Genre: Comedy
Premise: A group of 20-somethings must deal with the ever-complicated logistics of commitment.
About: Are We Officially Dating made the 2010 Black List, landing somewhere near the middle of the pack. Thomas Gormican, the writer, graduated from Brown University. He began his career at GreeneStreet Films in New York City. Afterwards, he partnered with Charles Wessler and the Farrelly Brothers to produce a short-films-compilation (Movie 43) in the vein of The Kentucky Fried Movie, to be financed and distributed by Overture Films.
Writer: Thomas Gormican
Details: 112 pages – 10-22-10 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).

The male bachelor afraid of commitment sub-genre is probably the most crowded sub-genre in the spec screenplay market. Makes sense, right? There are a lot of males between the ages of 20-30 writing screenplays. It’s only natural, then, that they write about what males between the ages of 20-30 think about. For that reason, if you’re going to add your name to this list, you better make sure your script is one of two things: 1) very well written or 2) a completely new take on the genre. I always advocate for #2, since people are more likely to pass around something that’s fresh and original. If you’re going to go with #1 though, know this: Even if you execute your story to perfection, there’s still a good chance it’s never going to be seen as anything other than an average comedy, and that’s exactly what we have here with “Are We Officially Dating?”

Jason is 28 years old, charming, handsome, and deathly afraid of commitment. He’s specifically afraid of the “So…” I think we all know the “So…” The “So” is when a woman has had enough of the fun, and after a particularly enjoyable sexual encounter sneaks in, “So….where is this going?” Yeah, Jason would rather sleep in an oven than deal with the “So…” So, as soon as a relationship gets to that border between fun and serious (The Great Wall of Commitment?) he bails.

Completing the bachelorhood lifestyle are Jason’s two best friends. There’s Mikey, a doctor whose wife just started banging their lawyer. Because Mikey has little respect for himself, he still allows her to use him for medical advice. Then there’s Daniel, whose best friend Chelsea is “one of the guys.” But when he sleeps with her, he too must deal with the question of whether to commit or keep it casual.

Jason’s problems start when he takes the cute Ellie home for a night of sexual adventure, only to realize she’s a hooker, only to later realize she’s not a hooker. They start hanging out, having fun, and in between these fun escapades, the guys, a la a younger better looking Seinfeld cast, discuss their predicaments in comedic detail.

Eventually Jason starts falling for Ellie, but when she gives him the “So…” he freaks out and tells her he can’t make a commitment. Jason then learns that Ellie is seeing a hot new author (both characters work in the publishing industry) and of course realizes that he loves her. He then becomes Stalk Machine 3000, breaking down cryptic updates on Ellie’s Facebook page like archeologists would hieroglyphics, eventually getting to the point where, as one of his friends puts it, he “looks like somebody Jamie Foxx would play in a movie.”

Jason has to pull it together to win Ellie back but there’s a chance he’s gone too far and that he’ll never experience the joy of a loving committed relationship.

I don’t have anything against “Are We Officially Dating?” There aren’t any big problems here. There’s a nice work goal that keeps the story on track. There’s plenty of conflict between the three pairs of characters. The dialogue is decent. The comedy wasn’t suited to me but I definitely laughed. What plagues “Dating” in my opinion is that there’s nothing new about it. I’ve read this exact kind of script two hundred times before. Was Gormican’s version of the story better than those other 200? It was better than most. But even though well-written, you can only read the same story so many times before it stops affecting you (and hence, another argument why you should find a fresh take on the genre).

There were some smaller issues here for me. Ellie isn’t a very exciting character. One of the things I constantly see in these male-written rom-coms – especially ones which sympathize with the male hero’s fear of commitment – is that the female leads aren’t very strong. And I’d probably make that argument here. Ellie is treated more as an ideal than a character. The focus is on what the guys think of her, of their situation, and of the developments on Jason’s side of the relationship, rather than Ellie herself. This is particularly true later on, when Ellie disappears for most of the third act. We’re focused more on Jason going crazy than what’s going on with Ellie.  For this reason (spoiler!), when he gets her in the end, we don’t feel it, cause we don’t really know the girl. 

