A quick note to drop by this Wednesday as I’ll be posting a review for the first script to break into my Top 10 in over a year!
Genre: Crime/Caper/Comedy
Premise: An art curator enlists the services of a Texas chicken farmer to con a wealthy collector into buying a phony Monet painting.
About: They’ve been trying to get this Gambit remake going forever. The original starred Michael Caine, and Joel and Ethan Coen’s draft of the script has been kicking around for 7 years now. They finally got financing, throwing newly minted best actor winner Colin Firth into the lead role, as well as bringing Cameron Diaz in to play the southern belle. The film is being directed by Michael Hoffman, who’s been seen by many as a talented director waiting to break out (his films include the underrated “The Emperor’s Club” and the more recent “The Last Station.”). As you’ll read a little more about in a link I provide for Wednesday’s interview, one of the practices the Coens’ use is to write their characters into a corner and leave it up to the other brother to figure out how to get them out.
Writers: Joel & Ethan Coen
Details: 129 pages – 2004 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).
Question. Can the Coens be stopped!? Long time readers know I’m not exactly public supporter numero uno for the siblings. But I will say this. Outside of maybe Tarantino, there are no other writer/filmmakers who take more chances than these two and still manage to bring in big box office. We talked about breaking the rules the other day and really, if you’re a supporter of that mantra, these guys should be your deity. Last week I was watching Fargo, my favorite of the Coen films, and there’s this scene near the end where Margie has a date with an old Asian friend of hers that has absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE. That’s, like, rule number 1 in screenwriting. Don’t include a scene that doesn’t push the story forward. Yet the scene works. It’s hilarious. You don’t think twice about it. And I couldn’t tell you why. Go figure.
Gambit starts off by introducing us to art curator Harry Deane, who’s playing the British version of Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy in Fargo), a desperate morally skewed man obsessed with money.
He’s enlisted his best friend and compatriot, a stalwart older gentleman known as “The Major,” to accompany him to Alpine, Texas to locate the owner of an extremely rare Monet painting known as “Haystacks Dusk,” which went missing half a century ago. The reason this painting is so important is that Deane’s employer, the obscenely rich English magazine magnet, Lord Shabandar, has the companion piece to Haystacks Dusk, Haystacks Dawn. Obtaining the long-missing Haystacks Dusk would complete the pair, and therefore he’ll be willing to pay a mint for it.
How this painting ended up in an Alpine, Texas trailer is another story. Through meticulous research and a few lucky breaks, Deane was able to trace the origins of the painting back to the trailer owner’s great grandfather. The current owner of said trailer, chicken herder and minimum wage earner PJ Puznowski, isn’t even aware that the painting’s a Monet.
Oh, there’s one thing I’m forgetting to tell you. This is all a lie. Deane has fabricated the lineage and the connection and, of course, the painting itself. He’s going to Texas to find a pretend PJ Puznowski, someone to play the part, who will meet Shabandar, pretend to be the owner of the Monet, sell it to him for 10 million dollars, of which Harry will take all of and give PJ 50 grand for her help.
Perfect plan right?
Of course not. Once PJ comes to England and meets Shabandar, the two hit it off, and soon they’re spending time at restaurants and balls, with Deane being pushed further and further out of the picture (so to speak) with each successive date. PJ’s rascally straight-forward personality delights the more buttoned up Shabandar, and before she knows it, she’s feeling bad about deceiving him. Maybe she won’t sell him this fake painting after all.
In the meantime, Deane, who’s put every last penny of his into this scam, is being nickel and dimed by PJ’s expensive lodging tastes, someone who extorts him once he leans about the scam, and is eventually fired by Shabandar for, not surprisingly, a lack of trustworthiness. Deane must find a way against all ways to reign PJ in, keep her on track, and somehow pull this all off. Can it be done?
First thing you gotta talk about whenever you read a Coen Brother’s script is the complete disregard for standard formatting. These guys don’t use Courier when they write. They use Times New Roman. Why would this matter? Well, the truth is, Times New Roman is much easier to read than Courier. So in reality, it would make more sense if we all used it. But we can’t, because Times New Roman takes up less space, giving an incorrect page count, screwing up the precious 1 page of script = 1 minute of screentime rule. This script is 129 pages. It’s probably closer to 140 or 145 if it were in Courier. Unless you’ve had a few Oscar wins under your belt, producers don’t like when you fudge the page count, so this is not advised.
