Genre: Crime/Thriller
Premise: A small town roller skating rink manager prepares for marriage when a secret from his past comes back to haunt him.
About: This script was purchased by Cruise-Wagner about 15 years ago, presumably for Cruise to star in. The writer, Philip Jayson Lasker, has a roundabout connection – believe it or not – to yesterday’s script. Although he wrote on the hit show The Golden Girls 
Writer: Philip Jayson Lasker
Details: 116 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).
The sale of Identity Crisis can be looked at in a couple of ways. There was a time when Tom Cruise owned the world. Not just movies. But the entire world. This allowed he and his producing partner, Paula Wagner, to buy up a ton of material and develop it, wait for the best stuff to emerge, throw in a dash of whatever Cruise was jonseing to do at the moment, and voila, movies would get made. In that sense, Identity Crisis could’ve been a chance Cruise took – one of those risky clothes purchases you’re not sure if you’re ever going to wear or not. But hey, why not? You can afford it. Then again, if you’re a more optimistic person, you might say, “Holy shit. This script sold to Tom Fucking Cruise at the height of his movie stardom!” Selling your script to *the* movie star of the moment is basically the screenwriting equivalent of the Super Bowl.
That alone is reason to study this script. Purchases like these get you into the mind of an A-List star.
Arthur is just your below-average roller skating rink manager in a small town in the middle of nowhere. He has a beautiful fiance, Ellen, who’s 3 months pregnant, and who he plans to marry in a few weeks. Despite his life looking up, it isn’t all roses for Arthur. He used to be someone important back in New York, someone who made a lot more money than what you make Tuesday afternoons at the bowling alley, that’s for sure. And it doesn’t help that his fiance’s mom thinks he’s a worthless loser who’s not good enough for her daughter.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the country, we meet Raincoat Man. Raincoat Man (not to be confused with “Rain Man”) is not a nice man. Raincoat Man specializes in one thing – killing people. And he’s awful good at it. If you have any doubts, he shoots a man right between the eyes while he’s at the top of a ferris wheel. I hear that shot’s pretty easy at the bottom of the ferris wheel. But at the top? That’s a hardcore killer there.
After a few “hidden in the shadows” discussions with another shady character, we become aware that Raincoat Man’s next victim is none other than Arthur. This instantly leads to the question: Why? Arthur seems like a normal stand-up guy. Why would someone want to kill him? Hmm, he did have that mysterious job back in New York. Just how mysterious was it?
In a scene that was surely designed to bring teenagers everywhere into a hormone-inspired frenzy, Arthur is allowing a private late-night “naked roller-skating” party at the rink. Raincoat Man is not prepared for all the naked flesh when he strolls in to kill Arthur, and the distraction allows Arthur to escape, get back to his house and save Ellen before she’s a victim too. That’s when the truth comes out. Our boy Arthur is in the witness relocation program.
In a seriously weak logic oversight, Arthur storms back to New York to see how he was found, and actually leaves his wife back at the town. This allows Raincoat Man to kidnap her and drive her back to New York with him, where he’ll use her, if necessary, to complete the hit on Arthur.
This culminates in a couple of rather gigantic double-crosses, leading to the biggest double-cross of all, the answer to who put the hit out on Arthur.
If you’re thinking to yourself, “This sounds a lot like ‘History Of Violence
Figuring out why Cruise bought the script isn’t hard if you read my “How To Write For An A-List Actor” article. Once again, we hit on another actor staple – Actors like to play roles where they’re projecting one person to the outside world but are secretly someone else on the inside. That’s why they like to play CIA agents. That’s why they like to play superheroes. There’s an inherent complexity in playing someone who’s hiding something from everyone else that satisfies their acting needs.
As for the script itself, I don’t think there’s enough going on here in the first 2 acts to keep an audience interested. The third act gets kind of good when we make our way up the ladder and find out who’s behind all this, but up til that point we spend way too much time focusing on insignificant scenes that feel like they’re stalling. For example, we get a scene where Ellen is picking a wedding dress with her mom that doesn’t push the story forward at all (always push the story forward with every scene!).
I think Raincoat Man (who’s actually referred to as “Man in Raincoat” in the script – the reverse moniker was my own) had a lot of potential. He’s cold and calculated, yet chatty and practical. When he kidnaps Ellen and she tries to run away, instead of immediately going after her he yells out that they’re in the middle of nowhere, with nowhere to run, so it would be wiser for her to just get back in the car. We’re never quite sure what’s going to come out of this guy’s mouth, and that unpredictability goes a long way, making him the stand-out star of the script.