I also found it strange that Jason was pursuing Ellie early on, despite the fact that he so adamantly didn’t want a relationship. The explanation we’re given for his contradictory actions is that he “wants her on the roster,” though it’s never explained what that means. So it felt like a cheat.

A lot of you are probably wondering, “Well then how did this get on the Black List?” It’s a fair question. I think it’s because it gets all the little things right. A big problem I see in amateur scripts is that writers don’t know how to get the script to the point where it’s being judged solely on the story. They haven’t learned all the little things required to make the story stand on its own.

For example, they may not know how to set up their main character. When we meet your main character, you need to tell us exactly who that character is, what their strength is, what their flaw is, what the central problem in their life is. We need to know this so we understand what it is our character will need to overcome during the course of the story.

I don’t see that in a lot of amateur scripts. Instead I see character introductions with our protagonist doing arbitrary things that tell us very little if anything about the character. The writer erroneously assumes that since *they* know who their character is, that it will just magically leak out onto the page. But it doesn’t work that way, and as a result, the whole movie’s point is muddled. We don’t know who our main character is, why they’re existing, what they’re trying to overcome, and how it relates to the plot, because nobody’s ever told us. I see this ALL. THE. TIME.

Are We Officially Dating begins with Jason explaining exactly what’s wrong with him. He’s a commitment-phobe. He avoids relationships. There isn’t a single doubt in our mind what’s going on with this character after that scene. And I realize that Gormican chooses to TELL us and not SHOW us this information (we can debate that another day), but the point is, when that opening scene is over, you don’t have any doubt in your mind who Jason is – and that’s important.

There are a lot of little things like that in a screenplay that you have to get right JUST TO HAVE YOUR STORY MAKE SENSE TO THE READER. And that’s why a lot of amateur scripts don’t stack up to “Are We Officially Dating?” even though there’s nothing particularly new going on here.

These are always the toughest reviews for me to write, because the script didn’t make me feel anything one way or the other. It showed a good command of the craft, but that’s about it.

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

What I learned: Up above, I went on a long rant about making sure we know who your main character is in his introductory scene. Well, I wanted to make sure you knew that there are times when you DON’T want to do this. In particular, when your character has a deep mysterious background. So say you’re writing a Western and start on a drifter riding into town. The appeal of this character might be his mystery. It might be counter-productive, then, to tell us everything about him right away. Instead, you’ll want to install little pieces of his backstory and problems throughout the story.  Just make sure that the revelations about his secret past are worthy of being initially kept from us (in other words, make sure they’re damn interesting).

Genre: Western
Premise: Appalled by the lack of concern following a brothel worker’s murder, a young prostitute in the Old West sets out to find the killer while searching for her own escape from the world’s oldest profession.
About: Iris Of The Garden is a 2010 Nicholl Quarter-Finalist. That tag has gotten Shaarawi some requests for her script, but so far nothing’s come of it. She wants to know what it’s missing. — 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: Lizz-Ayn Shaarawi
Details: 100 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).

When I finished “Iris Of The Garden,” I really took Shaarawi’s question to heart. “What’s missing here?” “Garden” had done pretty well at Nicholl and she’d gotten some read requests from the placing, but how come that’s where the trail ended? What is it that’s holding this script back?

It’s an important question. If you don’t understand why another script isn’t working, how can you understand what’s wrong with your own script? I mean sure you can just say, “I didn’t like it,” or “It was boring,” but that doesn’t help you become a better screenwriter. So I really had that question on my mind when evaluating Iris Of The Garden.

It’s the Old West. Iris, a pretty 19 year old young woman, has just finished her first “job,” which would be fucking the mayor of this town. Yes, Iris is a prostitute.

Her career path wasn’t by choice (it rarely is). Iris was simply coming to town to get some honest work, and found herself out of money with no place to turn. So now she’s here, in a brothel, the last place in the world she wants to be.

If that wasn’t depressing enough, her arrival is quickly followed by the killing of one of her co-workers. Petal, barely 17 years old, was a recluse, a one-time good girl who had since gone nuts.

