Turns out I’m more hungover from sugar plums and eggnog than I thought I’d be.  Plus, let’s face it, does anybody actually work this week?  I mean please.  They should make the week between Christmas and New Years an official holiday.  Anyway, start prepping those New Years’ lists.  And get ready for my Thursday Top 10 Movies of the year post.   It’s been kinda fun catching up on all the movies I’ve missed this week.  Oh, and yes, I will be posting a review tomorrow.  A continued Happy Holidays! :)

Genre: Christmas Comedy
Premise: A disenchanted hotel executive’s life is turned upside down after he drops a Dear Santa letter in a mysterious “Letters to Santa” sack — then must live with the consequences when his wishes come true.
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: Bryan Dunn
Details: 112 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).

Ho ho ho! Santa Carson is here. Before I get to the script, I’ll quickly run down my favorite Christmas movies of all time. First on the list is….drum roll please….It’s A Wonderful Life! Cliché choice? You bet. But I absolutely love this movie. Gotta love how they don’t unveil the hook (Seeing what the world would be like if he was never born) until ¾ of the way through the movie! A studio executive would just as soon kill you before allowing you to do that these days. Next up is the original “A Christmas Carol.” That’s also a great one to study as it has one of the most unlikable leads of all time. Study how they make you care for that character and use it for the next time you write an anti-hero. Following that is “A Christmas Story.” I mean dur. No explanation needed there. Finally you have “Miracle on 34th Street.” Yeah yeah it’s a little cheesy and on the nose, but it’s a well-executed script.

So how does today’s amateur script stack up? Well, I don’t think it’s fair to compare an amateur script to the four best Christmas movies of all time, but is it at least a worth entry into the genre? Let’s find out.

“Boyishly handsome” Ray Kincaid is a hotel manager at a posh Beverly Hills-ish hotel. Things are going all right for Ray. He’s got a beautiful girlfriend in Maggie. He’s well-respected for the job he does. In fact, his boss, Phil, thinks he’s vice-president material. The only blip on Ray’s radar is his nemesis, the perfectly plastic OTHER manager of the hotel, Chip.

They say you should never count your sugar plums before they’re hatched but Ray is skating towards that promotion faster than Christi Yamaguchi. Imagine his surprise then when his boss, Phil, chooses Chip instead of him! Humbug? More like humbullshit.

Ray is so furious that he flips out Jerry Maguire style and moans to anyone who will listen about how much his life sucks. His girlfriend doesn’t act sexy enough. He never has enough time to do anything. His hair is thinning. Chip’s an asshole. And on and on and on. In one of those crazy moments we all have when we’re not flying straight, Ray scribbles together a “wish list” addressing all the things he wishes he had in life and drops it into a “letters to Santa” bag.

And the next day, everything changes.

First, he has his hair back! It’s a little thicker than he would’ve liked but beggars can’t be choosers, right? Next, Maggie’s slinked out in a nice expensive piece of lingerie, ready to rumble Tiger Woods mistress style. At work, Ray is shocked to find that there’s…ANOTHER RAY! Ray 2! But how could that be? He starts to put everything together. Asking for more hair. Asking for his wife to be more sexy. Asking for two of himself so he has more time. All his wishes came true!

Of course, what would a wish-fulfillment movie be if the wishes turned out exactly the way you wanted them to? While Ray tries to manage the big “end of the year” hotel event, everything he wished for starts working against him. His hair gets REALLY poofy. His girlfriend starts dancing at a strip club. And his doppelganger is a moron who’d rather party with the guests than get any work done.

Ray changes his mind. He wants to go back to his old life. But is it too late?

It’s Christmas. I don’t want to be a scrooge, but I don’t want to *not* help Bryan get this script into better shape either. I thought Dear Santa was well-written, had some funny moments, and showed a strong command of the three-act structure (except for one part, which I’ll get to). However there were a few things going on that prevented me from recommending it. The first thing that popped out was the “buying of the hotel” storyline. The current hotel is being bought up by new owners which means there’s going to be a transition at some point and somehow that’s going to either help or hurt Ray’s job, which of course has nothing to do with Ray currently being promoted, as that’s up to his current boss and….Well, you can tell just by that sentence that I was utterly confused by that storyline.

The problem is it’s too complicated for this story and prevented me, in a lot of places, from just enjoying Ray’s predicament. I would take all that transferring of the hotel stuff out and make the story simple. They have some huge Christmas-related event that accounts for a ton of money for the hotel at the end of the year and Ray’s gotta nail it to get the VP job. He makes all these wishes, which he thinks are going to make that goal easier, but they actually make it harder. There’s your story. You don’t need to get any more complex than that.

