Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: After a woman spills her secrets to a stranger during a turbulent plane ride, she shows up at work to discover that he is the recently returned CEO of her company.
About: Can You Keep A Secret landed on the bottom half of the 2010 Black List and is an adaptation of a novel by Sophie Kinsella
Writer: Megan Martin (Based on the novel by Sophie Kinsella
Details: 114 pages – 10/04/10 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).
Oh boy, I’m already anticipating some blowback from this one. I feel the readers descending upon me, chastising me for endorsing a seemingly straightforward romantic comedy. But here’s the thing with romantic comedies: Even if they follow the traditional clichéd romantic comedy path, if you can create two characters that we fall in love with, the predictable plot elements can be excused (TO A POINT! – I am NOT saying that plot isn’t important). And the truth is, I loved both of these characters, starting with our heroine, Emma.
Emma Corrigan is living a lie. Well, aren’t we all living a lie? But Emma’s living lie is one that makes life quite difficult – she’s lying to her parents. She pretends to be a big corporate hotshot on the express elevator to the top when in reality she’s barely holding on to her assistant marketing job at a dying energy drink corporation, a job she hates with a passion and yet, like many of us, is too terrified to leave.
A big reason for Emma’s fakery is her beloved golden child cousin, Kerry, who is the apple of her parents’ eye. Kerry really *is* living the high-class corporate lifestyle, making Emma’s lack of success look more embarrassing at every turn. Of course after a couple of fibs, it’s all even again, to the point where Emma’s parents believe she’s living the exact opposite life that she actually is.
On her way back to the West Coast, Emma experiences one of her few fortuitous moments, finding herself upgraded to first class. Her seat-mate must have gotten bumped up as well because with his five-o’clock shadow and grubby outfit, he’d be lucky to be accepted on a Greyhound bus, much less the first class cabin of an airplane.
Somewhere during that five hour flight, the plane starts careening out of control, and it looks like they’re going down. A terrified Emma responds by barking out an endless closet of secrets she’s never told anyone, starting, of course, with how much she hates her job, moving on to how she made up a charity organization she volunteered for to get the job in the first place, and going into her deepest darkest sexual secrets that she’s never been able to act out (which include, amongst other things, dressing up like a nurse and being taken advantage of by a doctor).
Well wouldn’t you know it, the captain regains control of the ship, and an embarrassed Emma realizes she just told her whole life to a complete stranger. AWK-WARD. But it’s about to get a lot more awkward honey. You see, Panther Cola’s elusive CEO shows up for the first time in forever at the company. And wouldn’t you know it? It’s Airplane Guy. Who will henceforth be known as Jack Harper.
Emma assumes she’s screwed nine ways to Tuesday but is shocked when Jack calls her in and tells her she’s inspired him. Panther Cola has been down in the dumps and he’s been frantically searching for a new marketing campaign. Unleashing who you truly are, in essence, all your secrets, is the inspiration behind the campaign. And since she inspired it, he wants her to head it up.
Emma is re-energized, in both her work and her personal life, charging up those around her in ways that nobody ever expected. But as Emma and Jack’s professional relationship becomes personal, it becomes unclear if Emma is really earning all these accolades on her own, or they’re being handed to her because she’s – let’s not mince words here – “banging the boss.” When the truth finally comes out, Emma’s credibility is called into question, and all this success she’s finally been able to achieve, very well may come crumbling down.
I’ll get to the characters in a second, but what I really liked about Can You Keep A Secret was the uniformity of the theme. This romantic comedy is about something: Lying and/or the omission of truth. There’s the life we project to everyone else, and there’s the life we actually live. The distance between those worlds is usually wider than we’d prefer. Emma must lie to her parents to live up to their lofty expectations. Jack omits the truth in his relationship with Emma. Emma can’t tell her co-workers the truth about her relationship with Jack. The manipulation of truth is one of the most relatable themes out there, and I thought Can You Keep A Secret explored this in a wonderful way.
That’s why I liked Emma. I could relate to her plight. We all exaggerate things (especially us storytellers!) in order to impress the people we love, even though we know there will be consequences to those actions. And I think that’s what makes her situation so fun to watch, is that we know that, sooner or later, the consequences are coming. You can’t keep doing something “bad” forever and not have to pay for it. Just ask Bernie Madoff.