Iris is shocked that nobody seems to care about this brutal killing, so she bestows it upon herself to figure out who was responsible. She eventually teams up with her best friend in the house, 17 year old Fern, to seek out clues that will lead her to the killer.

At first the assumption is that it’s Indians, then one of the customers, but over time it spreads to the owners of the brothel and beyond. The chief suspect is Mr. Donner, the big shot owner of the General Store and one of Petal’s main customers. Donner is notorious for being violent in bed, so Iris and Fern are certain he’s involved in this somehow.

Along the way we meet a few other suspects as well one of Iris’s customers, the loner Jimmy Wayne, who falls in love with her, proclaiming her “his girl” and promising that one day he’s going to take her away from here. Iris must also fight off Violet, the evil “queen bee” of the house who’s clearly threatened by Iris’s beauty, and who may be in cahoots with a couple of other main suspects.

There’s a few twists and turns along the way, and Iris is also seeking a possible escape from the brothel, but this is basically a simple story about one woman trying to solve a murder.

So back to that question. Why isn’t “Iris of The Garden” able to find a way past that “good but not great” label? I think there are a few factors to consider here, and it starts with the genre. Despite the amazing success of True Grit, Westerns are a tough sell, and rarely find their way up the development ladder. The only reason why Grit was made was because the Coen Brothers decided to make it. It was not a spec script that was brought to them. It was all them.

You have to remember that 99% of the people you give your script to are thinking, in one form or another, can this script or this writer make me money? Writers don’t think about that for some reason. The agent? The producer? The manager? These are all people with families, with mortgages, with car payments, with “Hollywood image” upkeep. So when these people receive a Western, they know immediately it’s going to be a writing sample, not a script they can sell, and that puts it low on the priority list.

Now that’s not to say a Western can’t start someone’s career or that I’m saying “Never write a Western.” Craig Zahler, who wrote The Brigands Of Rattleborge, got himself a ton of assignment work from that one screenplay. The point I’m making is, becoming a professional screenwriter is hard as it is. But it becomes even harder when you handicap yourself with a genre Hollywood’s reluctant to embrace.

But I think the bigger problem with this script is in the setup, and it’s a problem that pops up a lot in this kind of story. For investigation scripts to work, the person investigating has to have a strong reason to do so. In most of these films, it’s a detective or a cop doing the investigating, which makes perfect sense because that’s their job. Over the course of the story, as they learn more about the murdered or kidnapped person, they become more attached to them, making their motivation even stronger.

When you don’t use a cop or a detective, you have to find some other reason why the protagonist would be strongly motivated. So in the million dollar spec sale, Prisoners, about a man whose daughter is kidnapped, he may not be a cop, but it makes perfect sense why he begins his own investigation. Because it’s his daughter!

I never once understood why Iris was trying to solve Petal’s murder. She never knew the girl. I don’t even think she spoke to her. So for her to become obsessively involved so quickly didn’t feel natural. It bordered on flippant, the way Nancy Drew might decide to investigate the random disappearance of her classmate’s favorite red scarf.

There’s certainly a sense of connection here, that these two girls are stuck in the same horrifying position. But no matter what twist or turn came up in the story, I always kept saying to myself, “Why is she doing this? Why does she care so much?”

The other big problem I had was that there was no urgency in the investigation, no ticking time bomb. One of the things that works so well in serial killer screenplays is that the killer is going to strike again. This results in both high stakes (another potential death) and a ticking time bomb (the impending next kill). We don’t have any impending doom in this story. There’s nothing dictating that our protagonist find out who this killer is RIGHT NOW. And there’s no stakes involved in whether she solves the case. Nothing will really change whether she finds the killer or not.

I realize it would make a different movie, but I think it might be more exciting if Iris showed up at this whorehouse with three of four girls recently murdered instead of one. Now she’s not just investigating a murder out of curiosity. She’s trying to prevent her own murder, to save the lives of herself and her friends in the house. I think that would be way more exciting.

As for the rest of the script, it was pretty good. You know, if you ignore the story problems I listed above, the writing itself is solid. It’s a nice sparse easy-to-read script. The prose is pleasant. The dialogue feels authentic. I felt like we were really in a whore house back in the old West, which is by no means an easy feat. Some of the characters were really well drawn, including the nasty Violet and the nastier Donner.

