a spec script (Get Back) and assignment work (Good Looking) is night and day. You can see the passion on the page here that you just didn’t see in that script.

20-something Ted Archer works in a record store. He’s a bit of a hipster, but not in an annoying way. He just loves the way music used to be made and the way people used to listen to it. Even if he won the lottery tomorrow, he wouldn’t change a thing about his life. He’d still be in here every day, listening to the great songs of yesteryear and selling albums, itunes be damned.

Peruvian Piero Chacon, Ted’s best friend, isn’t much different, but to add insult to injury, he’s so stuck in the world of yesteryear that women won’t even look at him. They don’t understand the clothes he wears, the words he uses, the things he likes. This man belongs in a first class cabin on Pan Am airlines in 1969, smoking a cigarette and not having a care in the world – not in Snooki-dominated 2010.

To demonstrate just how weird these two are, they’ve spent the last couple of years looking for a rumored spaceship prop from some 1970’s funk band who ditched it after a concert. It’s said to be in a nearby forest, and Piero and Tim are going to cover every square foot of that forest until they find it.

Imagine their shock when they finally come upon it! And imagine their additional shock when they find a strange dashboard on the inside with destination years on it. Holy shit, Ted and Piero have just found a time machine!

The two debate the ramifications of this find, and pontificate on the most valid uses for it. After agreeing that “killing baby Hitler” would be too difficult, they both agree that the single most horrible thing that happened in history is Yoko Ono meeting John Lennon and breaking up the Beatles. So Tim’s journey is set. He’s going to go back to London in 1966 and prevent John Lennon from meeting Yoko Ono!

So back they go, but get there too late, and must watch as the most fateful meeting in history occurs right in front of their eyes. What can they possibly do now? It doesn’t take Ted long to figure it out. In order to prevent this relationship from proceeding, he will need to get Yoko Ono to fall in love with him. Ted uses every trick in the book (i.e. telling her he’s predicting something called “the internet,” which fascinates Yoko) and soon the competition is on.

Unfortunately John Lennon gets so bummed out by Yoko’s interest in Ted that he decides to quit the Beatles.  The guys, via browsing through Piero’s ipod, realize that this destroys half the Beatles’ catalogue and nearly destroys the entire future of music.

As a last ditch effort, Ted has to find a way to have Yoko fall out of love with him and back in love with John, all by the time a young James Brown plays his first funk concert, which is the only fuel that can send the spaceship back to the future. Complicating all this is that Ted actually starts to like Yoko himself!

Okay, truth?

This is a shameless copy of Back To The Future.

But dammit if it isn’t a blast.

If I could only use one word to describe “Get Back” it would be “fun.” The script is fun. It doesn’t do anything exceptional and every choice made only helps you realize just how genius Back To The Future was, but this is just different enough from that film to get you your Back To The Future fix and still feel like you’re experiencing something new.

First, I was surprised at how clever the script was. When I first considered the idea, I didn’t know if it had legs. I figured Ted and Piero would get to London and go through a bunch of pratfall-like hijinx to push John and Yoko apart and then…that would be it. So I loved that John and Yoko got together right away and that Ted’s only choice of stopping them was to win Yoko over – the one person he hated more than anyone. *And* that he had to go against John Lennon – the one person he loved more than anyone.

I actually thought McCoy could’ve done more with this. Yoko’s really weird. And Ted’s present day annoying girlfriend was really conservative. If we could’ve stressed that Ted needed to find someone as “out there” and unconventional as himself, and Yoko could’ve filled that role, and he really genuinely fell in love with her, that could’ve made things really interesting in the end, when he has to go home. The way it stands, he only sorta falls for Yoko, keeping the stakes low and making their break-up at the end way too easy on him.

Actually, the entire ending is pretty clumsy and makes you appreciate just how perfectly constructed Back To The Future is. For example, instead of the lightning bolt scene, the spaceship is fueled by “funk.” This is pretty well set up and McCoy does as much as he can with it, but it still feels awfully clunky when he has to go to this James Brown concert with a spaceship propped on the stage and wait for enough of this mythical funk to fuel the ship so he can jump back to the present day.

Piero also gets short shrift here. I loved that we had a Peruvian lead in a script (don’t think I’ve seen that before) but he’s basically relegated to giving the movie something to cut to while we set up the next beat in Ted’s storyline. His romantic storyline also develops way too late, although I did like how it ended.