The care and attention to Jack was what really set this apart though. Usually writers will put all this work into their rom-com lead, then maybe half or three-quarters of that same work into the romantic interest. But Jack is not the typical happy-go-lucky “everything is peachy, I’m going to turn your life around” mate you usually see in these films. He’s got some pretty big problems of his own, and although it takes a while before we’re let in on those problems, we can see that they’re weighing on him.
That’s why this script got to me. Despite a lot of the formulaic plot choices (the company that NO real person ever works for – a protagonist with a marketing job), I thought the relationship itself felt realistic, with each person having real problems and real obstacles keeping them from being together.
In fact, I was all set to give this a double worth the read, but then, unfortunately, we get a huge plot contrivance late in the story, and it’s one of those contrivances you can’t make in your rom-com. In every romantic comedy, you need the “guy and girl break up” scene late in the second act. That way, they can get back together in the third act. But the break up in “Secret” is so manufactured (it involves Jack doing a CNN interview and revealing all of Emma’s secrets in a way that would never happen in real life), that it really hurt what was, up until that point, a fun romantic comedy about two people you liked.
That was a bummer, cause otherwise I would’ve given this a huge thumbs up. Unfortunately it will have to stand as a solid recommendation, a smart if predictable entry into the romantic comedy genre that WILL NOT be converting any non-rom-com fans, but should be plenty satisfying for the Notting Hill and Pretty Woman fan clubs. Just goes to show. Work on your characters first. Figure out what makes them tick. You do that and the rest of the story will come.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The late rom-com break up scene people. IT HAS TO BE BELIEVABLE. It has to be realistic! I can’t tell you how many writers I see fudge their way through this. They believe that because it’s part of the convention of the genre, that the audience will accept any version of it you vomit onto the page. Here, Jack gives up the details on Emma’s deepest darkest secrets on national TV completely unprovoked!!! There’s no way in a million years he would do this. Look at how this convention is handled in When Harry Met Sally
Genre: Fantasy
Premise: The death of the king’s right hand man results in a reclusive knight being recruited to replace him. Not only is the world he’s about to join filled with backstabbing and murder, but is threatened by the looming reemergence of a mysterious ghost-like species to the north.
About: Game Of Thrones is the new series debuting on HBO this April. A sort of weird hybrid of knight-ly tales mixed with Lord of The Rings 
Writers: David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, (based on the novel “A Game Of Thrones” by George R.R. Martin
Details: 59 pages – 3/27/09 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).
You asked for it. You’re getting it. A teleplay! Lots of e-mails from writers wanting me to cover more TV. The reason I don’t is because I don’t know the TV world nearly as well as I know the feature world. I’m not as familiar with how a series gets made. I’m not as familiar with how a show is supposed to be structured. But dammit if I’m going to let that get in the way of me pretending like I do! Truthfully though, the reason I decided to review this was because HBO creates some of the best programming on television, and since they’re heavily promoting this, I wanted to take a look. Okay, that’s a lie. I’m reviewing it because it’s 60 pages.
Game Of Thrones is packed with TONS of characters, and the first half of the script is pretty much an introduction smorgasbord. The most important of these people seems to be Lord Eddard Stark, a 40 year old knight who mans the northernmost castle in this imaginary land, a few short miles from “the wall,” a sort of “Great Wall of China” but bigger. Way bigger. What’s beyond that wall remains a mystery for this episode, but we get hints that an 8000 year old species of…human once lived there, and even though 8 millennia have passed, nobody has any interest in taking the wall down. Man, talk about a legacy. People are still afraid of you 8000 years after your extinction!!??
After an unexpected death by the king’s hand, King Robert takes a trip up to Eddard’s northern fortress to ask for his help. He wants Eddard to replace his enforcer and help manage his kingdom. While this would up his family’s profile quite a bit, Eddard is noticeably reluctant. He likes hanging out up here in the middle of nowhere – living the simple life so to speak. This would change his world considerably, and he’s not sure the pros outweigh the cons.
The rest of the script is a series of tiny subplots setting up a multitude of characters. We have an angry sex-crazed dwarf named Tyrion who’s so much like Charlie Sheen you wish Mr. Tiger Blood himself could turn into a dwarf so he could play the role. We have a young woman being forced into a marriage for political gain by her evil power-obsessed brother. We have the beheading of a prominent knight for deserting his duties after supposedly seeing a clan of ghosts. And we have the king’s 8 year old son accidentally seeing something he should not have seen, resulting in a shocking “guaranteed to get you back for a second episode” finale. All in all, a very jam-packed episode of TV.
