Genre: Fantasy/Procedural/Action
Premise: A hunter named Atlas must figure out why a human is being targeted by creatures from a parallel world.
About: Ben Magid is the writer of the dark serial killer fantasy “Pan,” which I reviewed a few weeks ago. He has a few other projects in development including Hack-Slash at Rogue and Invasion at Summit. Atlas originally went out on the town in 2009, but despite some initial interest, it didn’t sell. I’ve been told more than a few times, “Carson, you gotta read Ben Magid’s Atlas. It’s awwwesome.” And they say it like Jack Black but without the irony. Hey, I’ll admit it. I think fairies are for girls. So I wasn’t down with strapping my wings on. But if you want to expand your horizons, you gotta take some chances right?
Writer: Ben Magid
Details: 114 pages – 2/19/09 (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 people have spoken. You wanted more Ben Magid. I’m bringing you more Ben Magid. To be honest, I always thought this script was the script for Atlas Shrugged, so I stuffed it in my “never read this for the rest of your life” pile. I mean, did you see the trailer for that abomination? If you can watch that trailer and tell me what that movie’s about, apply to Harvard now cause you’re a certified genius.
Okay now you’re going to have to excuse me if I don’t get this right. I’m not a fairy expert. I don’t build troll replicas. The only witch I know is my ex-girlfriend. The parallel fairy worlds are confusing so take my description with a grain of pixie sand. Or dust. Or whatever it’s called.
We start on a 16 year old girl named Willa running from a creature. She’s not too sure why a creature is chasing her and quite frankly neither are we. But her big mistake is turning into an alley. Rule number 1 when anything is chasing you. Never EVER turn into an alley! You ESPECIALLY want to abide by this rule if any sort of creature is chasing you.
Lucky for Willa, Atlas Goodfellow, Creature-killer extraordinaire, has experience with people making the dumb decision to turn into alleys and decides to end this creature’s comfort, dragging a confused Willa back to the hideout afterwards to figure out what’s going on.
See, we’re in the human world. And creatures aren’t supposed to come into the human world due to some pact we made with them back in the olden days. Atlas is a hunter. He hunts down any of these things that come into our world and sends them back – if sends them back means killing they asses.
Atlas figures this girl must be pretty darn special if she has creatures risking their lives to come into the human world to execute her. And he wants to get to the bottom of it. Now here’s where things got a little confusing. I couldn’t figure out if the human world was our world as we know it now, or a heightened version of our world where fairy creatures co-exist with us. Because sometimes our heroes would, say, go to a club, and there’d be trolls and fairies hanging out. I’ve been to a fair share of nightclubs and I haven’t ever seen a fairy except for when girls dress up in slutty fairy costumes on Halloween. I suppose they could be real fairies PRETENDING to be slutty Halloween fairies but I doubt it. Anyway, I couldn’t figure that out.
But getting back on track, Atlas eventually realizes that Willa is special. Verrrrry special. And that’s why the people from the creature world want her. In the end, the two will have to team up to stop the baddies from getting their hands on her. Cause if they don’t, the human world and the creature world will collide in one giant world jumbolya and if that happens we’re all going to become human stew.
Atlas was a neat script if you like this kind of thing. Did you see that movie with Nicolas Cage? The one with the dragons in New York? The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Specially on the inventive part. Ben Magid’s really created his own world here. And that’s not easy to do WHILE keeping us entertained. You know how easy it would be to get bogged down in fairy names and troll guild descriptions? I see it happen all the time in fantasy scripts and it makes me want to claw my eyes out. “The Lisp Fairies are an ancient fairy tribe that once warred with the Carmine fairies, who would eventually give their allegiance to the Naksor King, who ruled the land of Falsettosoon before being consumed by the great Jigsaw plague, eventually reemerging as the Genky fairies, who were a combination of the original two factions, but who now only answer to Queen Xafulfa.”
