Genre: Heist
Premise: (from writer) A Detroit bank thief accidentally steals from the Canadian mob and is forced to lift a rare painting from the Detroit mob to pay them back.
About: Served Cold made it to the semi-finals of the Screenwriting Expo competition but that’s where it topped out. Pryor, who’s about as far out of the Hollywood loop as one can be, living in Atlanta, wanted to know why his script didn’t advance to the next round. — 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: Steven Pryor
Details: 101 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’re combing through queries trying to decide which scripts to read, there are two kinds of scripts that catch your interest. Subject matter you like and scripts that make movies. The first one is a wild card. You can’t control it because everyone likes different shit. But you have a little more control over the second one – whether your idea is “a movie.” In order to find out, you simply have to ask, “Is this an idea someone who’s looking to make money (In most cases – lots of money) would want to buy?” I’m not the biggest fan of the heist genre, but heist stories are inherently “movies.” People have proven that they’ll pay to see them. So this was the thinking behind picking “Served Cold.” I wanted to read something that producers would conceivably bet some cash on.
The script starts out somewhat predictably, introducing us to our team of heisters. There’s Fisher, the 20-something no-nonsense leader. There’s Worm, Fisher’s number 1. There’s pony-tailed Biggs, the muscle. And there’s chubby Carter, the “brain.”
We also meet the bad guys, the leader of the Canadian mob, Frenchmen and style aficionado Louis Garnier, his number 1, Roland (who I imagined to be Steven Seagal on a bad day) and a few other baddie underlings.
Fisher’s team starts out robbing a small bank with expert precision, not a hitch in their step, so when the FBI show up later, they’re curious why a group of pros would have any interest in such a small job. The answer, of course, is that they’re practicing. Practicing for something bigger.
But when Fisher heads home after his day’s work, we realize there’s more to this guy than simply nailing the big score. Turns out he’s got a younger brother with cancer and a mother who refuses to deal with it. Instead, she ducks responsibility by getting blasted every day. That leaves Fisher in charge of the bills.
But Fisher doesn’t want to be doing this forever, so he finally commits to that big job that’s going to put all of them on easy street. He and his team coordinate what should be the easiest 7 million dollar bank heist in history.
There are a few hitches in the execution but they do manage to grab the money – for a second. Turns out their pony-tailed teammate Biggs was playing them like an Xbox. He takes the seven million and jets. This is where it gets interesting (or more complicated depending on how you look at it). That money they stole was money owed to Louis Garnier. And as far as Garnier’s concerned, that means they owe him 7 million bucks. When Garnier’s rival (who I think ended up with the money Biggs took somehow) buys a 7 million dollar painting, Garnier orders Fisher and his team to steal the painting to clear their debt.
Annnnnnd…breeeeaaaaath.
There are actually several more twists and turns, which was one of the problems I had with Served Cold – the plot gets a little convoluted and overextended (especially in the second act). However, I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. It started off too conventional (a gruff voice over intro to our crew before they take down a bank), but what’s cool about Served Cold is how unpredictable it becomes. 70 pages in and you’re still wondering how it’s all going to shake down.
So then why didn’t “Served Cold” make the finals of the Screenwriting Expo Contest? Or why doesn’t it stack up to a recent heist script like “The Town?” That’s easy to answer. There’s a) not enough conflict going on between the characters in the story and b) the relationships between the characters aren’t explored enough.
Let’s look at The Town, which I thought was great. Renner’s character is Affleck’s character’s best friend. There’s a lot of history between the two. And Renner is a ticking timebomb. We know it’s only a matter of time before the guy blows up. Renner also wants the girl that saw them during that first heist dead. You know, the girl Affleck’s falling in love with? The girl Affleck is SNEAKING around with?
This is an extremely complicated three-way relationship that plays into every heist and provides numerous situations packed with conflict because of the unique dynamic between the three. So when Renner unexpectedly shows up at Affleck and the girl’s lunch, it’s a terrifying scene, because we know psychos don’t take kindly to their best friends lying to them AND keeping a girl alive that can put them in jail for the rest of their llives. Served Cold doesn’t have any of that. Each character in the crew is their own individual island, and there’s no sense of history or conflict between any of them.