Next, the guys don’t use sluglines. Instead, they use “faux lines,” mini slugs without all the technical jibber-jabber. This is another one of those things that actually makes more sense. It’s a lot easier to read, “A GAS STATION” than “INT. GAS STATION – NIGHT.” And you would think that with scripts becoming more reader-friendly over the years, that this practice might have caught on, but the Coens have been doing it forever, and it still hasn’t changed, so I guess it’s not going to anytime soon.
On the story side of things, there’s a lot of good here. First of all, I’ve been thinking a lot about “voice.” Personally, I’m sick of when people say this or that writer has a distinct “voice.” I guess what annoys me is that it’s too broad, and kind of lets the person get away with saying they liked something without being able to verbalize why they liked it. “Oh I LOVED that script.” “Really? Why?” “Because of the writer’s voice. Such a unique voice.” “What else? Anything specific?” “Oh, just the voice. The voice was so uniquely theirs.” “What about the characters?’ “Oh the characters. They all had such an original voice.”
Well, I think I have a better understanding of voice after this script. “Voice” encompasses a script that nobody in the world could’ve written outside of that writer (or writers). Yes, I know this is a remake, but when you read this script, you just know that nobody else in the world could’ve written this story the way the Coen Brothers did.
Look at how the characters speak for instance. First, you have this line from a British Lord: “I knew a Koznowski once, charming man, no relation I suppose, Baron Koznowski, Janusz, related to the emperor Franz Josef on one side, also quite the equestrian, man had horseblood in his veins. Mixed Cossack descent, stuck to a horse like a burr on a dog’s arse. Assassinated in the early nineties, sadly enough. By the Ossetians, the swine…This was, please.” Contrast that with this line from Southern belle PJ: “Well hey-ho there, friend, I wouldn’t recommend it. Yeah your nose’ll roll with the punches but Merle snores like a sawmill without that reinforced septum. Course I snore too on account of the sleep apnea, or maybe that’s just Mama puttin’ me on since in other respects I’m dainty.”
I mean, who the hell is able to pull off two distinctly different dialects like that in a single screenplay!?? You have to understand, I read a couple dozen scripts a month where the disparity in the character’s dialogue amounts to, “Hey essay, I’m going to the supermarket” and “Sounds good bro. Pick me up some cheese.” I could be wrong and this dialogue is plucked right out of the original, but the Coens past work tells me that they’re responsible for this incredible ability to write unique characters each with unique ways of speaking.
Structurally speaking, the script is good. The Coens follow a very simple formula in most of their movies. They put money in the middle of a room (the goal) and watch all of their characters try to get it (strong motivation). In this case, the money is the painting (or at least it pretends to be), and I actually liked that better, because money is so…generic. A painting, on the other hand, is romantic, intriguing, unique. And no, I don’ think it’s a coincidence that the Coens simply swapped out the last letter of money and replaced it with a “t.” This is what they do. Throw money out there and see what characters will do to get it.
My one problem with Gambit was that it started out so clever, and we’re led to believe this will continue, with double crosses, neat twists, and a reversal or two. But the second half of this script feels more like a Pink Panther film, with Deane turning into a stooge, scaling buildings naked and hiding behind curtains in Shabadar’s quarters before he and PJ get it on. I don’t know, I guess the humor devolved into juvenile tomfoolery, and that’s too bad, cause I really liked the first half. Luckily, there’s enough good stuff here to still recommend it. Not a bad script at all.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Stop writing boring characters! I implore you to rent 5 Coen Brothers films this weekend and study how different and unique all the characters are. I know that we don’t all write in this kooky exaggerated reality that the Coens have perfected, where every character is a little off his rocker. But you can learn so much from how different they make each of their characters. Throwing “essay” or “bro” into a character’s dialogue is not enough to make them stand out.
Genre: Comedy
Premise: After receiving panicked messages from a girl he’s been Facebook-stalking, a meek agoraphobe wrangles together his closest internet friends and journeys into the real world 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.
Writers: Clint & Donnie Clark
Details: 110 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).
I Think My Facebook Friend Is Dead is one of those titles that pops out at you, that makes you think, regardless of your interest in comedy, “That sounds like it could be good.” I always say, when writing comedies, if you can convey exactly what your movie is about in your title, you’re in good shape. And it’s hard not to envision this movie after reading the title.
