Genre: Rom-Com
Premise: A news anchor who idolizes Audrey Hepburn gets left at the altar, then starts a friendship with her ex-fiancé’s best friend.
About: Ryan Murphy is one of the biggest names in the business right now. The public at large first came to know his work as the series creator of the trashy but yummy Nip/Tuck. He went on to direct the sorta critically acclaimed “Running With Scissors,” and more recently shot to superstardom as the series creator of Glee (he also wrote and directed Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love). What you don’t know about Ryan is that he toiled away for a long time as a writer before he got his break. None other than Steven Spielberg saw Murphy’s talents and ended up buying this script as a result. Murphy recalls the experience: “Well I wrote the script based on a breakup I was going through at the time called Why Can’t I Be Audrey Hepburn? It’s this great soufflé of romantic comedy and it was close to her death, and he bought the script and we worked on it. It never got made. It had every female star in Hollywood attached to it—right before they became big stars. Renee Zellwegger, Jennifer Aniston wanted to do it … Halle Berry wanted to do it. It was thrilling to sit in a room with him and basically have him talk about movies.”
Writer: Ryan Murphy
Details: 113 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).

I know this is going to be hard for some of you to accept, but I’m not a Gleek. I know Gleeks. I’ve interacted with Gleeks. I’ve just come to the conclusion that we speak a different language. I’m not saying I wouldn’t use song and dance to express reviews here on Scriptshadow if I could. But I am saying that any show that celebrates Britney Spears and Justin Bieber with a badge of pride is not a show for me.

That said I have nothing against Gleekdom. Feel free to Gleek your way through the comments you Gleeks. If you want to tell me to Gleek Off or Gleek a life, I’m all for it. Express your Gleek with pride as I am not a Gleek-a-phobe. Okay, I’m going to stop saying ‘Gleek’ now and start this review.

Oh boy.

Here we go.

Let me get this straight. We have a rom-com where a girl gets left at the altar (barf!). She befriends a “bad boy” player who she hates more than anyone (double barf!). But they end up falling in love (triple barf!) But the original groom realizes he made a mistake and wants her back! (Barftopia!)

Could a romantic comedy be any more formulaic?

No, I’m sorry. It cannot. It is mathematically impossible.

So then explain to me this: Why the hell did I like it?

Why Can’t I Be Audrey Hepburn is, indeed, a mini-tribute to the silver screen goddess who gave us so many memorable performances. The movie starts out with our stylishly attractive female lead, Perry Forman, grabbing her gay best friend Duncan (yes, the token gay best friend – you have to remember though, this was written like 10 years ago – when token gay best friends weren’t token yet) and role-playing the famous scene in Breakfast At Tiffany’s where Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard go inside and buy the cheapest item that Tiffany’s sells, a sterling silver telephone dialer.

They are shocked to find out, unfortunately, that Tiffany’s stopped making the sterling silver telephone dialer over 3 decades ago. Whaaaat???

Anyway, Perry is getting ready for her big wedding with “owlishly handsome” Ross Miller, the seemingly perfect guy. But it turns out Ross isn’t so perfect, because he decides AT THE WEDDING that he wants no part of this “til death do you part” tomfoolery and leaves poor Perry at the altar.

Perry – who’s had her whole life planned out since she was five – has no idea how to process this turn of events, so she does the unthinkable and contacts brash badboy Sam, Ross’s best friend who Perry hates more than anything (the feeling is mutual: he doesn’t like her either) to get some insight on what happened.

While Sam isn’t exactly a Perry fan, he is an Audrey Hepburn fan, and the two’s mutual appreciation for the screen icon bridges an initial gap that would have otherwise remained gaping. The next thing you know, the idiots sleep with each other, and it gets all weird in that When Harry Met Sally way.

Sam is particularly shaken up because he’s screwed over his own best friend, a friend who happens to call him soonafter to tell him that he made a mistake and wants to get back together with Perry! He even lets Sam know what a good friend he’s been by helping Perry through this tough time. Yeah right. Friend now. Maury Pauvich guest tomorrow.

Naturally, things end with a second wedding, and Perry will have to decide who she really loves.

Okay, so I know how cliché and obvious this script sounds, but the thing is, it’s really well-written. Yesterday I made note of the fact that The Ark got boring because I always knew what was going to happen next. Well I pretty much knew what was going to happen here as well, but I was still into it. Why? Simple answer, the characters.