Another problem I had – and this is something I’ve been seeing way too much of lately in amateur scripts – is that the 1st act turn (in this case, where Ray makes his wish list) doesn’t happen until page 36! That moment should be coming on page 25 at the latest. I can understand this turn coming late in a gritty drama or a thoughtful period piece. But this is a high concept comedy, the genre best suited for the three-act structure, so it’s probably a good idea to follow that structure closely.

My third problem is in reference to the concept itself. Is this concept too spread out? The brilliance of Liar Liar is in its simplicity. He can’t lie. It’s one problem so everything about the script is centered and easy to understand. In Dear Santa, the elements are many. His wife is a stripper, he has this copy of himself running around, his adopted parents (another wish) come back into his life. So everything’s kind of haphazard and unfocused. I’m not saying it can’t work, but the randomness of it all did give me pause. I remember when he first saw Ray’s double and I thought, “That right there could be its own movie.” Then again, if you did that, it might be too much like other “be careful what you wish for” movies. So I’m not entirely sure how to address this issue. Maybe some of you readers have suggestions.

Finally, I would’ve kept everything as Christmas-related as possible in the same way that the theme of “Love Actually” focused all of its subplots on love. For example, when we have this big Jane Austen convention in the end, I don’t know what Jane Austen has to do with Christmas. It felt like a different movie. Why not turn it into something where the hotel holds the biggest Christmas Eve soup kitchen in Los Angeles and it requires an amazing amount of planning? That would feel more organic to the story.

Dear Santa had a really fun exciting energy to it. It was definitely better than the other “hotel manager” script I read not long ago, “Tower Heist,” but the script complicates itself in some ways and loses focus in others. If it could fix those problems, it would be a fun holiday film.

Scrooge out!

Script link: Dear Santa 

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

What I learned: I randomly ran across this interview from comedy writer Adam Goldberg and really like the advice. It doesn’t apply to this review specifically, but since I only use this section to take on in-script problems, I thought it’d be fun to talk about your mindset BEFORE you write a script. “Write in your voice. Write what you know and what appeals to you. This is where you’ll have the most success. My agent once called me and told me that studios were looking for Jackie Chan movies. He also said they were looking for the “new” Kindergarten Cop. So he said — “Why not do both?” Now, who knows? Maybe I would’ve sold it for millions. But you should never write to what the town wants. Don’t write a thriller just because you hear thrillers are an easy sell. Only write a script that you know you can knock out of the park. I wrote Fanboys because I’m a giant Star Wars Fan. I wrote Revenge of the Nerds because, well, I am one. They say “write what you know” and there’s a real truth to that!”

Remember, this is Amateur Friday.  We’re all in this together.  Try to give feedback in a constructive manner that will help the writer in his next draft.

Okay now for those of you who read the site every day, these choices probably won’t be that surprising to you. But if you’re only an occasional stop-buyer of Scriptshadow (and if you are, shame on you), then there may be a few succulent chunks of screenplay goodness for you to munch on. Now unlike The Black List, my list isn’t time sensitive. The scripts don’t have to have been written in the year 2010 to qualify. They could’ve been written in 2005, 1997, during the Bubonic Plauge, doesn’t matter, as long as I read it this year. And what may surprise you is that these rankings might not necessarily reflect my Top 25. I’m not even going to look at that list. I’m simply going to choose which scripts affected me and stayed with me the most. That’s the sign of a good script. Not one that masters all the rules of screenwriting. But one that hits you on a gut level. Let’s stop screwing around and get to the list!

10) HOME
Genre: Horror
Premise: A paranoid delusional ex-convict is placed on house arrest out in the middle of the woods.
Writer: Adam Alleca
Here’s why I loved Home. The contained thriller may be the most spec-friendly genre format there is, and for that reason, a smart avenue for any screenwriter to take. But 99 times out of 100, writers don’t know what to do once they hit page 30. They’ve created a cool situation, but they haven’t created a deep enough universe, a full enough backstory, to make that situation last for an entire feature-length film. Without fault this always results in the writer relying on cheap gimmicks. Spooky people with mysterious pasts. Scary dream sequences. Jump scares (lots of jump scares!). They believe that if they string enough of these moments together, they can get to the finish line. The problem is that’s all they do – make it to a finish line. Alleca’s created a real backstory to this house as well as all of the characters involved. Therefore whenever anything happens, you know there’s a reason for it. And when it’s all said and done, you’re rewarded with a great script.

9) SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: An eccentric billionaire Sheikh tries to buck conventional wisdom and transfer 10,000 salmon to a river in the Middle East in order to achieve his dream – to salmon fish in his own country.
Writer: Simon Beaufoy
Salmon Fishing is one of those scripts that sneaks up on you like a curious cat. You don’t know it’s there until it’s rubbing on your leg and purring louder than a helicopter. After that, you have to have it. What I loved about this script was each character’s unique motivation. The Sheik and his eccentric idea to transfer salmon to his own country. Our hero and his desperate attempts to prevent this from happening, despite being hired to do so. Everybody had such a particular interest, such a particular focus in this story, that they all stood out in their own way. A great reminder to read things that don’t sound like they’re for you. What a nice surprise!

8) THE ESCORT
Genre: Comedy
Premise: A flight attendant who refuses to grow up gets stuck escorting an uptight 14 year old boy cross-country.
Writer: Justin Adler
I remember reviewing this script. I felt like the monkey at the beginning of The Lion King who walks up to the edge of the cliff and holds up the lion cub so that all the animals of the land could marvel at it. Except instead of marveling, you all began throwing rocks at me. Well, I still think this is a great comedy and the second best I’ve read all year. Granted I’ve never seen its doppelganger, Dutch, so I can’t comment on their likeness. All I know is that the road trip movie is so played out and I loved the dynamic of an adult and a kid being stuck together. It felt fresh, it felt new, and it led to a lot of situations which, while not completely different, were different enough to make this story its own. Not to mention it’s a great script to study for developing conflict in buddy movies.

7) THE DARK FIELDS
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A New York novelist gets hold of a rare underground wonder-drug that turns his life upside-down.
Writer: Leslie Dixon
Before I comment on this script, let me say that I just saw the trailer for it (I see they’ve renamed it “Limitless”) and it looks….not like I imagined it at all. I imagined a dark gritty David Fincher film. They went more the colorful vibrant route. I guess the look is supposed to represent the newfound “clear” way in which he sees the world but it just comes off as cheap-looking. Anyway, I don’t care about that. This was a damn good script. The thing I remember most is that it got right three important phases necessary for a good thriller. An active character (his pursuit of wealth), a mystery (all the uncertainty about the drug) and the chase (there was always someone right behind our hero – which kept the script moving at a breakneck pace). Lots of other things I loved about this too but too many to mention in a mini-review. I’m still interested in seeing how this film ended up. Can’t wait to watch it.

6) THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: After her 18th birthday, a young girl and her brother go looking for their sperm-donating biological father, who subsequently becomes a part of their lives.
Writer: Lisa Cholodenko
One of the best character pieces I’ve read in a long time. Usually when you read character pieces, three of the characters are wonderfully deep and the other three are thinner than tracing paper. If a character has three or more scenes in your screenplay, give them the full treatment. A backstory, needs, desires, secrets, flaws. Don’t ever settle for cliché. I remember thinking that if needed, any one of these characters could’ve starred in their own movie. That’s when you know you’ve created deep characters. If you want to study character development, check out this script over on Focus’ site.

5) CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE
Genre: Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) A father’s life unravels while he deals with a marital crisis and tries to manage his relationship with his children.
Writer: Dan Fogelman
Execution execution execution. Crazy, Stupid, Love is not the most original idea in the world but man did Fogelman execute the shit out of it. Because I’m a lazy bastard, I’ll just use an excerpt from my review to explain why I loved it so much. This is in reaction to the script’s fantastic climax: “Here, not only do we get that scene, but we get the reason why this script sold for 2 million dollars. It’s the climax of the story, a huge sequence where all of these relationships finally collide with one another in this glorious wacky explosion. It’s executed so perfectly and with such skill that for a brief moment, you sit up and think, “This is what screenwriting is all about.” And it really is. It’s that moment where all of the variables in your story come together in that perfect harmonic climax. It’s really good stuff.”

4) DRIVE
Genre: Crime/Action/Thriller
Premise: A stunt driver moonlighting as a getaway driver gets caught up in a job that’s over his head.
Writer: Hossein Amini
Vroom vroom. Look at Ryan Gosling go. Two slots in the Top 10! If that doesn’t prove this man knows how to pick material, I don’t know what does (with one notable exception of course). This is a great script to read to study character dynamics. I’m not talking about what goes on individually with your characters, but how each character relates to one another, so that when something happens to one person, it has a ripple effect on everyone else. That’s what sticks out to me most about Drive. There are scenes where five characters are in a room, and every person has different things going on with everyone else. This adds a load of conflict, a load of subtext, and just makes each scene infinitely more interesting. Top notch stuff.