Now it’s been awhile since I really liked a comedy, since I actually got that charge you get when you’re reading something great. The last one may have been Crazy, Stupid, Love, and I don’t know how long ago that was but it certainly wasn’t yesterday. A big reason for the low quality in comedies is that not enough writers take them seriously. They focus on the gags, on the set pieces, and forget to build interesting likable characters that we want to be around. The comedy almost becomes like the special fx of a blockbuster, where the effects become the focus, and the story and characters are an afterthought. Well, suffice it to say, I was hoping Facebook Friend would break that trend. It had a great title, a solid premise, and sounded fun. So, did I like Facebook Friend?
25 year old agoraphobe Owen Dietz spends every spare moment on the internet. He even has a job as a web designer, allowing him to never leave the house (the life!). It only makes sense, then, that he’s fallen in love with Jessica Henessy, his sweet and cute Farmville neighbor, whose field he plows every day. The only thing keeping them apart is Jessica’s mysterious boyfriend, a boyfriend who on this day, she breaks up with. Which means that FINALLY, Owen can be together with the love of his life!
However, later that day, Jessica pops up on IM, scream-writing that someone’s coming, and that she’s in grave danger. Before Owen can do anything, she signs off. He sits there in silence, coming to terms with the reality. Someone’s attacked Jessica. A call to arms is needed. One that will require him to, gulp, actually go outside, and like, interact with the real world. Owen can’t do this alone so he calls his internet best friend, Rishi Rao, the only person on the planet more addicted to computers than he is, and his manic blogger buddy Jeff Pants, who makes Dwight Shrute
The four burn rubber to Ohio, where Owen has mapped out Jessica’s most frequently visited spots via her Foursquare footprints. The first of these locations is an internet café, the second a recording studio, and the third, a raucous nightclub where Youtube internet celebrities such as Techno Viking hang out.
Things get complicated when they realize Jessica’s associated with some sketchy players, most notably her on-again off-again fiance, D’Mario. D’Mario met Jessica when she was an aspiring singer and proceeded to exploit and take advantage of her, leading to a marriage proposal that Jessica probably felt forced to say yes to. When she called the wedding off, D’Mario went apeshit, and that’s where we find ourselves now, with D’Mario unwilling to let Jessica leave him.
Owen and his rag-tag group of buddies, all of whom are having a hell of a time adapting to the real world, will not only have to find Jessica, but learn to overcome their dependency on a medium that’s shut them off from real life. Regardless of what happens, this experience will surely change them forever.
Okay, so first the good. I love the setup here. I love the idea of a technology dependent agoraphobe being forced into the real world – his biggest fear. You can already imagine the hundreds of comedic possibilities with that setup. The structure here is solid as well. We have a clear goal (find and save Jessica). The stakes are high (the life of Jessica). We have plenty of urgency (they’re running out of time). And the plot is focused (due to the foursquare locations, we always know where we are in the journey).
The Clarks have also put a lot of effort into exploiting their premise, which is essential with any comedy. We cut away to scenes in the Farmville universe to establish Owen and Jessica’s relationship. Our characters have trouble operating in the real world (when given a real map, the characters try to “pinch-zoom” it a la an iphone). And locations like the Bumblebee Internet Café exploit this theme of real world vs. “the internet world.”
Finally, in one of the most critical components to making a comedy work, the main character is strong and likable, an underdog character whom we want to see succeed.
So everything here is set up for success. Everything is in place for a gangbusters script. Why then, doesn’t Facebook Friend deliver?
The other day we were talking about choices and making sure every choice was interesting and right for your story. I’m aware that this comes down to my opinion and my opinion only, but I thought many of the choices here were uninspired, starting with the set-pieces. In the cases of the Bumblebee Café, Dreamz, and finally The Library, nothing really funny or memorable happens. They just didn’t seem – I don’t know – inspired. With the exception of Dreamz, it felt like any one of these places could’ve been anywhere (a hardware store, a high school gym, a flower shop), because the characters would simply show up, talk to some people, and leave. The locations were functional. But they weren’t funny. And that sucked a lot of life out of the screenplay.
That problem may have stemmed from a geography issue. I realized that while reading Facebook Friend, I never had a sense of where they were or where anything was in proximity to anything else. In The Hangover
But I think the real problem here – at least for me – is that Jessica and D’Mario don’t feel right as story choices. And I’m not sure why. My first thought was that they were too broad. They didn’t feel grounded enough. But then The Hangover has a naked Chinese guy leaping out of a car trunk and attacking our main characters. That’s about as broad as you can get. So I don’t know. But as Jessica’s sketchy past and sketchy association with D’Mario began to reveal itself, I found myself less and less interested in Owen finding and saving her. I don’t have some magical screenplay adjustment to fix that. It just felt like the wrong way to go.