Okay, there’s a secret being whispered about in the back rooms of Hollywood screenwriting channels. It’s one of those things you tell your feature-loving friends behind closed doors, but not dare say in public as doing so would be admitting a horrifying truth – that TV has become more interesting than film. I was watching The Walking Dead 
This is a particularly interesting conversation as we were just debating this with last week’s Amateur submission, Glastonburied. Sean argued, soundly, that writers shouldn’t always follow the rules and should instead take chances and let their instincts guide them. But therein lies the rub. Just being different does not equal “better.” In fact, the large majority of the time, different means much worse, and that’s because most of the people being different don’t even know how they’re being different, cause they never learned how to be the same. It’s an ugly confusing state us cinema lovers are in right now because we need vision, we need to take chances like these television people do, but I’m not sure enough people know how to take good chances that pay off. The reason The Walking Dead is so good is because it’s produced by Frank Darabont, one of, if not the, best screenwriters in the business. He knows how to be different because he understands all the rules he’s breaking.
Getting back to Thrones, this show is indeed a unique shifty story that could only be made on TV these days, and that’s a crying shame, as it ambitiousness is exactly what the feature world lacks at the moment. But is Thrones different good? Or is it different bad?
Maybe it’s because I’m not as familiar with TV, but holy moses smell the roses there are a TON of freaking characters introduced here. The first 30 pages consist entirely of characters being set up. Ugh, I felt like I was swimming in the La Brea tar pits. What made it even worse was that everyone was a “Ser” or a “Lady” or a “Lord,” There were so many damn sers and ladies and lords I felt like I was at a Dungeon and Dragons convention. But if you stick with it, if you push past this early portion of the script, Game Of Thrones starts to get good.
It starts with Eddard. There’s something broken about this man that we want to know more about. He’s given this great opportunity to change his life. So why is he so reluctant to do so? We also get a large dose of conspiracy, as we find out that the king’s hand might not have died, but instead was murdered. Hmm… And don’t get me started about this strange mythical species on the other side of the wall. Who the hell are these guys? What exactly did they do to have a kingdom keep a wall up 8000 years after their extinction? We have emerging nemeses with studly knights. We have beheadings. We have forced marriages. We have incest. There’s a lot of interesting fucked up shit going on here. It kind of feels like Tudors 
One of the reasons I believe reading TV pilots is important is because the medium depends more on its characters. Story is important, but not nearly as much as the people who populate that story. For that reason, all of the characters tend to be richer, more detailed and more interesting.
For example, Eddard’s oldest son must bear the brunt of being a bastard child, born from one of his father’s whores. This reality clearly eats away at him every second of every day, to be a lord’s son, and yet not be one, and we can already tell that at some point, this situation is going to explode. In its short running time, Game of Thrones introduces tons of characters like this, all battling some inner unresolved conflict, and when reading features, I rarely see that attention to detail in what’s going on INSIDE of everyone. Not every character hits in Thrones, but a lot of them do.
The one thing I do know about TV is you need that last minute cliffhanger to bring the audience back for week 2, and while I wouldn’t call what happens at the end of Game of Thrones a “twist,” the way they used to throw around shockers on Lost
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A great reminder that your characters should be battling some inner conflict. Whether it’s with their own identity (being a bastard son), with a belief in themselves, their commitment to family, selfishness, obsession with power. The characters in Thrones are all fighting battles inside, which is why they all feel a cut above normal movie fare.
Genre: Sci-Fi/Comedy
Premise: Every man in the world is dead except for a young slacker and his pet monkey, leaving a world entirely populated by females.
About: Brian K. Vaughan is a comic book writer, a TV writer (Lost
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan (Based on the series from Vertigo Comics Created by Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra)
Details: Draft 1.2 (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).