Like I said. Ben doesn’t do that here. He tells us only what we need to know about the world and then keeps things moving so we can focus on the characters and the story. ALWAYS follow this rule when you write a fantasy movie. Know your world inside out, but don’t tell every single detail about it.
The thing is, the few times Ben does get into detail, it’s pretty cool. Like when Atlas whips out some strange bio-duo-loaded steam gun that shoots huge bullets. Except when we move in close, we see that these are not bullets at all, but rather fairies, who then burrow into their target’s skin, and suck the life out of them from the inside. Fairy bullets? Okay, I admit, haven’t seen that in a script before.
On the problem side, though, are a few things. Starting with the dialogue. It’s either too plain or too “summer action movie’ish,” and the reason it stands out is because everything else is so imaginative. For example, when Willa asks Atlas about a witch they have to see, Atlas replies, “More bitch than witch. It’s too risky. And there’s a price. No. We’ll find another way.” I don’t know. It’s not bad. It just never feels like people are *really* communicating with each other. Rather, they’re just shooting movie lines back and forth.
I also thought Atlas’ motivation was kind of wishy-washy for the majority of the story. He risks life and limb (literally death at every corner) because he’s “curious” about why the baddies are after this girl? Later on it starts to make more sense when he realizes that the world he’s protecting is in danger. But at first his obsession with protecting her at all costs didn’t have merit.
Likewise, I wouldn’t have minded a little more urgency, a ticking time bomb of sorts. They are getting chased a lot, which keeps the pace upbeat, but for the longest time there was no looming problem, allowing a leisurely pace through some of the second act, such as when they had unlimited time to visit Black Annis the Witch.
Atlas is unique. It’s a procedural that happens inside a hybrid human/fairy world. And I have to admit, I hadn’t seen that before (still haven’t read Killing On Carnival Row – is that script the same thing?). Would I have liked the relationships to be better explored and the backstories a little less clichéd (My parents were murdered right in front of my eyes!)? Yeah, probably. But none of these things are so bad that they’re story killers. The main reason I can’t personally recommend Atlas is because I’m just not into this kind of thing. But I have a feeling that those of you, men and women, who like to dress up as slutty fairies on Halloween, will like this quite a bit. So if you’re in that camp, read it and tell me what you think.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be careful when you’re writing a “summer type” movie, that your characters aren’t all speaking in trailer lines. Those lines have their time in the sun, such as the climactic moment of a speech or during an action scene where your characters are in danger, but for all the lines in between, have your characters talk to each other like real people.
Genre: High School Comedy
Premise: A teenage friendship is tested when one of the friends informs the other that he’s gay.
About: Gay Dude was on the 2008 Black List. It subsequently disappeared into the Hollywood ether before popping up as one of the projects on Lionsgate’s new “microbudget initiative,” a new production initiative stemming from the success of movies like Paranormal Activity. The group of movies will be shot for around 2 million dollars. The writer of Gay Dude, Alan Yang, has been quite successful since Gay Dude got him noticed. He’s worked on Parks & Recreation, sold a bromance pitch to Summit called “We Love You,” sold a spec “White Dad,” to Sony. He also has a script called “Jackpot” set up at Fox about a group of high school friends who win the lottery.
Writer: Alan Yang
Details: 108 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).
Here’s the shitty reality about readers. They don’t always give you a fair shot. It just happens that sometimes your script hits a reader at the wrong time. They’ve read five terrible scripts in a row and are assuming yours will be the sixth. It’s been a bad day. It’s been a bad week. They just got dumped. Their boss is an asshole who deluges them with the worst of the worst screenplays to cover. Sometimes a reader is just ready to hate your script. And it’s unfair and it sucks but life is unfair and sucks so…that’s reality baby.
Gay Dude is a perfect example of that. I remember reading it during a period where I was reading seven scripts a day (due to a contest) and I’d just read four really terrible comedies whose collective awfulness had actually managed to destroy humor for 47 minutes in the world. So within fifteen pages of the sophomoric humor of Gay Dude, I had already hit “skim-mode.” (this is the dreaded mode readers get into when they’ve given up on your script).