I thought the “romantic interest” could have been better handled, as it never seemed like Lizz-Ayn was truly committed to it (and the whole “I’m really rich” surprise at the end felt like a reality TV reveal, not a serious twist in a dramatic Western), but for this script to get where it wants to go, the whole motivation thing needs to be worked out, and I think there needs to be more danger involved in the pursuit. We have to feel like people don’t want Iris digging. We have to feel like more killings are coming. This thing just needs to be a little grander in scope.

Some good writing here, but the story definitely needs some work.

Script link: Iris Of The Garden

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

What I learned: Motivation is so important. Why is your main character doing what they’re doing? If there isn’t some strong reason for their actions, your entire script is doomed. Shrek’s going on his journey to get his swamp back. Colin Firth in King’s Speech goes on his journey because he has to give the most important speech in history. Even in the movie I didn’t like, Winter’s Bone, I admit that the main character had a very strong motivation for going on her journey – to save her house and her family. So make sure your protagonist’s motivation is rock solid in your screenplay.

Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: A pharmacist whose wife regularly questions his masculinity starts an affair with a tortured trophy wife, who encourages him to explore the “fruits” of his profession.
About: This one was on the Black List this year and will star Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) and Jennifer Garner (13 Going on 30). The writers, Posamentier and Moore, have one other project in development, a sci-fi family script called “Grandma’s Intergalactic Bed and Breakfast,” but are relatively new on the scene. Posamentier worked as Zach Braff’s personal assistant on Garden State. The duo is also directing “Chemistry.”
Writers: David Posamentier & Geoff Moore
Details: 110 pages – Feb 18, 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).

Over the course of Scriptshadow’s life, I’ve read a lot of “Next American Beauties.” These days it feels like I read a new one every week. The problem with most of these explorations of suburbia is that they don’t find a new angle on the sub-genre. It’s essentially the same deal: Upper middle class suburbians hate their lives. They do self-destructive things. Then eventually have to deal with the consequences. Movie over.

What I liked about Better Living Through Chemistry was that it took a slightly different look at that world. You see it just by reading the logline, which actually has a hook. What if you were a pharmacist, with access to every drug known to man, and you decided to take advantage of that power? Already the story’s feeling fresher.

Douglas Varney isn’t a man. We know that because his over-exercised bitchy triathlete of a wife, Kara, tells him that every single day. The two stopped getting along a long time ago and their only real discussions outside of daily logistics revolve around raising their 12 year old reclusive son, Ethan, a job they’re both failing miserably at.

As if dealing with his wife and son isn’t enough of a chore, Douglas also has to deal with his wife’s father, Walter Bishop, who’s owned the pharmacy Douglas works at for the past ten years. Douglas is thrilled that he’s finally bought the pharmacy for himself, because maybe now people will take him seriously. This transition will be signified by a sign change from “Bishop’s” to “Varney’s,” a day Douglas’ looked forward to for months.   But when Walter shows up with the new sign, Douglas is horrified to see that it still says “Bishop’s,” and that the store will always be called “Bishop’s,” a move he predictably doesn’t challenge.

Frustrated, Douglas finishes off the day delivering meds to a huge mansion at the edge of town, where he meets the eternally buzzed but stunningly beautiful (and married) Elizabeth Roberts. The two have an undeniable spark and immediately begin an affair.

It’s innocent at first, but Elizabeth implores Doug to bring a couple extra pills along to their parties. Doug is so blinded by his obsession for Elizabeth that he obeys, and before he knows it he’s hopped up on every drug known to man. Party drugs, performance drugs, uppers, downers, you name it, he does it. And when individually they’re not enough for him, he starts mixing and matching, creating new super-designer drugs, anything to get a bigger and longer high.

When Elizabeth mentions leaving their respective families and running off together, Doug is more than game. But things get tricky when she asks him to kill her husband. Doug’s not a killer, but if it’s the only way he can be with Elizabeth, he’ll consider it. It would actually be easy. Doug has sole control of the town’s med-supply, so all he’d have to do is change Elizabeth’s husband’s medication to something lethal and it would be untraceable. But as he gets closer and closer to the big moment, he has doubts about whether he can go through with it.