There are few screenwriters out there who have as much geek cred as Brian K. Vaughan. You say his name and geeks everywhere smile unintentionally, their cheeks turning red the way a 13 year old girl reacts when the school stud says hi to her in the hallway. I, however, am still undecided on Vaughan. I loved the majority of Roundtable, his Ghostbusters-like 
Y The Last Man starts the way a spec script should: with something happening. And boy is something happening. Moms are driving their dying husbands and sons to the hospital. Businessmen are keeling over mid-stride. 747s are crashing into the middle of cities. It appears we’re smack dab in the middle of the Apocalypse. Well, sort of anyway. We realize quickly that this apocalyptic event is selective, only killing off the men in the world, sparing the ladies and girls completely. Within 5 hours, every damn living creature with a y chromosome is a burnt pop tart, el officio deadondo.
Or wait, not EVERY living man. It appears that eternal slacker Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand, have somehow survived this ordeal. We’re not sure how yet but a guess is that the monkey has something to do with it. So Yorick throws on a gas mask to disguise himself, and heads to his mom’s place, where he hopes she’ll know what to do. Shock City then when his mom betrays him and calls the CIA!
Yorick grabs the monkey, jumps out the back window (don’t you love how awesome back windows are in movies?) and sprints for his life. A test subject for the remainder of his existence does not sound like fun. The last Yorick heard, his girlfriend, Beth, touched down in Los Angeles, and the poor romantic sap feels like if he can just make it to her, everything will be okay. Too bad finding your girlfriend in an apocalyptic wasteland isn’t as easy as jumping out the back window.
Unfortunately, Colonel Alter Tse-Elon, a female soldier in the Israeli defense force, hears about Yorick and makes it her mission to find him. She believes (I think – I wasn’t clear) that if Yorick is found alive that the earth could be repopulated with men, the root of all war, and that once again Israel would be subject to attack. Finding and killing off Yorick would essentially ensure world peace.
And you know what? She’s not the only one who wants to take Yorick down. A huge female biker gang that may or may not be hardcore feminazi lesbians, discover the presence of Yorick and want to pave his way down the Highway to Hell as well. Ugh, not good.
Luckily Yorick runs into Agent 355, a smoking hot secret agent for…some really secret agency, who decides to help him get to Los Angeles. She’s really the only thing that stands between him and capture, as she fights off the biker chicks and Israeli army at every turn, all the while trying to convince Yorick to offer himself to science so they can repopulate the world with men. Will this happen? Will the world’s biggest slacker be able to save mankind? We’ll have to see.
Y The Last Man is as crazy as it sounds. And that’s both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. What I like about Vaughan is that he gives you what every reader asks for. Surprise. Show me something different. And when Vaughan writes, indeed, you’re never quite sure what’ll happen on the next page. But it’s a double-edged sword, since what you get isn’t always satisfying, and occasionally is so broad that even the developers of those weird Japanese video games step back and say, “Whoa dude, not bi-winning, too far.” A lesbian biker gang? The Isralei army? A pet monkey? It’s not as out there as The Vault, but you definitely need to be up for the absurd when reading one of Vaughn’s scripts.
On the technical side, I wished Vaughan had explored his premise a little more. What if there really were no men left in the world? There’s a great little scene early on where this super-hot chick pulls up in a garbage truck (which she can barely drive), clumsily screwing up her job at every turn, and we’re going, “What the hell is this girl doing driving a garbage truck?” And she explains how she used to be a model, but when all the men disappeared, there was no use for models anymore, forcing her to take the lowliest of lowly jobs. True it was a gimmicky scene that had nothing to do with the plot but I loved that it was actually exploring the premise in a clever way. And I wanted to see more of that. There’s a little of it (the energy sector was dominated by men so there’s basically no electricity anymore) but I was hoping for more.
Structurally, the script has some good and bad things about it. You have a main character with a clear goal (“Get to Beth”) and plenty of urgency behind the goal, since Yorick is constantly being chased. Remember, if you don’t have a ticking time bomb in your script, a great supplement is to create a chase scenario. If someone’s always on your hero’s heels, it creates the illusion of a ticking time bomb. And whenever you have a road trip scenario, you probably want someone chasing your characters anyway, as it gives the story an added edge.