3) THE GREY
Genre: Thriller
Premise: A group of oil drillers on a plane ride home, crash in the arctic tundra, where they become hunted by a vicious pack of wolves.
Writers: Joe Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers (based on the short story ‘Ghost Walkers’ by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers)
This script is just low down dirty fun. Guys vs. Wolves. But not just any guys. The most badass of the badasses. Bonafied scary-ass motherfuckers. And our leader? The most badass of them all. It’s the closest experience that you’re going to get to watching Aliens that you’ve had since that film. I know that’s a huge statement, but this little script about survival is captivating stuff.

2) WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
Genre: Period Drama/Love Story
Premise: (from IMDB) A veterinary student abandons his studies after his parents are killed and joins a traveling circus as their vet.
You know, this is one of those scripts that shouldn’t have roped me in the way it did. It’s basically a love story. But the great thing about Elephants is that it’s a love story wrapped in a loony dangerous unpredictable package – the Bizarro World version of Titanic. Not to mention it has the best villain I’ve read all year hands down (can’t wait to see what Waltz does with it). You’re not going to read anything like this again for a long time.

1) UNTITLED CHEF PROJECT
Genre: Drama
Premise: A selfish workaholic chef tries to get back into the restaurant game after a much publicized meltdown years ago.
This script grabs you by the adam’s apple and never lets go. Even if you’re a girl. It will find your adam’s apple. Trust me. If Water For Elephants had the best antagonist of the year, Untitled Chef Project has the best protagonist. Our lunatic lead Adam is what would happen if you stuffed a powder keg inside of Christian Bale. Since Bale is already a powder keg without you having to stuff anything into him, you can imagine what that combination might create. In fact, I think Bale would be perfect for this role, a role it seems Hollywood has cooled on. WHY GOD WHY??? Although I’ve never done peyote and I’ve never hung out with Gary Busey, I’d imagine hanging out with Gary Busey while on peyote is the closest experience you’re going to have to reading this script. I still remember reading “Chef” like it was yesterday, and I read it ten months ago.

And there you have it. So, is there a common thread between all of these scripts, something we can take away for our next screenplay? It’s tough to say. However I did notice that almost all the scripts had at least one really memorable character, especially the Top 4. The biggest surprises for me were scripts like Water For Elephants, Untitled Chef Project, and Drive, all of which I was reluctant to pick up because the subject matter didn’t interest me. Yet once I opened them, the characters drew me in like a champagne sunset on a 70 degree July night. So work on those characters people. The concept will get your reader past the title page but once they’re there, it’s the characters that will keep them reading.

Enough about me. What were your favorite scripts of the year?

Last year’s Top 10 Black List script, Cedar Rapids, debuts its trailer.  I have to say, this looks pretty damn good.

Genre: Indie Comedy
Premise: In order to earn the respect of his famous father, a young man must go on a great journey to find his idol, a “Cat Stevens” like 70s alternative-dance icon who’s since gone into hiding.
About: Lonny The Great finished with 5 votes on the inaugural 2005 Black List. The writer, Jay Reiss, recently got his first produced credit as a writer with his script, The Oranges, which finished in the Top 10 of the 2008 Black List. Weiss has a few other projects in development, including “Man-Witch” about the first male witch. In one of the weirder coincidences I’ve stumbled upon since starting this site, the listed director for that film is none other than Robert Florsheim, who you might remember as the co-writer of The Passion Of The Ark, which I reviewed last week.
Writer: Jay Reiss
Details: 134 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

When you pluck a script that you’ve never heard of out of obscurity, the most you can hope for is that it’s readable. I mean if it were any good, *someone* would have told you about it by now, right? But Jay Reiss isn’t some nobody writer. His script “The Oranges” finished Top 10 on the 2008 Black List and has an exciting cast that includes Oliver Platt, Catherine Keener, and Hugh Laurie. Some have called it American Beauty by way of Meet The Parents. That script used to be in my Top 25 (albeit a thousand reads ago) so I find it kind of surprising that nobody told me about this little-known Reiss gem that first got him noticed.

In order to properly prepare yourself for Lonny The Great, you’ll want to assume that Wes Anderson is directing it. No, Wes Anderson is not actually directing it (that would be awesome) but this reads very much like an Anderson script. Like in many of Anderson’s films, our main character, Lonny (a zoo attendant), has some major issues with his much more accomplished father.

The father in question, Julius, made his fortune selling lettuce and then, after losing part of his thumb in one of his factories, took that fortune to the next level by creating a prosthetics empire, inspired of course by creating a mini-prosthetic thumb piece to make his hand whole again.