Speaking of the girl, look at the differences between the love interests in The Town and Served Cold. In Served Cold, Adelle, the romantic lead, is cast off to the side – someone Fisher simply visits between heists. Contrast that with the romantic lead in The Town, who’s right in the mix of the story. She worked at the bank they robbed at the beginning. She might remember them at any minute, which means every moment Affleck spends with her jeopardizes his own and his best friend’s safety. Affleck’s best friend also wants her dead. Notice how much better the story is when your romantic lead is right in the thick of things.
I also had a hard time with Cancer Brother. One of our jobs as screenwriters, especially when we give our heroes unsavory lifestyles, is to come up with a way to make them sympathetic so the audience will root for them. But sometimes we go a little overboard. On paper, Fisher making money to pay his brother’s medical bills is noble, but in this particular situation, it comes off as manufactured and schlocky, like the writer is trying too hard to make you love his protagonist. It’s the right idea, I just think Pryor went too far.
We also have to talk about the beginning of the script. You can’t introduce 10 characters in your first four pages. It’s so important for these pages to flow. They have to hook the reader. If your reader is going, “Wait…um….who is that again?” Or “Okay so that guy is friends with that guy but that other guy is friends with…this guy?” or, “I might need a notepad to keep track of all these people,” you’re gumming up the portion of your script that’s supposed to be the easiest to read.
If I were tackling this rewrite, I’d probably back off all of the plot developments and focus more on the characters. Find out who these people are to each other. Create bonds that can be broken, rivalries that can be renewed, love that threatens to get in the way. A heist is so much more than busting into a bank. It’s about the people busting into the bank. I didn’t get that sense here (other than with Fisher).
But on the writing end – this was pretty good. The style was easy to read and the script has story density to spare, so I can see why this would advance in a big competition. I’ll tell you what I loved. I loved that Pryor killed a major character in his story. I love when any writer does this because it sends a subliminal message to the reader: “You don’t have a fucking clue what’s going to happen in my script.” Readers can usually predict everything because they’ve seen it all before. When someone who’s supposed to be safe dies, that comfy little cocoon they’re in disappears. “How could that have happened?” the reader thinks. “That character never dies.” It’s definitely the moment that pulled me into the script.
This was a tough call because I like Pryor’s writing, but since the relationship aspects were barely explored and the romantic interest exists outside the main plot, I’ll have to give this a “wasn’t for me,” just barely missing a “worth the read.”
Script Link: Served Cold
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The character descriptions here were too generic. When you’re writing a genre that’s been done a million times before, and therefore has a high probability of coming off as generic, you don’t want to confirm that likelihood by giving the reader unimaginative character descriptions. “Cropped hair, muscled but not bulky.” “Ponytail.” “Chubby, scar on neck.” That’s how you’d describe a criminal to the cops, not how you describe characters in a screenplay. Give us more. Be creative. Tell us if their eyes are damaged, what their demeanor is, a unique characteristic that sets them apart from everyone else in the world (a scar is too simple). I want to connect with characters. If the writer doesn’t tell me anything about them, I just imagine a stick figure and a blurry face.
What? You can’t stand waiting for the 2010 Black List? Me neither. Which is why I present to you The Hit List! What is this “hit” list you ask? I’ll let the guys over at The Tracking Board give you the in-depth breakdown. But basically they realized that one of the biggest weaknesses of The Black List was how much studio generated content was on it. What if you created a list…that only ranked the best SPEC SCREENPLAYS of the year? Ahhhh? Now we’re talking.
There were over 400 spec scripts that went out this year and over 250 Development Executives, Producers, Writers, Agents, Managers, Directors, and Assistants who voted on which of those they liked the best. So the voting pool is pretty comprehensive. I voted myself (although I’d only read 40 of the 400 scripts on the list). Anyway, it’s pretty interesting to see which ones did well. No doubt some finished high because of the sheer volume of people who read them, but there were definitely some surprises that I was happy to see do well.
Since it’s impossible to publish a “best of” script list these days without a few jokes being made, I WILL approve your jokes, but only if they’re funny and don’t personally offend me.
To download the list, head on over to The Tracking Board. I’ll address my feelings about some of the rankings in the comments section below. Meet me there!
When you decide to jump into this unpredictable chaotic world of screenwriting, the first thing you’ll want to do is write some scripts. Bust out that copy of Final Draft 
However, once you’re ready for the race, it’s time to start thinking about which avenue gives you the best chance of breaking in. Everybody has their own path. Everybody “makes it” their own way. But what I’ve found is that there are a lot of talented writers out there who aren’t making it because they keep banging their heads up against the wrong door. When you’re jonesing for some ice cream, you don’t head over to the nearest Pizza Hut, do you?