Trying to walk in the shadow of one of the best constructed screenplays of all time is not easy. I’ve read a lot of really bad time travel comedies hoping to find the next BTTF. Hot Tub Time Machine, for example, was nothing short of embarrassing. This is a thousand times better than that. It just needs some tuning up on the details, particularly the ending. And Ted could use some beefing up too. What we liked about Marty was that he was a dreamer. He wanted it all. And we wanted to see him get it. Ted’s a little more subdued, his dreams more down to earth, and as a result, he lacks a lot of the energy that made Marty so fun. Then again, you don’t want to make the exact same movie so maybe it’s better this way. This is a really fun little script that has a ton of potential – potential it may have fulfilled in the three years since McCoy wrote the original draft. Let’s hope so cause this definitely needs to become a movie.

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

What I learned: Does your title only sound clever once people read your script? Or does your title stand on its own? “Get Back” is a boring title if we know nothing about the concept. I would never pick this script up off a pile. Here’s the thing though. When you read the script, you realize the title’s actually quite clever. The problem is, *you have to read the script to realize that*. I’m okay with a writer doing this as long as they’re aware of it. But if you want to give your script a better chance of getting read, make sure the title is exciting on its own, not dependent on the read.

Also, check out my breakdown for the Back To The Future 2 script that never was here.  

Genre: Drama
Premise: A young boy goes on a journey through New York City to find the truth about how his father, who disappeared in 9/11, died.
About: Based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was adapted by Eric Roth, who won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Forrest Gump in 1994. He also co-wrote the screenplays for The Insider (1999), Munich (2005), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), all of which were nominated for Oscars. Roth was born in New York to a studio executive and a film producer. He got his masters from UCLA Film School. In a side note about Roth, he is one of the unfortunate group of investors in the Madoff Ponzi scheme, and has admitted to losing all of his retirement money in the scam. Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock star in “Extremely Loud.” 12 year old Thomas Horn, who won Jeopardy Kids Week in 2010, will be playing Oskar.
Writer: Eric Roth (based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer)
Details: 137 pages – March 17, 2010 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).

Eric Roth is very much an anomaly in screenwriting circles. He more or less does things his own way and doesn’t subscribe to fancy-schmancy screenwriting theory. He simply sits down and writes what comes to mind. Once asked what a writer should do if they hit writer’s block, Roth unassumingly offered, “Change the weather in the scene. That’s what I do.”

Not exactly shocking. Roth’s adaptation of Forrest Gump bucks numerous screenwriting trends, and you’d be hard pressed to find much structure in Benjamin Button. This makes him a hero to some and a hack to others. The “do it yourselfers” love that they can point to a successful screenwriter who ignores convention. The “structuralists” argue that that’s the reason why his stories are all over the place.

I’ll never forget listening to an interview with Roth where he was asked why we hadn’t seen any spec screenplays from him. Roth was genuinely confused by the term. “Spec?” The interviewer actually had to explain what a spec screenplay was to Roth. He had no idea. After being told what it was, he explained that he had been paid to write a script right out of UCLA and has been working ever since. Eric Roth has never worked on an idea of his own. Make of that what you will.

Oskar Schell is a 10 year old boy who wishes his anus could talk. In other words, Oskar’s weird. He’s the kid who gets picked on at school, the guy snorting up jello through a straw. He’s a loner through and through.

Oskar’s best friend was actually his father. “Was” because his father was one of those unfortunate souls who died in the twin towers on 9/11. Now Oskar, his mother, and his grandmother (who lives in the adjacent building and who Oskar communicates with via walkie-talkie) are taking it one day at time, trying to make sense of how and why this happened.

Oskar, in particular, is devastated by his father’s absence, to the point where he combs international websites with videos of people jumping out of the towers, hoping he can break through the blurry pixelated dots to locate his father. Oskar needs to know how his father died that day so he can stop inventing his death. He needs closure.

One day, Oskar finds an old vase in his mother’s closet and accidentally breaks it, only to find a key inside accompanied by a letter to someone named “Black.” Believing that this key will open something that sheds light on that fateful day, Oskar plans to visit all 500 Blacks in New York City, to find out which one this envelope belongs to. If he can get a couple visits in every week, it should only take a few years.

During this time, Oskar meets his grandmother’s mystery tenant, an old man who can no longer speak. Oskar’s put off by his weirdness, but it’s not like he’s breaking any Facebook friend records, so he asks him to join him on his journey, and “The Renter” (as we come to know him) accepts the invitation.

In the meantime, Oskar has to come up with clever ways to escape his house without his mom finding out that he’s running around New York. The relationship between the two is strained at best. They always got along, but the death of Oskar’s father exposed that the link between them was bridged by him, and that without that bridge, they have nothing to talk about.