There’s a whole lot to like about Better Living With Chemistry, starting with all the rich characters. Everybody’s unique here. Everybody’s well thought out, has their own thing going on, has their own vices, has their own flaws. When you write one of these quirky suburbia flicks, you better make sure your character creation is top notch because that’s what these films are about. And Posamentier and Moore nail it.

But what really sets Better Living Through Chemistry apart is its final act. It’s been a long time since I’ve read an ending that truly elevates a script, and it’s been an even longer time since someone genuinely “got” or “tricked” me in a screenplay. The set up at the beginning with Doug getting arrested and how that plays out when the third act arrives thoroughly blindsided me (what happens with the cop was so clever I had a big smile on my face for five full minutes). I just didn’t see any of it coming.

And this was all accomplished because these writers are masters of the set-up and payoff. They snuck all these little set-ups into the script that you didn’t think twice about, only to have them all pay off in that final act. It was like watching a perfect line of dominoes fall. Afterwards you smacked yourself on the head and said, “How the hell didn’t I see that!” As someone who – as I just mentioned – is rarely surprised anymore, I have to give it to writers when they trick me. And these guys definitely tricked me.

This is also another script that proves how important it is to create unresolved relationships in your screenplay. A lot of new writers think you just have to come up with a hook, fudge around for 80 pages until you get near the end, then make a lot of exciting things happen and you’re done. No, the heart of every screenplay is that second act, and that’s where you explore all the unresolved conflict. So Doug and his wife don’t get along. We have to resolve that. Her father doesn’t think Doug is good enough for his daughter. We have to resolve that. Doug’s son has pulled away from him. We have to resolve that. Sooner or later Doug and Elizabeth will have to decide if this relationship is just for fun or they want to be together for good. We have to resolve that.

When people talk about second acts being boring – being the black holes where stories go to die – their issues usually have to do with there not being enough unresolved relationships in the second act. Exploring those relationships is the engine that makes that second act go.

I did have a couple of problems with the script though. I never bought Doug jumping right into the drug thing. He seemed to take his job very seriously. He seemed to have a spotless record. He’s out to prove his ability to own his own pharmacy. Yet when Elizabeth suggests they start doing drugs, he hops on board faster than a standby ticket out of Siberia. There’s no transition, no contemplation. It’s just a shrug of the shoulders and a “Why not?” It was definitely a big leap of faith.

And also, I’d be remiss not to mention that, yet again, my celebrity cameo issues strike. For those of you who don’t remember, I took to task a writer on Amateur Friday who had thrown a celebrity cameo in his script, explaining to him that I see the celebrity cameo 8 million times a week in comedy screenplays and therefore to avoid it. That opinion sparked a mini-uprising in the comments section from writers who didn’t agree with me.

Well here, we have a celebrity cameo of Judi Dench. But it’s actually more than a cameo. Judi Dench narrates the story as Judi Dench. For no reason. Whatsoever. This was the one big thing that annoyed me because I thought the script was great and hearing Judi Dench pop up every ten minutes to tell us something we already knew felt like a cheap gimmick. Why impede upon something that’s working with a cry for attention? It was just way too broad for me.

I don’t think narrators in these movies work to begin with unless it’s the main character (American Beauty). In my opinion, Little Children was ruined by the strange choice of random voice over in the film. That’s not nearly the case here. But I’m hoping they reconsider it, cause it’s so not needed.

Anyway, this might be why I’m avoiding the impressive. But this was still a wonderful character piece with a fabulous ending.