This is the real reason I preach all this advice about keeping your writing concise, being clear with your descriptions, not writing scenes that don’t push the story forward, not adding characters you don’t need. So that you don’t lose your reader in those crucial first 10 pages. Because many readers are looking to disqualify you as soon as possible so they can skip through your screenplay and be done with work an hour early. Again, it’s unfair, but a 9 to 1 bad script to good script ratio will do that to a person.
Long story short, I felt like Gay Dude needed another shot. I hadn’t read ANY scripts on the day that I picked it up this time, so I could be sure that I was giving it the best chance to succeed. I’m not going to lie and say it blew me away or anything. But it was a lot deeper than I originally gave it credit for.
Eager Michael and chubby Matty have been friends for as long as they can remember. Now in high school, they’re only a couple of months away from prom. And they’ve decided to make an American Pie 
Yeah, these two aren’t the brightest string lights at the prom dance but Michael seems to think they can do better. Except a little problem pops up before better can make his presence known. Matty informs Michael that he’s, like, gay dude.
Michael thinks he’s joking but he’s not joking. Matty likes the scrotum. Michael’s a little weirded out by this. This is, remember, a person he’s been best friends with since he was two. So he retreats into “what the hell is going on” mode before finally strapping on his support cap and refocusing on their goal – to get laid before prom. It’s just that now half of their search will include…men.
The problem is Michael becomes TOO supportive, forcing Matty to visit places like the only gay bar in town, which consists of a bunch of old dirty gay guys. Since Michael figures “gay is gay,” he assumes it’s what Matty wants. But Michael’s off-target assessment begins to grate on Matty, who eventually finds a guy his own way, and that guy becomes, well, sort of a replacement Michael.
The lack of communication feeds the downward spiral of their friendship until there’s no friendship left, leaving both friends to wonder how those two words could have changed so much.
Gay Dude made a couple of really good choices that elevated it above normal teenage script fare. The dialogue was good and Yang actually explored the friendship on a real level. Let’s start with the dialogue. The back and forth between these two was organic, witty, and popped off the page. We’d get exchanges like this one, where Michael talks about his prudish girlfriend, “It was like a sexual brick wall with Ava. The last couple of dates we were moving so slowly that we were actually going backwards. Three dates from now we would’ve been bowing to each other and speaking in formal, turn-of-the century English.” “Good morrow to you, sir.” “Good day to you, madam. Shall we wait another fifteen years to commence the fucking?”
Or this exchange, where Michael tries to find out when Matty knew he was gay. “When did you first realize this? Like, is this a recent development?” “Fuck no. Remember that guy, like when we were like seven, he used to come around the school and we would slip him half our sandwiches through the chain link fence?” “That guy was a homeless guy.” “Yeah, well, I sort of had a crush on him.” There’s a lot of fun back and forth like this throughout the script.
But what really sets Gay Dude apart is that it actually explores its characters (and their relationship) on a real level. And this is where so many amateur comedy screenplays fail. They think it’s about packing as many jokes as they can inside 100 pages. Laughs will only get you so far. Sooner or later, you need to connect with the audience. And Gay Dude isn’t afraid to tackle those confusing and frustrating feelings that come with finding out your best friend is gay at a time in your life when you’re not emotionally capable of dealing with it. Late in the script, it’s clear that if the two just sat down and talked, they’d get past this. But they don’t know how to do that. So instead they lash out each other (Michael tells Matty’s homophobic father that he’s gay) and everything gets a lot worse before it gets better.
The problem Gay Dude runs into is that it does feel a little one-note. There isn’t enough variety in here to last an entire film. I felt like the characters were having the same conversations (“It’s not easy to find out you’re gay!”) over and over again. In addition, there wasn’t enough variety in the set pieces. For example, we go to a gay bar. And then after that doesn’t work, we go to a gay rave. It’s important, especially with a concept like this which has the potential to be “one-note,” that you really try to differentiate your set pieces.