The most common way into the business is still a good writing sample that gets you heat from low level agents, managers and producers, which gets you into meetings, which allows you to pitch other projects and interview for assignments, which allows you to start working, which – voila – makes you a working writer. However, let’s face it, that path is the least fun to walk. And it takes so damn long. So let’s discuss four quicker ways into the business and see if your style matches up with that avenue. If it doesn’t, you may need to reevaluate if the direction you’re taking is the right direction for you.
I’ve read a lot of Black List scripts and there are two common traits that permeate through the ones that end up on the coveted list: quirkiness and cleverness. The people voting on these scripts are used to reading the poor man’s versions of all those stinkers you see in the cineplex. That’s like trying to find refreshment in those generic supermarket colas (“Premium Cola!”) as opposed to drinking real coke. And you wonder why readers have a reputation for being bitter. Because of this, Black List readers like to be caught off guard. They like to be surprised with something as far away from the Hollywood groupthink as possible. A small-town butter-carving competition? They’re in. A depressed man who speaks through a British-accented Beaver puppet he’s found in the garbage? Touchdown. A serial killer flick about a guy who talks to his pets…and they talk back? Oh yeah. This is the place for all the future Charlie Kaufmans, the disciples of Michael Gondry, the guys who build “best of” Spike Jonez Youtube compilations. There are other ways to make this list for sure, but if you’re quirky and clever, if those are the kind of scripts that emerge from your hard drive, then the Black List is your destination.
There’s a little crossover between the Nicholl and The Black List, but the Nicholl, more than any other screenwriting avenue, gravitates towards depth. They want their scripts cerebral. Period pieces about the human condition, a recent politically charged event, a dark exploration of characters facing death…this is what these readers like. Theme is also a huge component of a Nicholl-winning script. If you aren’t trying to say something with your story, if there isn’t a moral or a statement about humanity, then chances are your script isn’t going to do well here. And that’s great for writers of slower character-driven screenplays. Because if it wasn’t for the Nicholl, there’d be no place where these writers could find acceptance. So stop sending that script about an 1875 Scottish wake to Michael Bay. Save yourself the trouble and enter it into Nicholl.
Selling a script for a million bucks is getting harder and harder to do these days, and usually only happens via high-profile agents who can use past sale prices from their top-level clients to negotiate that elusive seven figure sum. But does that mean we’re just going to give up? Hell no! Big price tags have notoriously come from four genres: Thrillers, Comedies, Sci-Fi and Action (and sometimes Horror). Why? Because these genres are the most receptive to the high-concept, and high-concept is still the most important component to making that big sale. If you don’t have a big idea, drop your dreaming ways and enter the Nicholl instead. High concept has been debated to death but basically, you know you have a high concept if you can put it on a billboard and people everywhere will get excited to see your movie. A bachelor party where they lose the groom told as a mystery the day after? High concept. A CIA spy who doesn’t know that they’re a double-agent (Salt). High concept! Someone keeps reliving the same time loop over and over again (Groundhog Day, All You Need Is Kill, Source Code)? High concept. If you’re hoping to sell your script for a lot of money and you’re not working with a big idea, you’re proverbially banging your head up against the wall, keeping your career in check!
What if I told you you could write a script that was guaranteed not to net you a single penny? Do I have your attention? Probably not. But trust me, you’ll wanna keep reading anyway. There’s a secret way into this screenwriting business and it’s through the back door. I’m talking about the “viral” script. Viral scripts have been around a lot longer than “viral” became a media buzz word. You might remember Blockhead about the Peanuts gang all grown up in New York, smoking pot and fucking each other like nobody’s business. Or Passengers, where the writer decides to tell the story in the first person. Or Van Damme Vs. Seagal, about the two once-famous action stars warring with each other in modern day L.A. The common thread here is that none of these scripts can be made into movies, one because of copyright issues, one because the actors would never agree to it, and one because the main reason it’s such a good read (that it’s in the first person) doesn’t translate to the screen. But each of these scripts received a ton of buzz, and really what it comes down to is getting your name out there so you can start getting into rooms and pitch your backlog of projects. This avenue is for the craziest of the crazy, the weirdest of the weird. If you’re a little bit nuts or notoriously think outside of the box, this is definitely a direction you’ll want to consider. A word of advice though. Make sure you have a couple of “real” scripts already written and ready to go when you write your viral script (they should preferably be in the same genre). There’s no use going through all that effort to get some meetings if you don’t have any product to sell.