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

What I learned: Make sure your set-up doesn’t draw attention to itself. The best payoffs are ones we’re not expecting, so if you tip your hand when setting something up, we’ll know a later payoff is coming. Take the scene in Back To The Future, for example, where Marty and Jennifer are chatting about their weekend plans and try to sneak a kiss. Annoying Lady thrusts a can into their faces and says “Save the Clock Tower!” then proceeds to give Marty a flyer explaining what happened to the tower 30 years ago. The scene is constructed to focus more on the annoyance of our leads being interrupted than it is the details of the clock tower’s demise. Zemeckis even uses a double-set up in the scene, when he has Jennifer write her grandmother’s number down on the flyer, ensuring that Marty will keep it. Later, when Doc is explaining that the only way they’ll be able to harness enough energy to jump back to the present is if they harness a bolt of lightning, Marty rips out the flyer and our set-up is paid off. Of course, this seems like a simple set-up and payoff in retrospect, but that’s only because it was seamlessly executed. A lesser writer might not have thought of the Old Lady. He might have said, “I have to figure out a way for Marty to bring up the Clock Tower to Jennifer,” and given the couple some awkward stilted exposition to set it up, something like: “Jennifer, did you know that 30 years ago today the clock tower was struck by lightning?”  The awkwardness of it would clue us in that something was up.  You can actually see, when the writers had less time, how their set-ups and payoffs got much clumsier and drew way more attention to themselves in the film’s sequels. Always make sure your setup stands on its own.

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: In a world where families are allowed only one child due to overpopulation, a resourceful set of identical septuplets must avoid governmental execution and dangerous infighting while investigating the disappearance of one of their own.
About: This spec script sold to Vendome Pictures after it landed on the 2010 Black List. Vendome Pictures is a new production company who also happens to be the company that produced Source Code. This seems to be a major departure for Max Botkin, the writer, as his one other produced credit is a comedy called “Opposite Day.”
Writer: Max Botkin
Details: 116 pages, 9/9/10 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).

The other day we talked a bit about assignment work. How the time constraint and lack of passion in assignments usually results in mediocre work. What Happened To Monday is the opposite of that. This is a script that is clearly a passion project for the writer. Whereas with Dibbuk, story parts came and went faster than hot Krispy Kreme donuts, the pieces in this story are intricately researched and weaved into an impressively complex plot.

However, this attention to detail brings about its own set of problems. Namely, can a world be TOO specific? Are the characters and situations so singular that they’re impossible for an audience to relate to? I’m not sure I can answer that definitively, but I can say that despite how character-driven What Happened To Monday is, its universe is as sterile as a surgeon’s gloves. How a script can feel so detached and yet so connected at the same time is a mystery to me, and it’s part of the complexity that makes “Monday” such an intriguing read. In the end I’m left to wonder whether the story is so unique that there’s nothing for the reader to grab onto.

It’s the future. How far in the future, we’re not sure.

But in this future, the combination of overpopulation and dwindling resources has become a huge issue. As a result, the government is forced to pull a China and limit every family to one child. Any more children than one and a newly formed bureau (headed up by the evil Nicholas Cayman) will take them away, to God-Knows-Where.

Around this time, a young woman named Karen Settman has septuplets. The law states that each child born after the first one must be taken away. But Karen, an architect, decides to keep her children, building them a specially designed condo with multiple hiding places for if the authorities ever stop by.

In order to give each of her children a life, Karen constructs a logistically elaborate set of rules whereby her seven identical sons can go out into the world, one day at a time, living life as a single person. This, of course, is why they’re named after the days of the week.

For those wondering how they pull this off, it’s by no means an easy sell (for them and for us). After each day they have to have an hours-long meeting relating back what happened during the day so that the others always know and understand the details of their singular life.

As they become adults, however, the brothers start getting restless. Nobody can express any individuality once they leave that building. They’re all living a lie. They can’t even experience the greatest thing life has to offer – love. And this starts to take its toll.

Some agents come sniffing around the building and Thursday, our narrator in this journey, realizes that somebody may have given them up. The brothers split up and one by one are either caught or killed, sometimes by agents, sometimes by unknown factors. Thursday realizes that if he doesn’t find out who sold their family out, that it’s only a matter of time before the whole damn week is dead.

If all that sounds complex to you, that’s because it is. Reading this screenplay was exhausting. You have to learn about the universe, you have to learn about the backstory, you have to learn about the rules, you have to watch the brothers grow up, you have to establish the relationships between them all. By the time we actually get to the story, your brain feels like a 50 pound anvil. That may be my biggest complaint here – there’s just…too much. What Happened To Monday feels a lot more like a novel than it does a screenplay.