On the stakes front, I’m not sure the script achieves its goal. While Yorick IS the last man on earth, and therefore the last chance to save mankind, that’s not what his mission is about. His mission is to get to his girlfriend. It’s not like Will Smith in I Am Legend
The biggest misstep, however, was one I noticed only because I’d watched Raiders recently. Every third or fourth scene In Y The Last Man is Yorick and Agent 355 in a safe setting (on a train, on the side of the road) talking. These scenes are weak because the story isn’t being pushed forward in any noticeable way. Instead, the characters are talking about their pasts or discussing the effects of the plague. They’re not TERRIBLE scenes because Vaughan is good with dialogue (i.e. “You know what the strongest muscle in the human body is?” “The heart?” “No, it’s not the heart, you sappy fuck. It’s your jaw muscle. Even a scrawny dude like me has five hundred pounds of bite strength.” “Great, that’ll come in handy when you’re fighting food.”) but there’s no outside force or conflict or subtext going on during them. It’s just two people talking.
Compare that with the “dialogue” scenes between Indiana and Marion in Raiders. When he first finds Marion, he has to convince this woman whose life he ruined to help him. Or later on when they’re talking in Cairo, the baddies are moving into place to attack them. Or when she’s dressing Indy’s wounds, probably one of the truest “straight dialogue” scenes in the movie, even there the sexual chemistry that’s been building through them the entire movie is about to burst. In other words, there’s ALWAYS SOMETHING GOING ON in those scenes, whereas here in Y The Last Man, it just feels like two people talking. This is more a testament to how good Raiders is than any defining statement about Y The Last Man, but it is a reminder to add layers to your dialogue scenes.
In my opinion, Y The Last Man is too broad, too loose with the reigns, but there’s no denying that Vaughan always keeps you guessing and has some of the more unique characters you’ll find in a script. You want to talk about a unique voice, a voice that separates a writer from everybody else out there, go ahead and read one of Vaughan’s scripts. And for that reason alone, I think Y The Last Man should be read.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’m surprised I’m bringing this up with a Brian K. Vaughan script, since I just championed his originality, but this is proof that even the top writers fall into the same traps as the rest of us. No less than six days ago – SIX DAYS AGO! – I read an apocalypse script where in the opening scene, a jumbo jet crashes into the city. What happens in the opening scene of Y The Last Man? A jumbo jet crashes into the city. This is proof that ALL WRITERS THINK ALIKE. We think apocalypse and we imagine a plane diving into the middle of New York. It’ll be epic! But did we ever stop to consider that everyone else who’s writing an apocalypse script would think of the same thing? For that reason, always keep your competition in mind. Ask yourself if another writer would write the same thing. And if they would, write something else. Maybe an oil tanker with no one at the helm plows into the port instead. I don’t know. But keep in mind that that cool original scene you just wrote? A reader may have just read it last week. Which means you’re playing the role of second fiddle.
When Roger came to me wanting to review Stoker, the Wentworth Miller screenplay, I said, “As long as there are plenty of Prison Break jokes.” But I don’t think Roger’s ever actually seen Prison Break, which leaves the joking to me. Did anyone here watch that show? It was called Prison Break yet they broke out of the prison after the first season. Isn’t the show over? I’ve never seen a show/plot strain so hard to keep its characters together. They eventually ended up in Mexico in another prison, but get this, the prison was so relaxed that the characters were actually allowed to roam the basement area unattended. So the first prison was the most secure prison in the world and they broke out of that. Now they were having trouble breaking out of a prison where they could hang out in the basement for days at a time without anyone knowing or caring? I kept watching out of sympathy for the writers, who were tasked with making this whole thing conceivable. Eventually someone realized, “What are we doing?? None of this makes a lick of sense,” and they put the poor show down. But Prison Break will be immortalized for its ability to continue on longer than any dead show in history. And people thought Lost had filler. Anyway, I have great news. I’m reviewing an awesome comedy later in the week. It sold earlier in the year so if anyone wants to guess what it is, please do so in the comments. I’m also reviewing a haunted script. Unfortunately the only thing scary about it is the comedy. Should be a groovy week. Now here’s Roger with his review of Stoker.
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Premise: When India Stoker’s father dies, a mysterious man arrives and claims that he’s her long lost Uncle Charlie. As he integrates himself into the wealthy family, the eccentric teen is torn between trusting a man who may be an imposter and discovering her true nature.
About: Ted Foulke is the pseudonym of Prison Break star, Wentworth Miller. Carey Mulligan and Jodie Foster are attached to the project under Ridley Scott’s Scott Free production banner. Miller has actually written two scripts (the prequel script is called “Uncle Charlie”) about the unusual Stoker family and is presumably going to play the role of Uncle Charlie in both.