But despite him and the nice twists at the end, too much of this script went according to plan. I was way too far ahead of it most of the time, especially in the middle act, where everything was too “standard witness relocation genre” stuff. When you’re writing a script that depends on its twists and turns, those twists and turns must be frequent and inventive. If they’re just like every other twist and turn in the book, you’re not going to excite the reader.
I can see why this sold but I would’ve liked a more inventive treatment of the story and in particular a more exciting middle act.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: How far ahead of you is the person reading your screenplay? This is one of those things I don’t think writers think about enough – especially in “twist-centered” screenplays. Sometimes you *think* you’re ahead of your reader, but you don’t really know unless you put yourself in your reader’s shoes. A good rule of thumb in these types of scripts is to have something unexpected happen every 15 pages or so. I’m not talking about a world-shattering Sixth Sense like twist every 15 minutes, just something unexpected (big or small) to keep your reader on his toes. If you sail along for too long where nothing surprises the reader, he’s going to get bored fast.
Genre: Period/Drama/Comedy
Premise: Orson Welles produced a musical titled “The Cradle Will Rock” back in 1937 that was shut down on opening day, forcing the production to make a last second change that some would later say inspired the best stage experience they’d ever had.
About: Cradle Will Rock was meant to be Orson Welles’ last film as director. It went into pre-production in 1983 with Rupert Everett on board to play Welles before the backers pulled out and the production collapsed. Spielberg was interested in producing it around 1985, but ended up dropping out and nobody would touch it afterwards. The same subject matter was later written into a completely different movie, which Tim Robbins directed, also titled “The Cradle Will Rock
Writer: Orson Welles
Details: 109 pages – Revised November 9, 1984 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).
Welles complained near the end of his life how frustrating it was trying to make movies. He said that to make just one movie you had to scrape and claw your way through ten years of torture. Now I’m no Einstein, but Welles may have been having this trouble because he was trying to get movies like “The Cradle Will Rock” made. This is just not the kind of movie you hitch your trailer to if you want to get films made. It’s a movie that may get made if you find a bunch of actors who want to play 1930s dress-up like Tim Robbins was able to do, but at a certain point you have to be honest with yourself. Why try to make movies that no one wants to see but yourself? It’s a losing proposition all around.
Anyway, on to the actual script, and I’m going to say this right off the bat. This is one of the most reader-unfriendly scripts I’ve ever read in my life. I don’t know if Welles has ever read any scripts or he just wrote them but man, this is like staring at one of those 1990s Japanese video games that gave you epilepsy for two hours. The slugs are underlined. Huge parenthetical passages are placed under every character name before they speak, the margin pushed awkwardly far to the right, forcing your eyes back and forth across the page like you’re watching a tennis match. Over-description to the tenth degree. I know Welles is writing for himself here but pointless details litter the script, making 109 pages feel like 209. Each character gets a novel-like introduction. Little asides assault your patience at every turn (like this one: “It should be noted that Moishe (like Carter) is a man of many accents. Just here, for instance, he should have said “thoid” for third. He didn’t.”). Each page was such a chore that finishing them felt like running a marathon on no sleep.
Because I needed a Da Vinci Code cryptex to translate what was on the page, it was nearly impossible to get into the story. So if the below plot summary seems confusing, it’s probably because I didn’t understand exactly what was going on.
The Cradle Will Rock introduces us to the world of The Great Depression. Everybody’s poor. Nobody has a job. It’s a bummed out country. Hey, kind of like today, right?
Anyway, Orson Welles (who refers to himself as acronym “OW” in his voice over) is putting together a stage production/musical/opera called “The Cradle Will Rock” (remember, the entertainment industry is depression proof!). The music is being written by newcomer Marc Blitzstein, who, despite garnering nearly 20 adjectives of description, I still know next to nothing about.
I don’t know if Aaron Sorkin was writing back in 1982, or if Welles did some time-travelling and watched the West Wing, but the next 60 pages are basically Welles walking around with Marc and other people, Sorkin-style, showing them the city, showing them his home, showing them his favorite restaurants, and prepping “The Cradle Will Rock.”