There’s this popular theory (which I don’t subscribe to) that the best sci-fi is a commentary on some aspect of the modern world. District 9, for instance, was more about the ghetto districts in South Africa than it was about aliens coming down to earth. I get the sense that What Happened to Monday is likewise about a bigger issue, but I’m not sure what that issue is.

I mean is this about China? Is it a human rights film? Part of me thinks yes, but then you get into the whole “naming your seven characters after the seven days of the week” thing and the China connections end. I actually found it cute that each brother acted like their day of the week (Monday was always pissed, Saturday was a party guy, Sunday was the religious one). It was funny and clever. But it contrasted with the larger picture, which seemed to be making a grander statement. What that statement was still eludes me, so I’m eager to find out if any of you caught it.

I think the problem here may be theme. There’s a lot of interesting ideas in “Monday,” but unlike the seven brothers in the script, they don’t have a home. They don’t have a centralized unit to stabilize and unify their message. There are just so many competing elements here.

I think one of the reasons the script sold, however, goes back to a tip I gave you guys a couple of months ago, in my “How to Write For An A-List Actor” article. Write a part where an actor gets to play more than one role. They love that shit. And here, you give an actor seven different roles to play. Talk about challenging. It’s almost too many, but I can definitely see actors giving it a read for that reason.

And you know, once the story gets going, it’s actually pretty good. The mystery of who’s killing off these days of the week gets pretty intense, and while I wouldn’t say the ending was wonderful (again – we’re trying to keep track of so many things that it’s hard to keep up with the intricate plot), it was satisfying.

And I do admit that the script made me think. I kept imagining how miserable these characters’ lives must have been, trapped in this house for six days a week, having only a single day to go out and enjoy the world, and how even when that moment came, they had to pretend to be someone they weren’t. If there’s one thing “Monday” doesn’t lack, it’s complex characters.

But ultimately, the premise requires such a suspension of disbelief and there’s so much to learn before the story can actually get going, that I spent more time fighting this script than reading it.

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

What I learned: This is a complicated lesson but it’s definitely worth discussing. When you’re writing a sci-fi screenplay, you’re establishing a lot of rules. One thing you have to be careful about, however, is establishing a rule that makes sense in your sci-fi world, but not to the audience. In “Monday,” one of the things we keep asking is, “Why can’t these brothers just split up and live off the grid, each with their own separate lives?” What we’re told is that biometric machines are constantly floating around the city, scanning for “siblings.” This sort of makes sense, but how many of these biometric scanners do you think they’d have floating around in Gemini, Texas? Or Marxville, Wyoming? To you and I, going out of state is as simple as making a phone call. So it’s hard for us to imagine it being difficult for our septuplets, even if it is the future. My feeling is that the more influential a story element is in suspending the audience’s disbelief, the more convincing it has to be, and I was never quite convinced that these seven couldn’t just spread out and split up.

Hip Hip Hooray! Oscar nominations day. Maybe I’ll get to my thoughts on that later in the week. As of now, Article Thursday has been moved up to today, and Thursday will become a review day. Also, I found a new draft of Dibbuk Box, so I decided to do something unprecedented: go back and remix my review. So if you want to see my review for the newest draft of Dibbuk Box, head back to yesterday’s review now. Now, it’s time to talk about the increasingly strange behavior of Kevin Smith.

What a strange day Monday was. I woke up and every single site I went to had some blogger ranting about how Kevin Smith had become the anti-Christ. At first I thought they were part of a viral marketing campaign for Smith’s new religious-themed horror film, but no, everybody seemed to be genuinely upset, though it was hard to figure out why. After digging around (and reading through 100-something tweets on Smith’s Twitter feed) I finally put it together.

To summarize it, Smith previewed his long in development horror film, Red State, at Sundance Sunday night. Apparently, he’d told the public for weeks that he would have a live auction for the movie after the screening. So all the major indie companies sent their people there to potentially bid for the film. Except afterwards, Smith went on a 25 minute rant (or so we were told – the actual footage is only semi-ranty) telling those very people that they sucked and he was tired of them stealing his money so they could suck his dick. He then proceeded to “sell” the movie to himself, subsequently pissing off a lot of distributors who could’ve used that time to target other Sundance material.