There’s also a story thread where Michael starts suspecting Matty is faking being gay that doesn’t go anywhere and actually ends up confusing the story as opposed to helping it (if he isn’t gay, why does this story matter?). It’s not a huge deal, but again, I think this stemmed from the fact that the story was one-note, and SOME sort of complexity needed to be added. I just didn’t think it was the right complexity.
Anyway, I do think Gay Dude is worth the read. It digs deeper than most comedies, which in turn makes us care about the characters, which should be priority number 1 in any genre you write. By no means perfect but a breezy 90 minutes nonetheless.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Story over shenanigans people. If you’re trying to decide between a scene in your comedy where you’re adding yet ANOTHER silly situation, or getting into the meat of your characters issues, pick the issues. Strive for a balance overall, but don’t be afraid to get into your characters real problems. Remember, we’ll laugh a lot more if we actually care about these people. Gay Dude proves that.
Genre: Drama /Horror
Premise: After his wife goes missing, a man heads to the darkest reaches of Transylvania to find her.
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: Lee Matthias
Details: 107 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).
What if your wife got kidnapped? And what if you found out the man who took her was the most notorious blood-sucking vampire in history? How far would you go to try and get her back? Those are the questions posed in the mysteriously titled, “The Sleep Of Reason,” the first amateur script I’ve read in forever that I believe is worthy of your time. And a big reason for that is, I’ve never seen a “Dracula” story taken this seriously before. This is one part Dracula, seven parts character study. That’s what makes The Sleep Of Reason so unique. It doesn’t rest on the laurels of its famous character. It’s more about the man who must overcome him.
Sleep of Reason didn’t start off well for me. There’s a big difference between complex openings and confusing openings. Complex openings create interesting questions the reader wants answers to. Confusing openings leave readers frustrated and trying to keep up. These openings are usually the result of a writer trying to cram too much into their setup. Because they’re so familiar with the elements in their story, they wrongly assume you’re familiar with them too.
We start off Reason on a boat (for seemingly no reason), then jump to an insane asylum, then jump to a man in that asylum interviewing a crazy person, then jump to that interviewer’s predecessor at the asylum from a few years back, who then helps us jump back 35 years prior to understand why this man went crazy. It was just so many elements coming at us so fast and in such a disjointed fashion, I had to reread it a couple of times to understand what was going on. You never never never want your reader to have to go BACKWARDS to check something in a script. It takes them out of the story (literally) and screws up the rhythm of the read.
Luckily, once we move out of the present day storyline, things pick up considerably. Renfield (our crazy character and hero) is the son of a wealthy entrepreneur on a trip to America to explore some business opportunities, when he meets and falls in love with Elsbeth, a poor but beautiful young woman.
Unfortunately, because Elsbeth is a woman of simple means, Renfield’s father doesn’t approve of their union, cutting the two off from the family. This forces Renfield to pursue a career on his own, and their first option is a contact he knows in the furthest reaches of Eastern Europe. It is there, in a small town, that Renfield leaves his hotel for just a moment, before coming back and finding his wife gone. Her disappearance is particularly upsetting because…it’s impossible. He was outside the hotel for just a few minutes and never saw her leave. It’s as if she just…vaporized.
Naturally, Renfield becomes consumed with finding his wife, and after experiencing many roads that lead nowhere, he finally gets a clue about a mysterious resident who lives up in the mountains in a castle. Against the advice of the townspeople, he heads up to that castle, and finds it occupied by a curious group of people who welcome him with open arms.
After a couple of nights of wandering through the cavernous castle walls, Renfield befriends the irresistibly sexy Elizabeth, who informs Renfield that his wife is here in the castle. There’s a problem though. Vlad, the owner of the mansion, has become enamored with her. Soonafter we realize that Elizabeth is just as heartbroken about the chain of events as Renfield, as it used to be her who was the apple of Vlad’s eye.