I run into a lot of writers who don’t have a plan – who fall in love with their well-written but ultimately unmarketable script and haven’t yet figured out which avenue is their way in. As a result, they cling to scripts that don’t have a lot going on in them. I call these: “nothing happens” scripts. The most common “nothing happens” genre is the “coming-of-age” story. We all write them, particularly early on, but this genre is notorious for creating scenarios that are completely devoid of drama and conflict. Characters sit around and philosophize about life (“Death is like so…complicated”). 25 year olds are bitching about how difficult their life is (They’re 25!). There are no character goals, no point to the story, no forward momentum, no interesting situations. It’s just talking heads. Talking head talking heads talking heads talking about…whatever the writer thinks is interesting. And yet we write them. Why? Because that’s generally how our 20s go. If you want to write a character piece, that’s fine, but make sure there’s a hook to it. Everything Must Go is essentially a coming-of-age story, but it’s one with a clever hook – a guy is kicked out of his house so he starts living on his front lawn. I think the lesson here is, try to be exploring some unique angle in your screenplay – whether it’s the style, the hook, a character, a subject matter, the point of view, how you treat time – some aspect, no matter how tiny, that gives your script a uniqueness that sets it apart. Nobody wants to linger in obscurity but if you’re clinging to that idea where a bunch of people in their 20s are just trying to “make it in life,” there’s a reason no one’s responding to those query letters.
And that’s it folks. Now that you know which kind of scripts do best in which scenarios, you can start targeting that specific avenue. For example, if you’ve decided you’re a Black List writer, go back through all the old Black Lists and write down every agent and manger in the Top 30 and send them a query. And one more thing, which should be obvious but it’s worth mentioning. The caveat for all these scripts achieving their goal is that they’re well-written. They have to have structure, conflict, character development, sharp dialogue, story density. And they have to be good from page 1 to 100, not just in spots. So there you are. I’ve given you the blueprint for your success. What are you waiting for?
Genre: Horror
Premise: A paranoid delusional man is left on house arrest out in the middle of the woods.
About: Adam Alleca first started writing feature scripts at the age of 13. His father was in the Air Force so he lived all over the world growing up. He got an internship with Eli Roth’s company right after college and realized that would be his best shot to get into the business and had seven scripts ready to go when he arrived (talk about a writer with a plan!). He optioned this script to Wes Craven’s production company back in 2005, when he was 22 years old, and soon had six other options set up around town. As a testament to how bright this guy is, go ahead and read this interview and tell me you don’t think you’re reading the interview of a 42 year old and not a 22 year old. I’m a little shocked that his only produced credit up to this point is 2009’s “Last House On The Left
Writer: Adam Alleca
Details: 115 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).
I don’t want to alarm any of you young writers out there. But it’s rare when I see a young writer churn out a great script. Young writers tend to be full of ideas, but don’t yet know how to form those ideas into a compelling narrative (it takes time!). I think they’re capable of doing this, of course, but when you’re a young writer, you’re not really interested in narrative. You care about the eye candy, the great scenes, the flashy dialogue, the big concepts, the shit people will be talking about when they leave the theater. This is why you’ll read a great scene in a young writer’s script, then the next five scenes are complete disasters.
So color me shocked when I came across this script from a 22 year old that showed more command than any script I’d read all year. I was so skeptical of his age after reading this, in fact, that I was convinced he’d either pulled a fast one or the script I had read had gone through 5 years of development. It wasn’t until I learned about his backstory that it made sense. Alleca had been writing features since he was 13! This meant Home was written 9 years into his screenwriting career. For whatever reason, that settled an oncoming bout of anxiety. Cause if any 22 year old can bang out a script this good, I might as well give up now.
Home has a simple compelling “contained” horror setup. 30 year old Ellis has just been released from jail to start a 30-day stint on house arrest. The house he’ll be staying at is his eccentric uncle’s, who died last month. The souped up cabin (with an entertainment system to die for) is in the middle of the forest, sheltered from the outside world.
Ellis is under the watchful eye of Brode, his parole officer. Brode is thick, brash, and enjoys the power her job brings her. She lays out the rules for Ellis in straightforward fashion. She’ll be coming by once a day. He better be here. He’ll be getting three calls a day from an automated machine to confirm he’s in the house. He better answer them. He’s got an electric ankle bracelet. He better not try to leave the house.