I wish I could tell you that something interesting happened during this time but honestly, it was 60 minutes worth of set-up for the final act. I guess the one semi-interesting thread was Orson’s wife, Virginia, whom he had married at a young age, and who he had since grown apart from. Their relationship is very business-like, and when Marc meets her, there’s a little bit of flirting there that we think is going to turn into something else. But Welles (the writer – and maybe, err, the real person) never allows it to, which means the one semi-interesting thread is never explored.
Somewhere around page 75, the government comes in to close the production down. Because Welles has such a difficult time translating the story to the reader, it was never clear why this was happening. After doing some research online, however, I determined that because everyone was so poor in The Great Depression, people were starting to sympathize with socialist/communist ideologies. “The Cradle Will Rock” supported these ideologies, and therefore the government felt the need to shut it down.
The problem with this is that this was the first time we were hearing about it. The script never sets up or mentions that this is a serious problem. As a result we’re more confused than captivated by the development.
The Cradle Will Rock’s only successful sequence is its final act, because it’s clearly the only time Welles knew what he wanted to do. Alas, I was just thrilled that I was reading scenes where I could actually understand what the point was and what was going on.
What happens is that Welles has 500 people show up for opening night only to find soldiers guarding the playhouse so that none of them can get in. His team makes some last second frantic phone calls and realizes that if they can say this is a “concert” and not a “musical,” the government can’t stop them. So they rent a concert hall 20 blocks away from their current location, and ask the crowd to actually walk there with them.
Because at a concert, only the musician can be onstage, the actors are forced to sit with the crowd and act out the musical from their spots. A famous New York critic would later write that it was the most inspiring and magical production he’d even seen.
I have to admit that, despite all the other problems here, the ending was solid. The problem is, Welles had no idea what to do before it. We are literally watching our characters walk around and do NOTHING for 80 pages. Even though our main character, Welles, has a clear story goal (to put the production together in time), it’s never a struggle. It’s never in doubt. There isn’t a single moment where we wonder if he’ll be able to do it. Which leaves us a whole lot of pages where zippo is happening.
Also, the quickest way to get a reader to tune out is to throw them into an unfamiliar setting right away (in this case the 1930s – which we understand the broad strokes of, but that’s about it) and then rapidly introduce a dozen-plus characters. Keeping track of a bunch of written names is hard enough in a familiar setting. In a period piece? It’s like being told to memorize the fifteen ingredients in an obscure Mediterranean dish that you’ll later be asked to cook. And you’ve never cooked before! So right off the bat, I had trouble keeping up with “Cradle.”
Ironically, despite their huge introductory paragraphs, very few of these characters have any actual depth. A lot of them are steeped in the characteristics reminiscent of a sitcom, plowing into rooms like Kramer from Seinfeld, but with no backstory, no context.
Overall, this was a bizarre reading experience. And I love Orson Welles. He has one of the most interesting stories in Hollywood history. But I think he believed his final act was enough. He didn’t realize that he needed a story before it. At the very least, this has me intrigued to go watch Tim Robbins’ version of the story, which I never in a million years would’ve been interested in watching if I hadn’t read this.
[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If there’s ever been an argument for why concise streamlined writing is important in a screenplay, this would be it. Overindulgence, pointless asides, too much description, clumsy formatting – all of these things murdered my interest in this story before I could get into it. There may be a much better movie in this screenplay, but because I was so beat up in the process of reading it, I didn’t have the energy to find out.
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: A female CEO hires a sleazy private investigator to help her find the perfect husband.
About: This script sold for 2 million dollars to 20th Century Fox back in 1999. Gerald DiPego has written half a dozen novels and has a number of produced credits, such as Phenomenon and Message In A Bottle. But don’t let that fool you. This script is his masterpiece.
Writer: Gerald DiPego
Details: 108 pages (November 7, 1998 draft)
Rachel McAdams would be perfect for the role of Chase.I’m so happy to be able to end Big Money Week with this script because whenever I go back into the unproduced specs of yesteryear time capsule, I usually find screenplays that prove why they’ve been forgotten. The last three Big Money scripts were perfect examples (still haven’t read Smoke and Mirrors). But this. This script surprised the hell out of me. Not only was it a great script. But it’s better than EVERY. SINGLE. ROMANTIC. COMEDY SCRIPT. OUT THERE. RIGHT NOW. I’m not kidding. Which gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, someone will wise up, stop fucking around with all these 18 Ways To Eat Your Spouse shitty rom-com projects and make Executive Search. This is a writer who actually understands what makes a romantic comedy good. This is someone who actually understands that it’s not simply a catchy title, a hilarious hook, a bunch of knee-slapping set pieces, and a billboard that says, “Heigle Vs. Butler.” It’s about the characters. For the love of God, it’s about the characters!