Whereas the characters in The Ark were one-dimensional, Murphy obviously put a lot of work into the people populating his universe. There are lots of ways to make your characters “three-dimensional,” yet strangely many writers avoid them. Start with a job for your hero. Make it a real job. Not something with a suit and an office where the only thing we see your character doing is answering a phone but rather something specific, preferably a job that helps define your character. Perry is an on-air news personality. Then take that a step further. Give them a goal at work, so it seems like there’s something going on in their life. Perry is up for a job at network.

Dig in to your character. Find out that thing that’s holding them back. Perry depends too much on planning. She doesn’t “go with the flow” enough. Then give your hero fears (she’s afraid to be alone) and obsessions (she loves Audrey Hepburn). There are lots of other things you can do (and should do) to flesh out your character but this is where to start and I can tell you this. If you don’t do any of these things? Your hero is going to come off thinner than a coat of paint. You gotta work on them so they feel like real flesh and blood human beings.

I also liked how the dynamics between the characters were maximized to create the most amount of conflict. This is an absolute necessity in rom-coms. Perry and Sam don’t like each other. That’s one source of conflict. Sam is Ross’s best friend. That’s another source of conflict. Perry and Sam have completely different philosophies on life. That’s another source of conflict. All these layers of conflict make Sam and Perry’s interactions interesting. Too many writers worry about making their dialogue “pop.” If you establish layers of conflict, the dialogue will write itself. It will “pop” without you having to try.

If there’s something I didn’t like, it’s that Perry’s flaw is told mainly through dialogue as opposed to action. Again, her flaw is that she’s a planner to a fault. But the only time we see this is when she *says* it. And she says it a lot. This is a lazy way to convey a character’s problem and should always be substituted by action if possible. For example, you might show Perry going to work with her blackberry, studiously checking away every little minor task she finishes – then have someone really important show up to her work unexpected for a meeting, and she’s simply unable to fit him in because it’s unexpected, not part of the “plan.” That’s off the top of my head but you get the idea. Show don’t tell. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR HERO’S CHARACTER FLAW.

This script is good. I probably would’ve rated it even higher if it were just a little more original. But the execution is great. With Ryan Murphy’s heat right now, I don’t understand why this can’t get made. I mean it’s better than 90% of the romantic comedies they’re dumping on us right now. Slap his name on it and you have a hit. What’s the hold up?

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

What I learned: Asked what the best advice he’s ever been given was, Murphy answered: “Two things. One, you know, the people who are successful, particularly in Hollywood are the people who don’t give up. And I think that is really true. And the thing that I know, someone once told me this great thing… it only takes one yes to change your life. And I think that’s been really true for me. The power of one yes. You work for years, and you get all these no’s and one person believes in you and your whole life can turn around. People need to wait for that one yes. And I think this can apply to anybody. My Yes was Steven Spielberg, so it was a big fucking yes. And you get No, you’ve got no talent, and your tone is so weird, and the way you see the world is so weird. And he was like, I like how you see the world, yes. And I have not stopped working since. I think our careers are like that. We do very unusual things that are very specific, but they are so specific that they become universal. A lot of people do things really broad, and I never think that anything I am going to do is going to be successful because it’s so specific but it becomes a success.”

I know this is a weird post, but I’m making a call out to all you Scriptshadow readers to answer a question I’m dying to know.  Last night I was watching Risky Business and realizing what a great movie it was.  Not only is the screenplay incredibly tight but the directing is unique and inventive and captivating – there’s clearly a vision here.  The movie made Tom Cruise a star and yet the director ended up making like 3 more movies, none of which were very memorable, and then disappearing off the face of the earth.  It’s so odd.  Outside of a post on Hollywood Elsewhere, there’s no information on Brickman whatsoever.  Do any of you know what happened to this guy?  I’m dying to find out something – anything.

Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi
Premise: Jurassic Park meets Michael Bay via Jerry Bruckheimer. A team of scientists study what could be Noah’s Ark, trapped underneath a mountain of ice. But this is not the same ark we’ve been told about in stories.
About: The 2005 sci-fi script “The Ark” is what got Holly Brix her agent. This later led to her selling her first spec, “Mile Zero,” about a young woman who takes a job on an Alaskan oil rig so she can prove her father’s innocence in a series of murders (to star Milla Jovavich). Finally, last year, Brix got her first produced credit with “The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations.” Lucky for us, she’s made her first script available through the WGA website which I link to at the end of the review.
Writer: Holly Brix
Details: 125 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).