The two must work together, then, to create a mutually desirable outcome. But it won’t be easy. When Vlad finds out what they’re up to, he plots to make things very difficult for Renfield.
After getting through that tough opening, I realized something quickly. Lee was a really good writer. I can’t remember the last time I came upon an amateur writer who had such command of language and story. And it gave me an immense amount of confidence in the script. I immediately felt like I was in good hands.
Indeed I was rewarded when Renfield got to the castle as that’s when everything really began to pick up. The conflict Lee creates and the clashing motivations of all the characters make for some really great tension. You have Renfield, who wants to get his wife back. You have Elizabeth, who wants Vlad back. You have Vlad, who wants to keep Elsbeth. And you have Elsbeth, who wants Renfield, but is too deep under Vlad’s spell to do anything about it. Complicating things even more is the vampire angle. Even if Renfield is able to get his wife back, how does he get around the fact that she’s now a vampire?
I also loved the tone here, and Lee achieves this quite cleverly. In order to protect himself from all of the vampires in the castle, Renfield keeps with him a special case of garlic-laced brandy. He must keep drinking the brandy to keep the garlic in his blood. The side effect of this, however, is that Renfield is always slightly drunk, which gives his actions and his experiences a dream-like quality, and puts into question everything he’s doing. Is he really here? Is this really going on? Are these people really who he believes them to be? Does he want his wife so badly that he’s merely creating this story in his head? It felt a lot like Black Swan 
That’s not to say The Sleep Of Reason didn’t have some hiccups. I wasn’t entirely clear on why Vlad didn’t just kill Renfield and get it over with. Possibly establishing that Elsbeth would’ve never forgiven Vlad if he’d done such a thing would’ve helped.
Also, the pace is a little slow. I’m afraid some readers are going to be like, “Let’s get on with it already!” And I guess I’d understand that argument.
But the reason I think the slow pace works here where it didn’t work in, say, Tripoli, is because Reason has something Tripoli did not: Personal stakes for its protagonist. At stake here is Renfield’s wife – the woman he loves more than anything. So even though it takes awhile to get to things, we’re willing to wait because the goal is so strong.
The Sleep of Reason is a thousand times better than most Amateur scripts I read. The attention to detail alone proves how much Lee cares about this story and how much he respects the craft. It’s slow-going in places and the writing is a little thick at times, but there’s enough conflict and a strong enough character goal driving the story, that it all works out. Granted I’m not a Dracula fan, but this is the best Dracula story I’ve read easily.
Updated Script Link (with changes): The Sleep Of Reason
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the mistakes I see intermediate to even advanced writers make is trying to cram too many elements into the opening of their scripts (voice overs and flashbacks and jumping back and forth between unrelated scenes). I think these writers are simply trying to create complex multi-faceted openings. But they forget that the reader is entering their world for the first time and needs to be oriented before they can handle all the craziness. You can’t throw me into the middle of the world Crickett Championships if I don’t know the rules to the sport. So just take a step back when you’re writing that opening and say, “Am I trying to do too much here? Am I asking too much of the reader?” Because if you lose your reader within those first ten pages, your screenplay is screwed.
Genre: Drama
Premise: A young janitor at MIT solves an impossible math equation, which leads to a unique relationship with a reclusive psychologist.
About: Good Will Hunting was originally purchased by Rob Reiner at Castle Rock for 675,000 dollars. The script at that time was a straight thriller about a math genius recruited by the government. Reiner told Damon and Affleck to cut out the thriller aspect, however, and focus on the character development. The rewrites went well, but eventually the project jumped ship to Miramax (spearheaded by Kevin Smith, which is how he got producer credit on the film). After demanding the usual suspects for the lead roles (DiCaprio and Pitt) and not getting them, Miramax begrudgingly allowed Damon and Affleck to play the leads, which would end up launching their careers. The script went on to win the best original screenplay Oscar in 1997. There was a lot of controversy behind that win, however, as many claimed William Goldman rewrote the script. Goldman repeatedly denied these claims though and told the screenwriting world they were simply jealous that a couple of good-looking kids could write a great screenplay. For an article about dialogue in GWH, go the the writer’s store.