Chase Banner is a 35 year old CEO of a software company that’s launching a game-changing software product in a few months. Chase is a tireless meticulous worker. So meticulous, in fact, that she schedules her meetings to the second. She doesn’t have time for anything else in her life. If you report to Chase, you don’t give her the fat. You give her the meat. If you can’t consolidate information into a few key sentences, go home. This girl operates on Cliff’s notes.
Problem is, Chase is starting to get that itch. No, not that itch, but the kind where you wanna, like, settle down. Get yourself a man. Start a family. But Chase barely has time to make personal phone calls. The last thing she has time to do is spend hours upon hours on the dating circuit in the hopes of maybe possibly potentially finding a man. So Chase has an idea. Since the kind of man she wants is exactly like herself – driven, passionate, successful – She’ll hire a headhunter to find her a “co-CEO” to “run her company.” Of course, she has no plans to actually partner with a CEO. She’ll simply treat the top choices as her potential future mates, finding a way to meet them after the search is over.
I know, I know. It sounds a little gimmicky. But the great thing about DiPego’s writing is that despite the obvious set-up, he manages to make it all sound plausible. Even reasonable! While I was reading this I started thinking, “Hmmm, this wouldn’t be such a bad idea to try out myself.” Unfortunately there’s a flaw in Chase’s plan. The Headhunter won’t research personal lives. Seeing as this is the man she’ll be spending the rest of her life with, she wants to know if he has any skeletons in the closet. This is before Google, you know? So it was a hell of a lot harder to stalk people. So she decides to hire the best private investigator in town to do background checks. But in a major mix-up, she instead gets a 45 year old gambling drinking mess of a man who can barely keep his apartment in order, much less his life. Meet Buddy Hallibeck.
Despite Buddy’s off-putting pedigree, he possesses just enough charm to convince Chase to take a chance on him. And it’s a good thing she does. Buddy may not look it, but he’s one hell of a P.I. When the headhunter brings back the top 3 “CEO” choices, Buddy immediately goes to work, breaking the men down with the skill of a forensics analyst. It’s through these ongoing updates that the two develop a tenuous if barely respectful relationship. Although this is where you’d typically find a lot of artificial fighting between the two swooning-but-refuse-to-admit-it future lovers, there’s none of that in Executive Search. Even though Chase’s resistence to Buddy feels familiar, it also feels honest. Sure she sees something in Buddy. But she’s also smart enough to know it’d never work. She’s a successful CEO. He’s a slimy private investigator. It’s not even worth considering.
That kind of honesty continues throughout Executive Search. Nothing here feels forced. Even though the scenario has a movie quality set-up to it, you never feel like you’re watching a movie. You feel like you’re observing two self-absorbed stubborn people, both with complicated lives, both trying to find stability in their own fucked up ways. The conventions are either absent or don’t feel like conventions. These two aren’t desperately in love but won’t “admit it.” They don’t get stuck in the same bed together at one of their parents’ house. There’s no obligatory montage with heartwarming music. Everything here is real. Gritty. Honest.
And the character work here is just awesome. Each of these characters has a flaw in their lives that’s holding them back – something relatable, something all of us can understand. And you truly feel that they’ll never be able to find happiness until they overcome it. There’s also a wonderful subplot with Buddy’s 17 year old daughter, a girl Buddy is desperately trying to win the admiration of, as well as a perfectly integrated sub-pot involving somebody trying to steal company info from Chase. And it all fits.