Hooray! A script all of you can participate in. We haven’t had much action oriented sci-fi stuff on the site lately, so I decided to change that. The Ark is one of those big idea scripts, the kind that Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin get all hot and bothered over. Something a younger Spielberg might have made. And make no mistake, The Ark has its influences steeped in Jurassic Park. The big question with these “big idea” scripts is always, does the execution live up to the idea? The answer is almost always no because a big idea only requires you to write 2 great lines. A script requires you to write 5000 great lines. Naturally, the odds aren’t in your favor. But hey, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it, right? Let’s hope Brix is one of the few who pulled it off.

Abby Archer, that rare breed of knockout archeologist you only find in movies, is approached by a man explaining to her that they’ve “found it.” Whatever “it” is, Abby seems to understand what he’s talking about, but doubts that it’s true. “It” is obviously something very rare.

Complicating matters is that Jeff, her ex-husband, is also being summoned to the “it” party. That’s good news for us readers (conflict!) but bad news for Abby. While it all seems like a lot of hassle for what will likely be nothing, in the end Abby agrees to participate because the scientific ramifications are just too large.

So it’s off to Iceland where Abby and an entire team are greeted by Allister Eckmann, a 56 year old Richard Branson times 20. Eckmann believes he’s found the Ark. Yes, the Ark as in that boat with all the animals on it. Well great, Abby says, let’s get the hell down there and check it out.

So they head down under stories and stories of ice and are shocked to see what doesn’t look like a boat at all. This looks more like a…giant space ship. Abby takes the group inside and they immediately come upon some frozen animals, but not like any animals you and I know. More like animal hybrids. Dog-bears and Emu-vultures. That kind of thing.

What this means, they beleive, is that Noah’s Ark is a ship that originated from another planet, and came here to populate the earth. Nobody’s quite sure why the ship then would be down here, with all the animals seemingly still entombed, but since they’re all scientists, they’re eager as hell to find out.

Unfortunately, while taking a stroll through the stadium sized ship, it TURNS ON, and all these animals start thawing out. These animals weren’t frozen after all. They were in cryogenic sleep! And since half of them seem to be the really nasty hunting type, our characters realize they’re playing the part of eggs and bacon in these animals’ breakfast.

As is the norm in these movies, people start splitting up, and each group is hunted down by a set of nasty monsters. One group takes on a rhino…thing. Another takes on a room full of cougars, and no, not that kind of cougar (though I’m not sure which would be worse). And others still take on some kind of Yeti beast.

There’s a big storm that prevents them from getting up to the surface. There’s a bad guy who’s got his own motives for the Ark. And there’s plenty of hypotheses about what planet the ship is from and why it came to earth. But in the end, it’s just about getting the fuck off this thing alive.

So, does The Ark work? I’m afraid to say “not really.” It’s certainly a fun idea but the treatment of that idea is too simple and too obvious. If you’re a fan of these kinds of movies, you’re not going to find anything new here, and while that certainly isn’t required for these films to work, the lack of surprises leads to us being way ahead of the story, which is never a good thing.

One of the overlooked things in these genre, believe it or not, is character development. Outside of Abby’s past relationship with Jeff, there’s nothing linking any of these people together – no history, no secrets, no conflict, no problems. In other words, there’s no drama to get wrapped up in, and as a result, we lose interest in the characters.

Look at a movie like Pitch Black. Look at all the tension and secrets and history and conflict going on between the characters in that movie. Riddick and Johns have a past. Riddick is the only one who can save them, but is also the one who can hurt them the most. So half the people want to let him free and the other half don’t. This causes a divide between the group. Certain characters are building trust with other characters, some of them lying, some not, so that there’s this intricate web of drama and deceit going on underneath the story. This way, when all the exterior stuff happens (they’re attacked), the character moments become a lot more interesting. Is a person who hates another person going to save them or let them die? You need that kind of stuff to make these stories work and there just wasn’t any of that going on here. Even the stuff with Abby and Jeff gets forgotten, which leaves almost zero conflict to play with.

The stuff that happened topside with Eckmann and our bad guy, Joe, was kind of interesting. But it felt completely detached from the rest of the story, since the two plots had little to do with each other, so it was tough getting into it.  Plus, if you’re going to have a bad guy, you want him to be a part of the party, right in the mix of everything, not safely upstairs in another subplot.  Imagine if Burke was still up on the main ship in Aliens. 