Writers: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
When Good Will Hunting 
But having watched the movie a number of times since, and maybe growing up a little as well, I’ve realized just how complicated and well-written this screenplay is. Good Will Hunting is a multi-faceted multi-character study, which places its chassis around an engine that’s never officially turned on. It’s overly melodramatic in places. The backstories are a mite cliché (oh, daddy was abusive!). And yet it’s all powerfully affecting. It works in a way that so many other character studies (Smart People
As I’ve stated many times before, most of the best stories start with a character who wants something badly. That thing they want? It’s called a goal. And their pursuit of that goal is what drives the story forward. Because there’s uncertainty in whether they’ll achieve that goal or not, we want to stick around to find out what happens. That formula right there is the core of any good drama.
However, every once in awhile, a movie is based around a character without a goal. In these cases, the character is known as “passive.” They’re passive because they’re not “actively” trying to obtain a goal. Movies based around these characters can still work (The Graduate
However, one of the ways to make movies with passive heroes work, is to give the goal that drives the story to someone else. In almost all cases, that secondary choice would be the villain. So in Home Alone
To recap, we have giving your main character the story goal or giving your main villain the story goal. But if neither of these two has a goal? Now you’re stepping into dangerous territory. Because very few movies work without the two most important people in the movie driving the story. I mean, if anyone besides these two is driving the story, why aren’t they the main character??
Yet this is what Good Will Hunting does. The goal in Good Will Hunting is Professor Lambeau’s. He’s trying to help Will realize his full potential. But it doesn’t stop there. Instead of Professor Lambeau – the person with the actual goal – being the one to guide Will to his objective, he brings in ANOTHER CHARACTER – a psychologist friend – to do the job for him. This means, by association, Sean (Robin William’s character), is the character responsible for the main goal that drives the story, a goal he personally (at least initially) could care less about.
If we were to go back to the conception of this idea, I think every one of us would’ve been more comfortable making the person who cares so much about Will becoming a math genius (Professor Lambeau) being the one to “help” him. Adding a buffer character between him and Will lowers the stakes, since Sean doesn’t have as much on the line as Lambeau. It would be like Daniel coming to Mr. Miagi in The Karate Kid and Mr. Miagi saying. “I want you to be a great Karate master. Let me introduce you to my friend, Cousin Taki. He will teach you.”
So, let’s recap again. Our main character has no goal. There’s no villain so the villain has no goal. A third person has the goal but pawns it off to someone else. And to make things as tough as they can possibly be on our writers, the goal itself is vague. They’re helping Will with his Math so he can…help the world? Sheesh, talk about a tough sell.
So then, why does Good Will Hunting still work?
Well, it starts with something not a lot of people who write character work think about – a hook. Will is a genius. He can solve impossible math equations, equations that would give Einstein fits, in a matter of seconds. So right away, you have something unique that intrigues an audience. But the writers go one step further. Will is a janitor at MIT. They’ve harnessed the power of an ironic character. A janitor at MIT who’s smarter than all the students? Who doesn’t want to go see a movie about that?
What the hook also does is it makes us like Will. Remember, audiences love characters who are talented at something. It’s no different than real life. We love people who are great at something. We look up to them. Admire them. Wish we could be like them. And so even though Will beats the shit out of people for fun (although it’s important to remember that the person he beats up is the kid who bullied him in kindergarten), we really like the guy.
Affleck and Damon then introduce the secret engine that’s driving the story. You didn’t know about the secret engine rule did you? Well pay attention, cause this is the key to why this story works. Are you ready? WILL HUNTING DOES NOT WANT TO DO ANYTHING WITH HIS TALENT. And that, my friends, is the conflict that’s driving the story.