That’s why I love this script. It’s that rare screenplay puzzle where every single piece fits. You can feel the care that went into this, particularly after being exposed to a decade of rom-coms that stink of being slapped together over a couple of Saturday afternoons. I liked this so much that I’m putting it in my Top 25. And I’m asking whoever owns it (I think 20th Century Fox?) to pull this one out of the vault and give it another shot. Give us a romantic comedy with depth again. Revive the genre. And don’t use any shitty rewrites either. Use the spec draft. It only needs a couple of technology updates and you’re set. Seriously, why the fuck are you wasting money on all this shit when you have something that’s actually good? I don’t care about the politics of this ridiculous business. Make a great movie and watch the money and accolades role in.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Once you have your gimmick down, once you have your hook, forget about it. Forget about how you’re going to sell the thing. Switch your focus over to the story and the characters. Make them the best they can possibly be. I think that’s the problem with a lot of today’s writers. Is they rely too much on their premise. They think that that’s going to do all the work for them. It’s a casualty of movies like “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up” doing well. Because so much of the joke is implied in the title and the marketing, that writers assume if they get that part squared away, their job is over. But Executive Search goes back to a time where writers still cared about their characters. You need to do the same thing in your rom com.
Ugh, yesterday was not a fun day at all. As a lot of you already know, the mediafire library that PJ had posted has been taken down. The reason it’s been taken down is because Fox has sued PJ for 15 million dollars. It’s just a sad day, not because scripts will no longer be available or nobody can come to a consensus on whether what PJ was doing was right or wrong. It’s sad because I know PJ is a good person and gained nothing personally from having the library up. She just wanted amateur writers to learn the craft of screenwriting through professional writing. She wanted to help others. I think what a lot of you are wondering is, will this affect Scriptshadow? The answer is a definitive yes. I’m not sure how yet but it’s a safe bet that the format of the site will change significantly. While reviewing scripts isn’t illegal, when billion dollar companies put their foot down, you have no choice but to ask how they’d like their shoe tied. If you want to help PJ with her legal fees, I know they’ve started a collection fund over here on this site. If you feel that you’ve in any way become a better writer because of what she provided, please please help her out.
Genre: Drama/Heist
Premise: A group of thieves invade a small southern town during a weekend festival in order to rob the town’s lucrative mill.
About: If you know anything about the history of film, you know James Dickey. He wrote one of the great movies of all time, Deliverance, which he adapted from his own novel. Dickey actually came to prominence as a poet in the 60s, writing several compilations that became very popular. This led to him reading one of his poems at President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. Despite the popularity of Deliverance, it is Dickey’s only produced screenwriting credit. Gene Bullard was his follow-up screenplay, which was never made.
Writer: James Dickey
Details: 121 pages – 1975 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).
Deliverance is one of my favorite movies. I dare you to go home tonight and watch that movie and not fall under its spell. That film wraps its finger around you and pulls you in until you don’t even know which way is up. It’s that spellbinding. And yet, it’s a really strange screenplay. When you go back and watch a lot of movies from the 70s, you get frustrated with the drawn out deliberate pacing of anything but the classics. But even in its slowest moments, Deliverance still dazzles, and it’s not easy to figure out why. I mean, who would’ve thought that stopping the story for five full minutes while two characters have a banjo showdown would not only work, but become one of the most famous movie scenes of all time?
Needless to say, when I heard that Dickey had written another screenplay, I got excited. Why wasn’t it ever made? Was it bad? Was it too genius for others to wrap their heads around? What’s the story behind Gene Bullard? I wanted to find out.
Gene Bullard starts with four criminals driving into a small town. There’s Makens, the dangerous leader, Jimbo and Leon, his loyal sidekicks, and Joby, the young handsome outsider. Through their conversation we learn that Joby’s just gotten out of jail and is leading Makens and his crew to his old town, where he plans to help them rob the lucrative mill that employs most of the town’s residents.
The town itself is gearing up for a festival and the star of this festival (and the star of the town) is Sheriff Gene Bullard. Bullard is a jovial type who grew up in this town as a virtual pariah. He was a high school sports star and the person everyone wanted to be friends with. He also was a surrogate father to Joby, who he’s ecstatic to see back from jail. Joby introduces Bullard to Makens and the others and Bullard has no idea that this man is going to rob his town blind within the next 48 hours.
This is where Gene Bullard gets a little strange. Instead of getting to business right away, Makens and his buddies decide to enjoy the festival for awhile. They head over to the main bar and get drunk. They head over to the town hall and dance. They stalk out any woman who will have them. They figure, if we’re going to rob this town, we might as well have some fun in it first.
Concurrently with Makens mini-ratpack adventures, we’re cutting back to Gene Bullard, who seems to have involved himself in multiple female endeavors, some of which he keeps under wraps and some of which he’s quite open about. There is one woman he can’t seem to get a handle on however. That would be Joby’s twin sister, Lila – easily the best thing about this screenplay. Lila is a master loomer (loomstress?) whose movements and demeanor feel almost ethereal in nature, like she’s floating above the rest of the world. She’s weird, mysterious, and dangerous. Gene has no idea what to do with her.