To be honest, I would’ve preferred they got rid of the topside plot altogether. Some of the stuff there was hard to buy anyway (Eckmann went down and set up cameras all over the ship ahead of time so he could watch the scientists expressions when they looked around). I think one of the reasons The Thing worked so well was that they were all alone, no way to call for help, stranded. I think this would’ve been more scary if our characters were experiencing that same kind of uncertainty.

This script actually feels more like a first draft, where the writer is getting the basic ideas down, with plans to flesh everything out later. If that’s the case, I think it has potential. Mutated animals hunting down humans is definitely movie material. But right now, too many aspects are only half-realized.

Script link: http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/theark.pdf (This link is for the WGA’s server, where you can download the screenplay)

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

What I learned: Use a lingering mystery in your first act to take us through boring character introductions. In some scripts, you have to set up a lot of characters. This can be really boring for a reader to trudge through, but here’s a trick to make it more bearable. Set up a mystery ahead of time. In The Ark, we’ve been told that he’s found “it.” What’s “It?” We’re not sure but from everyone’s excitement, we sure as hell want to find out. For that reason, while we meet 8 characters in a row, the pages fly by, because we’re excited to find out what it is they’re all talking about. If you ONLY introduce 8 characters in a row, you’re probably going to put us to sleep.

Hey guys.  As a lot of you know, I’m a big fan of The Tracking Board website.  For those not aware of what a tracking board is, it’s a site that tracks spec scripts as well as writing assignments in the industry and lets you know how those scripts are faring.  Which ones find that elusive sale, where that sale comes from, which ideas fall by the wayside, what big writer just landed the new Pirates rewrite, etc., etc.  The site is invaluable for writers to keep a gauge on what ideas are selling, what ideas aren’t, and it’s a great way to make sure someone hasn’t already written that masterpiece you were preparing to spend the next two years of your life on.

The site also keeps you updated on job openings (i.e. a personal assistant job for a producer, assistant at an agency), new project attachments, TV pilot happenings, festival info, private screenings, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

I know they have a holiday deal of 15% going on, but for Scriptshadow readers, I managed to get it down another 10% so the normal price of $59/yr is down to $44.25!  The deal is going on through January 10 so sign up if you’re not signed up already.  Happy holidays!

Genre: Biopic/Drama/Fantasy
Premise: The life story of one of the most creative minds of all time, Walt Disney.
About: For one of my favorite books about Disney, check out Disney War – a backroom expose of Michael Eisner’s tenure at the company. Some nice juicy stuff. — 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: Brendan Lee
Details: 117 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).

Brendan has dutifully sent me his Amateur Review script entry every month since I began the feature and I can safely say there is no one who’s more passionate about his material than Brendan is about telling this story. I e-mailed him a couple of times and reminded him that I’m not the biggest biopic fan and therefore his script already had an uphill battle with me, but he maintained that that was okay. He just wanted the script to get read and hopefully make it better.

Brendan is also aware that writing a biopic about Walt Disney is a no-win proposition. He doesn’t have the rights to Walt Disney’s story, and if anyone wants to tell Walt’s story, it’s likely they’ll buy up some other more renowned material – not a script from a struggling writer trying to find a crack in the Hollywood wall he can slip through. However, that’s the exact same thing they said about The Muppet Man, which was purchased by Jim Henson’s company. So why can’t lightning strike twice?

Funny I should bring up Muppet Man, because there were a few times I was reminded of that script during my reading of the Imagineer. But I’ll get to that later. For now, let’s take a look at Walt Disney’s life.

We meet Walt at 5 years old back in 1906 Missouri. While the rest of his brothers and one sister have a more conservative outlook on life, Walt is more interested in the bizarre, in the strange, in the eclectic, and we see this obsession emerge when he stumbles into a carnival in the middle of the woods one evening. The colors, the atmosphere, the wonder – it’s that defining moment in a life where you immediately know your calling.

Unfortunately, Walt’s strict father, Elias, is the exact opposite of Walt. He’s a hardworking blue collar man who believes that the way to a living is getting your hands dirty, and not with pencil lead or finger paints. This strained relationship will end up haunting Walt for the rest of his life.

Despite this strain, Walt becomes a pretty good little artist and through the years manages to eek out a living selling drawings until he gets a job at an advertising house called Gray Advertising. Around this time, Walt’s more business-oriented brother, Roy, comes back into town and the two decide to form a business together. They move to Hollywood where they segue into making movies and Walt starts working on an animated film that will later become one of the most famous movies of all time, “Alice In Wonderland.” (it will also, unfortunately, lead to the monstrosity that was Tim Burton’s version of the material last year – something I’m positive Walt wouldn’t have approved of!!).