Another problem Facebook Friend runs into is it feels sloppy. Despite the structure being laid out so nicely, there are too many moments that felt random and unnecessary. For example, while I appreciated the attempts to add depth to the characters, stuff like Rishi’s backstory with his ex-girlfriend only seemed to get in the way of the story, instead of enhance it. Stopping the script to go back and see him experience an embarrassing situation with his ex wasn’t necessary. This script needs to be streamlined, kept on track, simplified. Each page was packed with so much going on that I kind of got exhausted.
And probably my least favorite part of the script was Jeff Pants. I understand that this is a broad comedy, but he was just so random and out there, he ruined almost every scene he was in for me. There’s a moment in particular, where he reveals that he’s gay, that embodied why I had such a hard time with his character. There wasn’t a single occasion, either before that admission or after, that would indicate that Jeff Pants was gay. And that made me believe it was added solely for shock value. If you’re adding things for a laugh at the expense of your characters, those characters cease to be real in the eyes of the reader. Stuff like a character’s sexual preference, even in a broad comedy, need to stem from an organic place.
Having said all that, Facebook Friend is a script I want to try and figure out, that I want to try and fix. I feel with the right execution, it could be really good. But as I sit here, I’m having a hard time figuring out how I would recommend doing that. I know I’d axe Jeff Pants. I’d definitely get rid of the whole D’Mario thing as well. I don’t think that works. I’d personally like Jessica to be more normal, more innocent. There’s something about her shady association with this sketchy underworld that makes me not want Owen to be with her.
Unfortunately, I think the main problem is one that would require a complete overhaul of the story, and that’s rethinking their destination. A seedy city in Ohio feels…I don’t’ know…like it doesn’t carry the weight required to live up to this high concept premise. Should their destination be more internet related? Maybe a big tech CEO in Silicon Valley is holding Jessica hostage? I really don’t know, but my instinct tells me it should be something different from what it is now. What do you guys think? Any ideas?
All in all, I like Clint and Donnie as writers. I think they have potential. They just need to reign their premise in and make better choices. Maybe there’s a producer who likes this idea and is willing to develop it with them. I think it might be worth it.
Script link: I Think My Facebook Friend Is Dead
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Facebook Friend suffered in part from trying to make every single second onscreen funny. It’s exhausting reading a script where every line is trying to make you laugh. Don’t be afraid to use 2-3 slower scenes to set up some bigger laughs later on. Watch how they did this in Meet The Parents
The word “rules” stirs up a lot of debate in the University of Screenwriting. Some believe there should be no rules when you write. Others believe rules are the lifeblood of a screenplay. I fall somewhere in between. You definitely need to know the rules. Whether you choose to use them, however, is up to you. The thing is, most great scripts break at least a couple of rules. Why? Because if you follow ALL the rules then your story will be predictable, average, and boring. You need to take those chances in order to stand out. The problem is when these deviations get celebrated and writers erroneously believe that that’s proof rules aren’t important (“Quentin Tarantino writes 10 page dialogue scenes
The Social Network
Rule Broken: Page Count 162 pages
Why It Didn’t Matter: 162 pages! I get mad at people who write 122 pages. Who in the world gets to write 40 more pages than THAT and still get a pass? Why Aaron Sorkin of course! The man who could write a script in comic sans on discarded wallpaper and still get away with it. Well, before you think about reinstating that 30 page subplot about your hero’s blind Nazi mistress who’s just come down with a bout of scurvy, let’s take a look at the content of this behemoth. Go ahead and open up The Social Network right now. What I’m betting you’ll find is dialogue. Lots of dialogue. I’d go as far as to say that The Social Network is 95% dialogue. That’s important for two reasons. One, dialogue reads a LOT faster than action, making a 162 page script fly by like it’s 110 pages (Fincher actually shot the draft word for word and it ended up being under 2 hours). And two, dialogue is this particular writer’s biggest strength. If the reason your script is too long is because you have a lot of dialogue and you’re a dialogue master, then it’s not going to read like a script that’s too long. Now does this mean you get to write a 160 page script if it’s all dialogue? Hell no. Learn to be great with dialogue, put a few hit shows on the air famous for their dialogue, get a dialogue driven-script near the top of the Black List, THEN maybe you can write that 160 pager. But I’d still stick with the good old 110 page rule. That’ll force you to learn one of the most important skills in screenwriting, cutting out the pieces of the story that don’t matter.