He then announced he’d be taking Red State on tour, one city at a time, and charging $70/ticket (presumably each screening would end with one of Smith’s famous extensive Q&As – so the cost would cover more than the actual film). Smith’s argument was that this old model of marketing movies, where you spend four times the budget of your film on advertising, forcing you to make five times what your film cost just to break even, was ridiculous, and he wanted to try something new.

So instead of traditional advertising, Smith was going to utilize the power of his Podcast and Twitter feed (which has over 1 million followers) to let everyone know where the film was playing and how to buy tickets. After the tour, he’d release the film more traditionally, but with himself distributing the film instead of some big money-sucking distribution company, giving theaters more lucrative terms as an incentive to work with him.

Now I know this isn’t technically connected to screenwriting, but it kind of is. People with 1 million dedicated “can contact them at any time” followers simply weren’t around two years ago. That gives a ton of power to the individual, whereas before the individual had to depend almost exclusively on the company who financed his film. It’s a different ballgame and it might be time to start thinking about things differently. To think that the old model is going to transfer over seamlessly in this ever-changing world of social media is kind of silly.

With guys like Ed Burns foregoing traditional distribution and selling his movie directly on Itunes (where we’ll likely be watching all of our rented films in two years) so that he could retain ownership of his film, rather than hand it over to some prodco, has both its pros and cons. You’re not going to get that big marketing push, and thus your movie won’t be grossing nearly as much money, but you’ll be receiving some hefty royalties from being the sole owner of your film for quite some time.

Back in the days of video stores (I can’t believe I’m saying that – “Back in the days of video stores”), where shelf space was limited, you wouldn’t have thought of that. Not having that juicy “Miramax” or “Lionsgate” tag on your film would keep corporate-minded Blockbuster from even glancing at your film. But a virtual porthole, such as Itunes or Netflix, where the system is intelligent enough to know which movies you like and recommend them to you, makes those companies excited about a small movie owned exclusively by Ed Burns. It doesn’t cost them anything to throw it up there, and targeted recommendations means people will keep watching it.

At some point I expect this to trickle down to the development stage. If you developed your script openly, providing numerous drafts on the internet and encouraged feedback from fans, it’s an easy way to build awareness for your film (not to mention improve your script) and thus create anticipation throughout the development process. A case can be made that the leaked scripts for Inglorious Basterds and Avatar helped make those films what they were, and I would anticipate that same kind of buzz would happen with any filmmaker who has a built-in fanbase. I know some form of this is going to happen soon. I’m just not sure which major name is going to do it first.

So I’m really interested in what happens here with Smith. What sucks, and what’s turning out to be a distracting factor in this giant experiment, is that Smith may be heading off to Crazy Land. The guy is curling himself up into a cocoon of safety in order to protect himself from any sort of negative reaction whatsoever. First he takes on critics for hating a movie that was truly awful and says he’s not going to screen his movies for critics anymore. And now he’s giving a big fat middle finger to studios and production companies, which is allowing him to try this unique experiment, but creating an unhealthy amount of insulation in the process.

What he doesn’t realize, is that he’s effectively becoming the low-budget version of George Lucas. Just make movies in his own back yard and nobody’s allowed to tell him if they’re any good or not. This is the absolute worst way you can approach writing, and almost always leads to subpar work. If you have any doubt about that, go read The Phantom Menace.

It’s a weird scenario, and I don’t know if Smith’s post-modern Howard Huges-like behavior is going to get in the way of determining whether this is a viable option or not. Which sucks, because if it does work, it could be a game-changer. It could give birth to an entirely new generation of writer-directors, guys like Gareth Edwards and Neil Bloomkamp, who have a unique voice and realize that with emerging technology, they can make their movies on the cheap and distribute them outside the studio system, building followers on social media outlets through teaser scenes, short films, and word of mouth, then use those outlets to directly advertise screenings, whether they be in real theaters or online.

I think what Smith is doing is cool. I’m just worried that his questionable red state of mind may screw up the test. What do you think?