Finally, Walt’s dreams are beginning to come true, though not without conflict. Walt’s obsession with thinking outside the box and always trying to create the next spectacle nearly puts he and Roy out of business several times. Cause as anyone who’s worked with visionaries before can tell you, spectacle doesn’t come cheap. But Walt’s genius always seems to bail them out, and when Universal tries to rip them off over a movie deal, Walt has had enough and tells his brother they’re opening their own studio.

But while Walt’s businesses continue to thrive, he is still haunted by his father’s lack of approval, an approval he will never receive since his father dies before they can reconcile his career choice. Of course we all know that Walt went on to even bigger things, creating one of the most iconic brands on the planet, Disney World, but we’re left to wonder if that was ever enough for a man who just wanted his father to say, “Good job.”

Okay, before I get started on the critique, let’s recap why I have such a hard time with biopics. The main problem is that they don’t usually have a goal for the main character. Instead, the movie becomes a retelling of their lives, which can definitely be dramatized, but the lack of structure prevents that dramatization from ever firing on all cylinders.

For this reason, it’s hard to critique biopics because all you’re really critiquing are the events that make up a person’s life. You’re essentially saying either this man’s life is interesting or it isn’t.

So from this screenplay, did I find Walt Disney’s life interesting? Not really. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy The Imagineer. But Walt Disney’s life, at least the way I interpreted it, wasn’t that difficult in comparison to the lives of other less fortunate people who went on to have great success. Outside of some humble beginnings, the obstacles that stood in his path – getting rejected by a lot of newspapers, not having enough money to do what he really wanted – were frustrating but by no means cataclysmic.

Even though I didn’t like 2005’s “Ray,” you got the sense that being blind, African-American in a racist world and growing up with diddly-squat, that that man had to overcome some impossible obstacles to find success. Or “The Aviator,” about Howard Hughes. That man had to overcome obsessive OCD and even survived a trio of plane crashes to get to his success. You really felt like that was a life worth writing about.

That may be The Imagineer’s (or more specifically, Walt Disney’s) biggest hurdle in telling his story. Is his story interesting enough? I’m not sure it is.

Still, I have to admit that there’s something about The Imagineer that pulls you in. Brendan’s passion for the subject definitely bleeds onto the page and this is one of the zippiest biopics I’ve ever had – a welcome change from a genre that usually gets bogged down in overindulgence .

There are two moments in particular that stuck out to me. First, there’s a wonderful scene towards the end where Walt finds closure speaking to an apparition of his dead father. These scenes are so incredibly tricky to write because it’s easy for them to devolve into melodrama. But Brendan really nails it, and it’s impossible not to get choked up listening to this last conversation.

The other moment has to do with the final scene (SPOILERS) where Walt Disney is talking to his creation, Mickey Mouse, before he takes that final train off into the next world. There’s something so sad and touching about it that you can’t help but get wrapped up in the emotion. If it wasn’t for that moment, I’m not sure I ever would’ve felt Walt Disney as a real person. But that last scene really changed that.

Of course, this leads to a problem, one that a number of you are probably already thinking – Isn’t that last scene similar to The Muppet Man? Well, yes, it is similar to The Muppet Man. And that’s unfortunate, because I know Brendan’s been working on this forever and it’s likely he wrote this scene long before he even heard of The Muppet Man. But there’s no doubt that reading it reminds you of that screenplay, and that, unfortunately, is going to result in some people seeing it as unoriginal.

In the end, I think I’m going to recommend this. There’s something unexpectedly sad and unique about a man dying who’s brought so much happiness to others, because you feel like a lot of that happiness is dying with him. You’re going to get choked up here and just the fact that the writer is able to make you feel something about this man’s passing tells me he succeeded on some level.

An interesting script for sure. I’d like to hear what biopic lovers have to say about it. Go ahead and download it below.

Script link: The Imagineer  

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

What I learned: If you’re going to write about someone’s life, make sure that life was complicated, interesting and had plenty of adversity to draw upon. Because you can’t lean on a traditional storytelling arc (the 3 act structure) and are more a slave to real life events, you want to make sure those events are as interesting as possible.

Note: Disqus seems to be having a meltdown (one of their many).  If you can’t comment, try again later.