Titanic
Rule Broken: The inciting incident doesn’t happen until 2 hours into the story.
Why It Didn’t Matter: The inciting incident is the incident that throws your hero into peril, that forces him or her to go on their journey. It usually happens around 15 minutes into the story (In Shrek, it’s when his swamp is invaded). Some might say that the inciting incident in Titanic is Jack meeting Rose. Some might say it’s Rose meeting Jack. And you can probably make a good case for either of those. But to me, what really incites this story is when the ship hits the iceberg. And that doesn’t happen until a full 2 hours into the movie. That means we’re stuck watching two people diddle around a ship and fall in love for two hours! Doesn’t that sound boring to you? And yet it works. You want to know why? Because Titanic has one of the most unique and powerful story advantages in the history of cinema – a built in super-dose of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when we the audience know something about the characters and their situation before they do, preferably something that puts them in danger. Remember in Die Hard when McClane gets stuck up on the roof with Hanz, who pretends to be a hostage but WE KNOW he’s the villain? That scene is exciting because of the dramatic irony. *We* know McClane is in trouble. But he doesn’t. Well Titanic has the mother of all dramatic ironies. We know that the Titanic is going to sink, and our poor characters don’t. So we watch for 2 hours with baited breath, wondering how they’re going to handle it, what they’re going to do when it happens, and specifically what will happen to Jack, since he’s unrepresented in the modern day storyline. Cameron could’ve added a whole extra hour in front of the iceberg collision if he wanted to because he had the single biggest case of dramatic irony on his side during the story. I don’t know if there can ever be another movie with this advantage. But I do know that a solid dose of dramatic irony will allow you to push key story points back if need be.
Lost In Translation
Rule Broken: No character goal
Why It Didn’t Matter: Lost In Translation is a story that wanders. Which makes sense because it’s about a girl stuck in a city where she doesn’t understand the language or know anyone. So the fact that she doesn’t have a goal stems organically from the situation. But make no mistake, if you’d had Scarlett Johanson, voluptuous as she is, wandering around Tokyo and riding trains for 2 straight hours, we would’ve killed ourselves by minute 40. If you don’t have a goal, you need to create a dramatic question that will drive the story. That question almost always comes in the form of a romantic interest. Bring in another character and now your dramatic question is posed: “Will these two end up together?” Or “What will happen between these two?” But Coppola takes it a step further. Had the person our protagonist met been some suave-ish good-looking 20-something who’s also stuck in Tokyo for a few weeks, that would’ve been a boring question. Because we’d already know the answer (“Yes, of course they’ll end up together”). Instead, she introduces an offbeat, older, weird guy who’s about as opposite from her as they come. Now that question has some real meat to it, some real uncertainty. I still recommend giving your characters a goal AND adding a dramatic question (in the recently discussed spec, “Seeking A Friend At the End Of The World,” about two people who meet a few days before the earth is to be struck by an asteroid, the couple is trying to reach a certain location (goal) and we’re wondering if they’re going to end up together (question)). But if you can’t add that goal, like Lost In Translation, you better add an interesting question to the mix or else there’s no reason for us to watch.
Apollo 13
Rule Broken: Audience already knows how the story ends.
Why It Didn’t Matter: I don’t’ know if I’d call this a broken rule per se, but it is something that a lot of famous real-life stories have to deal with, and Apollo 13 was one of the more famous ones so it’s worth exploring. How do you make a disaster movie work when everybody who sees it knows that your main characters get out alive? If dramatic irony is the audience being ahead of the characters in knowing something bad is going to happen to them, isn’t this the opposite? Which would then create the opposite effect? “Oh, well we know they’re going to be okay, so who cares?” Writers Broyles Jr. and Reinert, under Ron Howard’s direction, did two things to combat this problem. First, they made sure you loved these characters more than anything. That was key. Once we love the characters, we’re going to care about any threatening situation they’re in. And second, they always kept the focus on THE HERE AND NOW. Apollo 13 hits its characters with one obstacle after another, each one bigger and with larger implications than the last, sometimes compounding these obstacles on top of each other (they need to get the navigation data while coming up with a way to conserve air). Their journey is so battered with obstacles that all we’re focusing on is the RIGHT NOW. They’re so focused on surviving that so are we. If they didn’t have all these things to do up there. Had the obstacles been less challenging or not as many, there’s a good chance we would’ve seen through the charade and said, “Hey, don’t these guys all live? Who gives a shit?”