Our character wants to be one way. **But we want him to be another way.** Conflict. We, just like Lambeau and Sean, want Will to realize his potential. We want him to realize what he can do for the world. And that’s why those therapy sessions between Sean and Will work so well. Because there’s so much at stake. If Will doesn’t open up, if he doesn’t listen to what Sean has to say, he’s going to be mopping floors and banging bricks for the rest of his life. And we can’t have that. It’s a really weird driving mechanism for a story. Because normally character goals or mysteries drive a story. In this case, it’s our desire to see this character reach his potential.
There are some other risks Affleck and Damon took in Good Will Hunting as well. Usually, in a drama like this, you don’t want to have any more than 3 central relationships for the main character to resolve. And that’s because if you spread yourself too thin, you won’t have enough time to explore those relationships on a meaningful level. So in Rocky, we have the relationship with Adrian, with Paulie, and with Mick. Here in Good Will Hunting, we have five. Will’s relationship with Chuckie (Affleck), with his group of friends, with Professor Lambeau, with Sean, and with Skylar. That’s a lot of jumping back and forth and by no means easy to juggle. Now on top of this – as if these guys weren’t making things difficult enough for themselves – we also explore Sean and Lambeau’s relationship AWAY from Will. This is a risky move because it isn’t required. They could’ve nixed it and kept the story leaner and more focused. But they did it and it paid off, because it made us understand these characters in a way we couldn’t have understood them if we had only seen them around Will.
Good Will Hunting also seems to violate the melodrama rule. Which is you don’t want to stack a bunch of really intense (yelling, crying) scenes back to back as the melodrama will overwhelm the audience and cancel itself out. Yet at the end of Good Will Hunting, we get, I believe, 5 back to back scenes with our characters breaking down, crying, or screaming. In every other instance I’ve seen this attempted, it’s failed miserably, as the audience just gets drama’d out. Yet in Good Will Hunting, it works. And it works because the characters are so unbelievably crafted. Each one of them feels like a real person so we believe that they’d really be crying and yelling at each other.
And the touches here. The touches are amazing. Making sure to keep enough humor in the script to balance out all the melodrama. Stuff like Professor Lambeau’s study aid, a character who could’ve been forgettable but Damon and Affleck gave him a jealousy storyline. The script strives to create those all important “memorable moments” (“How you like them Apples” and Chuckie’s “retainer” interview). And the dialogue. Jesus Christ the dialogue in this script is tremendous. I mean they must’ve written those scenes between Will and Sean a thousand times because none of it is cliché. Not a lick of it. They just kept pounding it out and pounding it out and pounding it out until it felt unique and infinitely organic to this world. I can’t say enough about this script. I think it’s genius. And it’s on Neflix Streaming for free. So what the hell are you waiting for?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[x] genius
What I learned: Good Will Hunting is a testament to the power of rewriting. It’s well documented that they rewrote the shit out of this thing. Probably over a hundred drafts. And when you keep going back and holding every scene up to the spotlight and saying, “Is this as good as it can possibly be?” and not stopping until the answer is yes, that’s the attitude that leads to great scripts. Just remember though. These guys had some really smart people giving them notes (Rob Reiner, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Smith, Robin Williams). Getting fresh eyes on the script after every rewrite helps you identify problems in your script that aren’t working which is the key to making it better.
First of all, shame on all you people who e-mailed me months ago telling me Source Code screenings had gone terribly and the movie was bad enough to go straight to video and you never understood why I loved the script in the first place . The movie is playing like gangbusters for critics made all the more shocking by the fact that it’s a sci-fi film!
I’m just kidding of course. Everybody has their own opinions and they’re all valid. But I’m excited as hell that a great script has transferred over to the big screen, because sometimes this shit gets screwed up. And it goes to show you that an original idea stemming from a SPEC SALE can turn into a good movie. So keep writing! Next Thursday, I’m going to chronicle the changes made from that initial draft to what ended up onscreen and discuss how those changes helped or hurt the story. So go see the film this weekend and support the Source.