Oskar meets tons of characters along the way, including a guard who works at the Statue Of Liberty and lets him come up and look out at the city. But most of his search is met with shrugged shoulders and apologetic smiles. Despite Oskar looking for some grand answer to it all, he may have to accept that the answer may never come.

It’s rare that I just get to talk about how a script affected me b/c it’s rare that a writer is so good that they can make me forget I’m reading a story. But this script did it. In a lot of ways it reminded me of when I read The Social Network, where I just forgot about form and structure and character and got transported into another universe via Roth’s wizardry.

Roth has a strange way of writing that I can’t quite put my finger on, but it’s its singular and unique and when you’re reading him, you go with it. Maybe it’s because he ignores convention. I don’t know. But there’s some really heavy stuff here that Roth has to sell and you never once question it.

Now make no mistake, there are some key things in place to make this story work. First and foremost is the character goal driving the action. Oskar is trying to find out what this key opens, and the connection he has with his father, shown through flashbacks and voice over, makes that goal extremely strong. I mean, I don’t know if I’ve felt this much love between two characters in a screenplay before.

Also, Oskar is the ultimate underdog. He’s a 10 year old kid with no friends who lost the most important person in his life. I mean who’s not going to root for this guy? (Note that Roth’s other most popular character, Forrest Gump, was also one of the biggest underdogs in cinema history).

But it’s the details and the crushing scenes in this screenplay that will leave you thinking about “Extremely Loud” long after you’ve finished it. (Spoilers) First and foremost the final answering machine message scene. I mean, I can’t remember the last time I felt so devastated reading something. The explanation of what happened on that last call? Grab your Kleenex girls AND boys, as you’re going to need it.

And rewinding his father’s “possible” jump from the towers so that he’s going back up into the building instead of falling down? I mean wow. I needed to wipe away some man-tears after that one.

On a lighter note, one of the nice touches here is being able to see what Oskar imagines. The trailer on this movie is going to be phenomenal. We’re going to have helicopters carrying the world’s biggest blanket, dropping it on the twin towers. We’re going to have thousands of coffins with rockets attached to them shooting up into the sky. We’re going to have a half-man/half-robot waiting to talk to Oskar. We’re going to have the “Sixth Borough” out on its own island next to Manhattan. The imagination in this story is incredible, and you really feel like you’re being taken into another world with every page.

This is easily the best thing about 9/11 that I’ve ever read. Probably the best decision Roth (or Foer) made was installing as much humor as there is here – and there’s a lot. Cause the truth is, people are tired of how emotionally draining 9/11 is. They see it and they just want to escape. But Oskar’s view of the world is so funny that this devastating tale is bearable – even enjoyable. And somehow – I’m still not sure how Roth does it – it never feels false. Everyone says “Don’t do voice over. Don’t do voice over.” But man, for writers who know what they’re doing, it can be the most powerful part of a screenplay – as some of Oskar’s musings in this story are.

So was it perfect? No, and I think that’s because this is an early draft. This is 137 pages long and it feels like it. I think Roth gets a little carried away with giving us the father’s backstory.  I mean, there are some great moments in there.  There’s just too much of it. I liked how we’d get a flashback scene with them every 20 pages or so to remind us what Oskar was fighting for. But right now there are like 20 scenes with the dad, and I think that can easily be cut in half. For this reason, the middle act drags until The Renter shows up.

Also, the mom storyline needs to be fleshed out and better defined. We know these two don’t get along, but we’re not exactly sure why. So their eventual reconciliation doesn’t have nearly the punch that it should have.

There were a few other things that bothered me. Roth can get a little long-winded at times. But the key here is that this script made me feel something. It’s hard to finish this screenplay and not feel affected in some way. Reading through so many average scripts, I sometimes forget how hard that is to do. Someone else told me that this script makes Extremely Loud a front-runner for an Oscar in 2012. I don’t know if I’d go that far but it certainly has the seeds to grow into something great.

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

What I learned: When comparing three of Roth’s most high-profile scripts, something sticks out. The combination of a heavy underdog and a voice over is a powerful one if you have the skills to pull it off. The underdog thing is obvious. Everyone roots for an underdog. But the additional voice over takes that connection between us to a new level. Because the main character is talking to us, we feel like we know him, and you’re always more likely to root for people you know. This approach was used to perfection in both this script and Forrest Gump. Contrast that with Benjamin Button, which was a good but not great film. It had neither. Benjamin was sort of an underdog, but not really, as he basically grew into a handsome young man. Also (if my memory serves me correctly) it was Cate Blanchett who did the voice over, not our hero. Are these the reasons Button is not as memorable as these two stories? I don’t know. But it’s certainly worth noting.