Rush Hour
Rule Broken: Derivative story execution
Why It Didn’t Matter: Being derivative is one of those mistakes that 99.999% of scripts can’t overcome. If we’ve seen it before, we will not want to see it again. Yet Rush Hour has one of the most derivative stories you can imagine and still works. This script is 48 Hours
Big
Rule Broken: No urgency (no ticking time bomb)
Why It Didn’t Matter: On its surface, Big is one of those scripts that seems like it follows the Hollywood formula to a tee. Well, yeah, concept-wise, it does. But the next time Big is on, fire up some popcorn and pay attention to the plot. What you’ll see is that there’s no urgency to the story at all. There *is* a time frame (I believe it’s six weeks until the wish-machine shows up again) but Hanks isn’t in a hurry to accomplish anything in the story. Contrast this with another high-concept comedy
Star Wars
Rule Broken: Main character isn’t introduced until 15 minutes into the story.
Why It Didn’t Matter: These days, if you’re not introducing your main character in the very first scene, then you sure as hell better be introducing him in the second one. Anything beyond that, and it’s no soup for you. The hero is the person the audience identifies with. We want to meet him as soon as possible. So then how does one of the greatest movies in history introduce its main character fifteen minutes into the story and get away with it? The answer is simpler than you think. It doesn’t matter that it takes so long for our hero to arrive because AN EXCITING STORY IS HAPPENING IN THE MEANTIME. Characters with immediate wants are tracking down characters with harmful plans. People are being killed to retrieve information. There’s mystery. Excitement. High stakes. Why would we be thinking about our main character when so much story awesomeness is going on? Had we started with Darth Vader chilling out on his throne back on Coruscant casually inquiring if his cronies had located the Death Star plans yet… Had we cut to R2 and C3PO casually landing on Tantooine, in no rush to find Obi-Wan… then yeah, we probably would’ve been like, dude, where the fuck is the main character?? But the intensity of the story, the immediacy of everyone’s actions, the mystery behind why it was all happening, kept us engaged to the point where we just weren’t thinking about it.
And there you go. Seven movies. Seven broken rules. Seven reasons why those movies still worked. Remember, no rule is carved in stone. Any rule can be broken. But if you’re going to break it, know why you’re breaking it and make sure it’s for a good reason. Otherwise, you’re flying by the seat of your pants. I’m still waiting for the first great script that isn’t built on a foundation of solid storytelling. I don’t think that script is coming any time soon so best to stick with what’s worked for thousands of years.
Genre: Family/Fantasy
Premise: 13 year old aspiring inventor Andrew Henry begins to suspect that the world he lives in is not what it seems.
About: Didn’t research this until after I wrote the review, but it appears that Andrew Henry’s Meadow is a well-known children’s book, which would make this an adaptation, not a spec script, as I had originally thought. Although I don’t know as much about Adam as I do Zach Braff, I’ve read in several of Zach’s interviews that Adam is interested in writing children’s books, which would make this adaptation a logical choice. Zach Braff starred in the NBC sitcom, Scrubs
Writers: Adam and Zach Braff (based on the 1965 children’s book by Doris Burn)
Details: 126 pages – 2004 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).
Well, for reasons I won’t get into here, today was supposed to be the review of my first “impressive” script (possibly even Top 25!) that I’d read in a long time. The script was “Seeking A Friend At The End Of The World,” which I’m guaranteeing will end up top 10 in this year’s Black List. But a series of events have prevented this from happening so instead I’m going to review Zach Braff and his brother’s script, Andrew Henry’s Meadow. However, if you’ve read “Seeking a Friend” and want to comment on it in the comments section, feel free to.
I didn’t know anything about Andrew Henry’s Meadow but the title made it sound like a more fantastical version of Garden State (Meadow? Garden?), so I was down. I’ll be the first to admit that Garden State’s script lacked some punch, but the movie was different and definitely captured the frustration and uncertainty that we often experience at different points in our lives. I was in that kind of mood so it sounded like a nice fit.
Well, as I would quickly realize, this wasn’t that script at all. Andrew Henry’s Meadow reads like a mix between Meet The Robinsons
13 year old Andrew Henry lives in a Truman Show
An aspiring inventor, Andrew finds a secret room in his house that contains an old book which states that, gasp, there are no mutants! That there’s nothing evil or scary outside of the city! So off he goes to test this theory, and finds that, indeed, all there are are big beautiful meadows as far as the eye can see. He begins to build the Michael Jackson mansion of all treehouses in this meadow, and soon other outcast kids, like himself, join him to help.