Writer: Ted Foulke
Wentworth MillerI was sucked into this script without knowing it was written by “Prison Break” star, Wentworth Miller. What caught my attention was the Edward Gorey-esque illustration of a girl on the cover, and I opened it and was enamored by the writing (the description and destruction of a spider as said girl plays a piano) within the first three pages. Intrigued, I paused to look up information on the script, and quickly discovered that the screenwriter, Ted Foulke, is the non-de-plume of the actor who played Sunnydale swim team member turned Lovecraftian fish monster on season two of the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.
Genre: Comedy
Premise: Three men on the verge of middle age celebrate a bachelor party at Glastonbury, a notorious mythic music festival in the UK.
About: (Correction – Although Sean does have credits, he does not have representation). — If you are a repped or unrepped writer, feel free to submit your script for Amateur/Repped Friday by sending it (in PDF form) to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Please include your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script. Also keep in mind that your script will be posted.
Writer: Sean Vaardal
Details: 103 pages – Feb. 14, 2011 draft
Lots of people have asked me to write an article on what makes a great query letter. That article has been written somewhere in the neighborhood of 713,000 times already, so I’m not going to rehash it here on Scriptshadow. But I will broach the subject because Sean’s query to me is the reason I picked him for today’s review. Before I get to Sean, let me address a few general thoughts.
Guys, I love you. And you send me some really passionate stories about how difficult it is out there and how hard it is to get your work noticed. However…I can’t pick your script when every tenth word in your query letter is misspelled. i can’t pick ur script if u don’t capitalize or punctuate correctly or if you write 2 me in text speak. I can’t pick your script if you ramble on incoherently about your concept or your aspirations. If you ramble on in a 500 word query letter, I can only imagine how unfocused your screenplay is going to be.
You need to approach your query letter with the same level of professionalism you’d imagine Ernest Hemingway would have done it. That’s not to say you should be buttoned up and humorless. But be focused, devoid of mistakes, and get to the point quickly. I thought Sean’s query was pretty much perfect, so I decided to include it here. Here’s what he wrote…
Dear Carson,
I am a scriptwriter with credits on two award-winning British comedy shows Smack The Pony and Monkey Dust.
I would like to send you my new feature-length script, a comedy called Glastonburied.
I got the idea after an article in The Economist, which said 43 is the age at which you are apparently no longer young. According to this, I have only 6 months left before I am ‘officially’ old. But what I want to know is: How do you stop being young, and are you supposed to? And if so, when does the wisdom start kicking in?
I thought this ‘tipping point’ idea was a good way of analysing three, 40-something friends over a weekend at the Glastonbury music festival. A place where people go to lose themselves or find themselves. A place where all your dreams can come true, a place of myths and legends, bands and chaos, where you might enter an innocent but leave with a rare, new kind of knowledge.
Glastonburied is like The Breakfast Club for adults. It combines male identity themes reminiscent in Sideways, with the added mayhem of Withnail & I.
Go on Carson, you old mucker, make it your Amateur Friday pick of the month.
Cheers,
Sean
Now I don’t know what a “mucker” is, and I’m not going to speak for every agent, manager, and producer out there, but I’ll tell you why this worked for me. First, he exhibits a clear grasp of the English language, which indicates to me that at the very least, his writing will be easy to read. Next, he uses a well-known trick to pitch his idea – relating his screenplay to his own life. If I believe that there are some personal issues you’re exploring in your script, I know I’m reading something meaningful to the writer, which almost always ends up in a better screenplay. Sean also gives me a couple of movie references so I know what to expect, and ends with a pleasant-humored challenge, encouraging me to give his script a shot.
Now, of course, this query got me to read the screenplay. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to like it. Did I like Glastonburied? Read on to find out.
Gary Newman is a piano bar singer just north of 40 who’s beginning to have panic attacks during his performances. It seems as if Gary’s directionless life has finally caught up with him, a life that was once quite promising . You see, back in 2003, Gary won one of those “Idol” shows in Britain, and was for a brief time on top of the world. Clearly, that top has bottomed out.