He later had two sons, Lonny and Spencer, and it became clear early on that Spencer was the chosen one. Lonny just had too much dream in him and not enough “do.” It finally becomes clear to Lonny that he will always play second fiddle when his brother asks his dad to be his best man. That is, of course, unless he does something amazing to make his father finally take notice of him.

It so happens that Julius keeps a special room in his mansion with a special table. And on that table are dozens of pictures of people that Julius has met and holds in high esteem. People like past presidents, Muhammad Ali, Gandhi. But there is one great person on this planet who Julius has not being able to meet.

Theodore Rome.

Rome has brought millions of people happiness through his unique and inventive interpretive dance prowess. Watching Rome dance would’ve been like listening to Martin Luther King speak or John Lennon sing. But right when he had the whole world in his hand, Rome disappeared into thin air, shunning the limelight to live a private and rewarding life on his own.

Lonny believes that if he can find Rome and get a picture with him, he will win his father’s respect and earn a spot on that coveted “Great Table.”

So Lonny grabs his 17 year old co-worker and only friend, Gerald, and the two go on an impossible pursuit of a man people have unsuccessfully been looking for for 30 years. Along the way they’ll be lied to, taken advantage of, they’ll fall in love, get arrested for burying a deer (I laughed for 2 minutes at the deer-hitting scene), mistaken for having an inappropriate relationship, and finally find Rome on his own private island in Hawaii.

The question is, will Lonny get the all important picture he covets, and will he finally earn his father’s respect?

This is a funky script. It definitely does a lot of things “wrong,” but it does so much right in the key areas, namely creating an emotional connection via its characters, that you overlook it. I mean, the script is 133 pages. That’s a page length I’d typically scoff at. However Reiss wisely keeps his description threadbare. So it doesn’t read like a 133 page script. It reads like its 100. Keep in mind, I read long scripts that feel short and short scripts that feel long all the time. If your script is going to have a thick page count, you better be lean with your description and have a lot of dialogue, cause if you do, we’ll forget about that page length immediately.

Also, the love interest (Beth – a professional rare pet transporter) isn’t introduced until way after the midpoint. Normally I advise writers to introduce their romantic interest within the first act, and at the very latest by page 45 (the quarter mark of the second act). But it didn’t bother me here, and I was trying to figure out why.

I think it’s because Lonny has such a strong goal that we’re so wrapped up in, we’re not thinking about whether he’ll find himself a lady or not. Reiss does such a great job setting up the relationship (between Lonny and his father) and establishing how important it is to Lonny that he prove to his father he’s worthy, that the lack of a love interest simply never crosses our mind.

Speaking of the love interest, I wanted to point out a great scene and an important lesson for all you young writers out there about how to approach your scenes. In every scene, you want there to be something else going on that makes the scene a little (or a lot) difficult for your characters. The most boring scenes tend to be two characters sitting around talking. Even if they’re pushing the story forward, it’s still boring if that’s ALL they’re doing.

In Lonny The Great, there’s a moment on the plane when Lonny decides he’s going to ask Beth to join him and Gerald in their pursuit of Rome. Now before I tell you how this scene plays out, I want you to think about how you would write this scene. Probably the first ideas that pop into your head are either he asks her while in their seats, he asks her right after they exit the plane, or he asks her at the luggage carousel. All three of those scenarios would get the job done, but there’s nothing EXTRA working against our characters in any of those scenarios.

What Weiss does is he waits for the plane to get to the gate and for Lonny to step into the aisle. It’s at THIS moment when he decides to ask Beth if she’ll come with him. Of course, that’s the very moment that 150 impatient passengers located behind Lonny are angrily trying to get the hell off of this airplane.

Immediately the scene takes on a frustrating yet intriguing life, because it’s the most imperfect scenario possible for Lonny trying to convince this girl to come with him. With people yelling at him, trying to squeeze by, and Beth not convinced it’s a good idea, you give Lonny’s goal a ticking time bomb and a lot of obstacles, which is why the scene plays out in such an interesting way. Had he just asked her while they were still in their seats, you wouldn’t have gotten any of that. It’s moments like this when you know you’re dealing with a good writer.

Now I loved this script. It’s a quirky fun character driven romp through Ridiculousville. Not to mention it has a ton of heart. Having said that, I understand it’s very particular. It’s a lot like “The Ornate Anatomy of Living Things”in that way, and for that reason, it isn’t going to be for everyone. But if you like these types of semi-absurdist character driven films, inspired by Wes Anderson, there’s a good chance you’ll like Lonny The Great.

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

What I learned: It’s okay for your script to be imperfect in some areas, as long as you make up for it in other areas.