Naturally, he learns that Omnimega has made all this stuff up to scare people (hey, just like leaders in the real world do!) so he and his outcast friends must find a way to expose them before it’s too late (the Omnimega president is transmitting content through TV waves that keeps the populace in a zombie state). The plan is to break into the Omnimega TV tower, seize the production floor, and transmit the truth to everyone out there.
Okay, so, I’m sure you’ve already identified several things wrong with this script just by reading my summary. Most notably, it reads like an amalgam of two writers’ favorite movies. We have scenes straight out of the The Truman Show, The Village, The Goonies. Although I’m forgetting which one, the whole “TV static in people’s eyes” thing has been done in several super hero movies before. We have The Running Man
But the problems with Meadow began before that. This is a laborious read. Open this up to any page and you will find skyscraper sized paragraph chunks that go on forever and ever. Over-description is an easy way to spot a new screenwriter, as they approach their scripts more like a novelist (since that’s where the bulk of their fiction reading has come from). You don’t need to tell us every little place your character walks, every little thing they see, every little way they react, every little crevice in their apartment. Only tell us what’s necessary for the story to continue. If you can’t describe an action beat in 3 lines or less, you’re probably writing too much description.
The direction of this story is all wonky as well. I understand that this is called “Andrew Henry’s Meadow
There’s a really good script that made the 2009 Black List called “Toy’s House,” where a high school kid builds a house in the forest and starts living there with his friends. That made sense because THAT WAS THE STORY – his building of that house and how it changed his life. In Andrew Henry’s Meadow, going to build this house feels like an unnecessary detour. Had they eliminated it, the story still would’ve made sense, which usually means it’s unnecessary.
Everything here takes too long to get to. It seems like we spend years before the inciting incident happens (he finds the book). It takes way too long for him to then get out of the city. I guess the “have fun in the meadow” stuff is supposed to be the second act, but since the second act is, by definition, the conflict stage of your story, it’s weird that this whole section is happy happy joy joy with no conflict whatsoever. This is followed by the “comes out of nowhere” Omnimega uses TV to hypnotize people subplot. Had that been set up earlier, it might have had a chance of working. Here it just…comes out of nowhere. And then the last act is so much like The Running Man that all we can think is, “Man, this is exactly like The Running Man.”
Now, it’s not all doom and gloom. Clearly, Zach Braff’s experience as an actor has taught him the importance of character, and while I didn’t fall in love with any of the characters in Meadow, I acknowledge that all of them were unique and interesting. We’ve seen the young shunned inventor protagonist before, but Andrew Henry’s underdog starry-eyed determined persona was easy to root for. Whereas in yesterday’s TV pilot, 17th Precinct, we only got the Cliff’s Notes version of each character, here, with Andrew, his parents, the girl he liked, his nerdy best friends, there was enough detail where the story could’ve centered around any one of them. And that’s not easy to do.
But the attention to character detail was the only thing that really worked for me. One of the most important things a script must accomplish is telling a story in a way that an audience hasn’t quite seen before. In other words, surprise us. If we can guess what’s coming around the corner every step of the way, if every plot development feels like, “Hmm, I’ve already seen this in another movie,” then the reader’s going to lose interest. And that’s how I felt reading Meadow.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In any script where you’re introducing a made-up world, there’s going to be more description than usual. However, there isn’t a more suicidal tactic in screenwriting than writing huge paragraphs. First of all, it depresses the reader. They know their reading time just went up by 50%. They hate sloshing through tons of extraneous detail to get to the important stuff. And sooner or later they just start skimming through those paragraphs anyway, causing them to miss key important details, which leads them to become confused later on. So only include the details in your description that are necessary to tell your story and NOTHING MORE. The reader will love you for it.
Genre: TV pilot – police procedural/fantasy
Premise: In a modern day San Francisco-like city where the laws of physics are superseded by hard magic, the deputy mayor’s right hand man is murdered, leaving some to suspect he is responsible.
About: Writer and show-runner Ronald D. Moore went to Cornell but failed out when he was a senior, and was only passively interested in writing while there. Afterwards, his interest in writing for TV grew, and he ended up writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation
Writer: Ronald D. Moore
Details: 65 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).
TV really is turning into the final frontier of experimentation. And if writers out there are taking more chances like this, I want to be there when they do. Because 17th Precinct is OUT THERE. I reviewed a script a couple of weeks ago called “Atlas” about a magical city that existed parallel to ours. Overall it felt like a soft treatment of the premise – wrapped in the safety of 8 dollar popcorn and stale boxes of milk duds. This is a way more interesting exploration of similar subject matter. In this world, Moore asks, what if our cities were fueled by magic? Not the Harry Potter kind. But “real life” practical magic. Sound interesting? It is.