If this is all sounding a bit random, that’s because Gene Bullard is very random. Between the moment we get into town and the moment when Makens attempts the robbery, we’re basically just watching a lot of characters enjoy a crazy festival. After all the festival stuff finally ends, Makens makes his way over to the mill to rob it, and in a very Coen Brothers like finale, a lot of things start going wrong, which results in a final showdown between Bullard and Makens.
This was a strange one. I think the most frustrating thing about Gene Bullard is the character Gene Bullard. This is a man who the screenplay is named after, and yet he has no goals, no real point – he’s just this passive character who stumbles around from situation to situation. I still don’t know how Dickey wanted him to be perceived, as he’s in some places popular, other places moronic, other places a clown, and other places a ladies’ man. If this script should’ve been named after any character, it would be Makens. He’s the one driving the story. He’s the one with the active goal (rob the mill). He’s the one who really sticks out as a character.
Dickey is almost able to overcome this deficiency with the inclusion of some Dickeyisms. I call them Dickeyisms since they’re strange Deliverance-like moments that only Dickey would write. For example, there’s a scene where Lila plays the harp that feels very similar in tone and mood to the famous dueling banjo scene in Deliverance. There’s also one scene in particular where, if this movie would’ve been made, would’ve been a classic that fans would still be talking about today. In it, Bullard is seduced by Lila, who, just before they’re about to have sex, pulls out a rattlesnake. It’s a bizarre scene where we don’t know if she’s going to kill him or have sex with the thing, but it was a great sequence that was impossible to forget.
I think where this script struggles to attain the greatness of Deliverance is in its point-of-view. Deliverance was awesome because our point-of-view was with the friends the whole time. We saw the hillbillies only through their eyes, allowing us to imagine for ourselves how dangerous they were. In Gene Bullard, we’re jumping back and forth between the good guys and the bad guys freely, to the point where we know Makens well, and therefore we’re not really afraid of him. I know this can work (it worked in No Country For Old Men) but it didn’t work here. Deliverance just had this overwhelming feeling of dread that Gene Bullard never attained. And I think knowing the bad guys too well is what caused it.
Obviously, this script is a product of its era. We have long wandering scenes that remind you of the wedding scenes in The Godfather or Deerhunter – scenes that just don’t work nowadays with people’s attention spans the way they are. There still might be a movie here (I’d love to see the character of Lila onscreen) but it would have to be rewritten considerably. Either way, it’s a fascinating look back at what could’ve been.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Splitting screenplay time equally between two main characters is hard to pull off. It’s advised that you focus on one main character and give the majority of time in your screenplay to him/her. However, if you want to split time between characters, make sure that each one is active, that each one has something going on. I think this script faltered because one of its main characters didn’t have anything to do. Gene Bullard just stumbles around from location to location until he’s called into action in the final act.
Genre: Comedy
Premise: In 1985, a 13 year old socially challenged boy obsesses over finding pictures of nude women while his preacher father tries to become a bishop.
About: This is Phil Johnston’s first sold script, I believe, which landed him on the 2006 Black List. Johnston would later write “Cedar Rapids,” which would make last year’s Black List and get produced earlier in the year (it stars Ed Helms). Johnston was a broadcast journalist in the Midwest who moved to New York to attend film school at Columbia. While details are sketchy, I believe this is the script that got him representation at UTA. You can also find some storyboards Johnston did for the script on this site.
Writer: Phil Johnston
Details: April 7, 2006 draft – 107 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).
Last year, Cedar Rapids, Phil Johnston’s kooky tale about a straight-laced small-towner trying to survive a weekend in the “crazy” big city of Cedar Rapids, climbed its way into the Black List Top 10. The script made Johnston one of the hotter writers in town. But it actually wasn’t Johnston’s first script. In fact, it wasn’t even his first foray into the Black List. That happened back in 2006 with another script called “Jeremy Orm is a Pervert.”
I had no idea what to expect from “Orm,” but I quickly found out that Johnston’s unique take on small-town America which served him so well in Cedar Rapids, was actually sculpted and framed long beforehand.