Adding salt to the wound, Gary’s fiance just called off their wedding. The reason being simply… he’s a shell of his former self. It would’ve been nice, of course, if she would’ve told him this BEFORE Gary’s two best friends showed up for his weekend bachelor party. And because Gary doesn’t want to deal with the consequences of telling them what happened, he decides to keep the break-up a secret.
The friends in question are Jeff, a once moderately successful actor, not unlike Thomas Hayden Church in Sideways, and Keith, a rich family man desperately clinging to his youth. The three of them head off to Glastonbury, a famous/infamous music festival where people go to lose themselves, in search of one last wild time together before Gary gets married (or not).
Naturally, once they get to the festival, all hell breaks loose. A urinating witch immediately puts a spell on them, they befriend a couple of hot young ladies who may be Nazi sympathizers, they meet and participate in some local cult rituals, and of course do a lot of drugs. The characters in Glastonburied do a LOT of drugs. In the end, Gary must decide whether to embrace the next stage of his life or stay trapped in his middling existence forever.
Alright so, first off, let me just say, Sean, I’m on your side. I liked the presentation. I liked the pitch. But since it does nobody any good if I sugar coat my reaction, I’m going to hold Glastonburied to the same high standards I hold million dollar sales. I think this script needs a considerable amount of work. And it starts with the main character. I have a tough time accepting lead characters as celebrities or former celebrities in a character piece, because there’s nothing relateable to an audience about someone who’s a current or former celebrity. Think about it. How many people have won an American Idol like competition in their life? 200? 250? So that’s 250 people who know exactly what your main character feels like. There are obviously exceptions and there was a connection between the character’s past (he’s a musician) and the current situation (he’s at a music festival), but here’s the specific reason why it didn’t work for me: It was false advertising. In the query letter, it was implied I would read a personal everyman journey. That’s the whole reason I wanted to read it! Because it was tackling a normal everyday guy’s collision with that most relate-able of relate-able situations: getting older. So when the main character was given this totally specific celebrity past, every drop of realism, every ounce of that “everyman” I was hoping for, instantly vaporized.
I was also bummed about the way the story was set up. What hooked me in the query was the bit about a guy learning he had six months before officially becoming “old,” and therefore wanting to do something exciting with his last bit of “youth.” But in the script, this line (about becoming 43) is buried deep within the second act, long after it’s lost its significance. That line was the perfect inciting incident for the movie and the fact that it has nothing to do with why he and his friends go to Glastonbury was a bummer.
The structure here needs work as well. Glastonburied is missing three very important story elements: A character goal, stakes, and urgency. Gary isn’t trying to obtain any goal in the script other than a vague sense of holding onto his youth. And since he’s not trying to obtain any goal, there are no stakes to his journey. You can’t gain or lose anything if you’re not going after anything in the first place. And of course, since there’s no goal or stakes, there’s no urgency. You can’t be in a hurry to achieve anything if there’s nothing you’re trying to achieve.
This leaves the plot in the same hole so many other struggling comedies find themselves in: it’s essentially a loosely connected series of comedic situations. This is great if you’re directing a Saturday Night Live episode, but not if you’re constructing a story where all the pieces are supposed to fit together.
Let’s go back to Hangover 
Goal: Find Doug.
Stakes: If they don’t find him, he doesn’t get married.
Urgency: They have two days before the wedding.
I’m not saying to copy this exact structure by any means, but these elements need to be in place for a comedy such as this to work. You also need to be aware of when specific story choices eliminate these opportunities. For example, Gary’s wife breaking up with him before the bachelor party was an interesting choice, but in making that choice, the ticking time bomb (urgency) was eliminated. There’s no need to get to the wedding if the wedding doesn’t exist.
I think a lot of my reaction goes back to the fact that I felt misled from the query. If this was going to be a goofy romp with lots of drugs and pissing witches and strange cults and that sort of thing, that’s fine. That type of comedy can work. But if I’m going in believing this is another Sideways
Script link: Glastonburied
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Whatever genre you’re writing, make sure the tone of your query reflects that genre. So if it’s a comedy, throw a joke in the e-mail to prove that you’re funny. If it’s a dark drama, keep the query more professional and straight-forward. Whatever the case, please, before you send your query to anyone, give it to your parents or the most anal punctuation/spelling Nazi you know and ask them to weed out all of the mistakes. It’s hard to catch the eye of someone in this industry. They’re all so busy. So bring your best game to that query.