17th Precinct begins with a dark figure murdering a man in an alley. The man cries out. But we hear nothing. I was a little disappointed in the writing of this scene only because it wasn’t made clear whether the lack of sound was a stylistic choice or we really couldn’t hear him. It was only later, once I understood the world, that I realized his screams had been muted out by some magical means. A small plant sprouting out of a crack nearby turned out to be the culprit, emitting a sound bubble around the immediate area. Clearly, it had been planted there earlier for that exact purpose.
Welcome to Excelsior.
The murder in question was that of Gilmore Pettigrew, which is a big deal, because Gilmore Pettigrew advises the Deputy Mayor on visions of the city’s future. No, I’m not talking about speculations. He can actually see the future. And that makes his murder all the more troubling. How can a man who sees the future not predict his own death?
We realize this is a different set of rules right away when inspectors Jeff and Caolan come in and begin investigating the crime scene. In this world, you can shift the blood around with the flick of a finger to see how it shot out of the body. You can also bring in necromancers to briefly bring the murdered victim back to life (in smoke-filled form) and get clues about what they saw before they were attacked.
What makes this murder so suspicious is that the Deputy Mayor lied about receiving Pettigrew’s yearly prophesy the night before. Coupled with a wild well-documented fight on the phone, the mayor definitely seems to be hiding something. The question is, is he lying to hide his hand in the murder? Or is he lying because that prophesy said something so horrible that it could never be uttered again in public?
What’s interesting about 17th Precinct is that you’ve never seen anything quite like it. In features, I always say, “Don’t fall in love with the details of your sci-fi world. Move the story along instead.” However, I don’t know if that applies to TV. Obviously, you have over a hundred episodes to delve into your characters’ storylines, so I guess it’s more acceptable to explore the details of your world. Here, for example, a lot of time is spent describing skyscrapers that are wrapped in some sort of living plant life. Or how the physical presence of someone might not be who they are on the inside (an old man could be a young woman). In the 17th Precinct, people keep cabinets full of spells the same way we keep cabinets full of food. I’ve never seen magic taken this seriously before. And that made getting into the details fun.
But make no mistake, that choice had residual effects. Whenever you spend too much time on one thing, you’re taking time away from something else, especially if you only have 48 minutes to tell your story. And the big weakness of 17th Precinct is that there wasn’t a single central character who popped off the page – who you remembered. The “rugged” Detective Chief Inspector, Wilder Blanks, looks the part. But at least in this draft, there’s nothing going on with him underneath the surface. No flaw. No fear. No inner conflict. And that, disappointingly, was the case with pretty much everyone. I’m writing this a week after I read the script, and I don’t remember any notable flaws that any of the characters were battling. Granted this is a pilot, but at least the hint of a flaw would be nice. I remember in that pilot for Lost
However, if I had to pick the most memorable character of the bunch, it would be Detective Mira Barkley. Why? Because she’s overweight and in her 60s. In all these procedural shows, I can’t remember a single one that featured a 60-something overweight woman in a detective role. It was refreshing and different and intriguing. I wanted to learn more about her. Having said that, even her character was lazy. One second the recently retired Mira is refusing to come back and be a detective again unless she gets the star treatment. The next she barely bats an eye after being paired with a rookie cop at the bottom of the barrel.
The most memorable characters from the pilot episode of 17th Precinct were, in fact, the single-episode characters, the characters being focused on in the investigation, which included the Deputy Mayor’s girlfriend and her son. And I admit to not knowing pilots that well but is this normal? I watch something like The Shield
Here’s the thing though. 17th Precinct still works. Because the star isn’t the characters. It’s the city. And luckily, that part is so fascinating and so different, it makes up for the lack of interesting characters, who you figure have plenty of time to grow in future episodes anyway. Still, I’m curious how the hell they’re going to pull this off. You’re going to have these huge buildings covered with plants, trees running through the middle of offices, people coming back to life in the form of smoke. If you’re not careful, it could end up looking like a Sonic The Hedgehog
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When writing about a visually exciting unique world, don’t let that world overshadow your characters. This is not to say you should tone down your world. Rather, bring the level of your characters up to the world you’ve put them in. Memorable characters would’ve easily put this into impressive territory.