Let’s jump back to 1985 Neenah, Wisconsin. Jeremy is a 13 year old “chubby bowl-haired oddball” who’s just trying to survive junior high. He and his “unnaturally thin” best friend, Gordon Pinto, are, like most junior high boys, obsessed with seeing girls naked. Now for you younger folk, let me just tell you, it was a lot harder to do this before the internet. Jeremy and Gordon have scrapped together bits and pieces of material through the years – a possible nip-slip from a JC Penny catalogue, some naked National Geographic African women, even some naked pictures from the Holocaust – yeah, there’s some major desperation here.
But when an acquaintance from their class brings them the real deal – a Playboy – it’s like their world has been turned upside-down. These are “real” real naked women.
Jeremy would be spending all his time on nudie hoarding if he could, but he has other problems to tend to. His preacher father wants him to get in shape and is therefore obsessed with the idea of Jeremy making the basketball team, a sport Jeremy doesn’t even play. After being cut immediately, Jeremy is so afraid of his father’s reaction, he lies and tells him he made the team.
He then goes and begs the coach to allow him to play, who says he’ll let him on the team if he pays him 100 bucks a week under the table. I’m not even sure Morris Buttermaker would pull that one. It looks like Jeremy is screwed. However, after some brainstorming, he realizes that he might be able to buy Playboys from his Playboy supplier and sell them to school kids at a marked up price. He, Gordon, and Swati (a smart pushy Indian girl) throw together a business and soon he’s making just enough money to pay the coach so he can stay on the team.
In the meantime, his slightly racist fairly sexist preacher father is up for the esteemed title of Bishop, and happens to be running against a woman. Over the course of the story, when it looks like the race will be surprisingly close, he resorts to darker and slimier tactics in order to land his dream job. This include exposing her gay son to the world. But what Jeremy’s father will learn is that he has a far bigger mess to clean up with his own family, especially Jeremy, whose increasingly unsavory antics are about to blow up in his face.
The term “voice” can be thrown around a little too liberally at times. Truth be told, of all the new writers I see jumping onto the scene, it’s rare that they have a truly unique vision of the world that nobody else has. I love Source Code. But I don’t think the voice in that script is doing anything we haven’t seen before. It’s just a really well-told story.
But when you open up a Phil Johnston script, you really do feel like this guy has a unique view of the world. Each of his characters are steeped in this quirky exaggerated Midwesterness that makes them slightly different from any character you’ve read before.
He mixes that in with the contradictory nature of Midwesterners, specifically their dogged attention to morals, which they circumvent on a daily basis. Watching Jeremy’s preacher father make racist comments and tear down women, while believing he’s the perfect candidate for state bishop, is the kind of conflict Johnston loves to explore.
But what sets Johnston apart from other writers who like to write these kinds of character-based quirky movies, is that Johnston makes sure his characters have strong goals driving the story. So here, Jeremy’s dad is desperately trying to become bishop. Jeremy is desperately trying to stay on the basketball team so as not to upset his dad. Those two goals keep the story focused, and that can’t be stressed enough. Character based stories that fall off the rails fall off because the characters have flimsy goals with no stakes. This may be a small story but the characters’ goals feel big because they’re so obsessed with them.
If “Orm” has a problem, it’s when its characters skew a little too broad. The basketball coach here is a Nazi-sympathizing German. I felt we’d gone a little too far into left field (and maybe even into the bleachers) on that one, and in the process took some of the edge off Jeremy’s goal. There’s also a deaf-mute assistant coach who speaks in sounds that would’ve worked great in a movie like Airplane. But here it was just a little too weird and “out there.”
In the end, however, this is really solid writing. Since a unique voice is so rare to find these days, when one emerges, it’s impossible to ignore. And I haven’t read anything like either of Johnston’s scripts. I don’t think this is quite as good as Cedar Rapids, which was a little bigger and a little more fun, but it’s still a very deserving script.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’ll be honest, I don’t know all the qualities that make up a “unique voice,” but I know that the dominant quality is how a writer sees the world. If you see the world just like everyone else, then there’s probably not a whole lot of uniqueness to your script. But if you see people differently, situations differently, objects differently, theories differently, chances are people will recognize you as having a unique voice. One of the reasons Tim Burton is so successful is that he sees the world differently from everyone else. You can tell that by watching any of his movies. When you read The Voices or Mixtape, you feel like they see the world differently. This is by no means the only way to get your script noticed, but it is one of the more established ways.