And just to show that this will be a little different from the usual horror fare you read, Brode has one more rule. Ellis has to fuck her whenever she wants. He says no, she reports him to her boss and back to jail he goes.
Ellis himself is a bit of a mystery. He’s pale, gaunt, has long stringy hair, and he’s afraid. Not of being out here in the middle of nowhere, but being out here in the middle of nowhere with himself. Ellis suffers from paranoid delusions, which means as soon as Brode walks out that door, he doesn’t know if what he’s seeing is real or imagined.
So how did Ellis get stuck here in the first place? His best friend Alex, as evil as they come, used to kill people and make Ellis watch. Alex was thrown away lock and key, while Ellis served some minor jail time for not turning him in.
So it’s no surprise that Ellis soon starts seeing Alex around the house. Alex is convincing, telling him he escaped from jail and needs to stay here for a few weeks while he figures out what to do. As proof, he mentions that he rode his motorcycle here and stashed it out back. Since Ellis can’t go outside however (because of the ankle bracelet) he keeps checking out the back window to see if the motorcycle’s there (thus confirming that Alex is real), but can never get the right angle to see it.
The lodging of Alex becomes an issue because a young woman, the gothy/alternative Lynn, comes by every day to deliver groceries. This girl clearly likes to walk on the wild side, and is curious about Ellis, always quizzing him on why he’s on house arrest. Ellis is terrified that if Alex was ever around her, he might do something to her. He might start the killing again. That is, of course, if Alex is real.
If all this isn’t enough to worry about, Ellis discovers that his “cool” uncle has a much more complicated life than he knew about. He finds a hidden sex dungeon in the house, as well as a huge covered up hole in the basement, that the mailman informs him probably connects to the old town mines. Ellis swears he can hear something down there, but the black bottomless pit makes it impossible to tell what, if anything, the sound is.
I *really* liked this. I mean really really liked this. Here’s the thing. When I read any of these contained horror scripts, I’m mentally counting down the pages until the writer runs out of ideas. I know that’s not the most positive way to read a script but it’s happened the last 30 times I’ve read contained horror scripts. You get a bunch of gimmicky scares and spooky situations that play well as individual scenes, but 20 pages later you’re bored out of your mind because there’s no story holding it together. The recently reviewed “Open Grave” is a perfect example.
Alleca – surprisingly (and I say that only because I’m not used to it – especially from such a young writer) – is more interested in telling a horror *story* here, instead of just a collection of horror *moments.*
It starts with the multitude of threads he weaves around Ellis’ predicament, all of which are interesting. I love the reversal in the Brode character. How many millions of times have we seen a male character using their power for sex in a movie? It was so refreshing to see that flipped around. The female was using *her* power to get what *she* wanted. That may seem like a small thing, but it told me that this writer was aware of what had come before him, and was interested in pushing himself to come up with something different, something other writers never push themselves to consider.
The mystery behind Alex is also well crafted. I loved how we had no idea if Alex was real or not. We’re set up to believe that he’s an appartition, and yet there are little clues here and there which indicate he might be telling the truth and is really here.
Then you have Lynn, who’s really the female love interest in the script. There’s something off about her but we’re not quite sure what it is. And we’re on the edge of our seats whenever she comes by because we know Alex is jonesing to kill again. Will Lynn be his next victim? Will his actions force Ellis back into that prison?
Then you have the Uncle, who’s revealed to have this sick sexual fetish. But you don’t know how deep his fetish goes. And when some of the people who visit his house reveal themselves to possibly know the answer to that secret, maybe even be involved in it, the storyline really becomes compelling.
And I haven’t mentioned what’s going on with that hole downstairs. Or who the person is who keeps calling and threatening Ellis. Each one of these threads provides so much mystery, you’re forced to flip through the pages faster than you can read them.
And I’d be remiss not to mention the dialogue, which I thought was great. Brode in particular has her own speech patterns and slang and idiosyncrasies that really made her character pop off the page. This was the case with all the characters, who each had speech patterns that fit their particular character.
Another reason why the writing surprised me so much was that I’d never seen someone this young use so much restraint and be this disciplined. Each scene is only there to move the story forward. Each scare is layered into the movie via a setup and payoff. And on top of that, he’s an incredibly lean writer. I dare you to find a 4 line paragraph in this script. Every action paragraph only tells us exactly what we need to know and nothing more.
I see so many bad horror films that I can’t fathom why they’re not putting this into production. It’s so good. I don’t know if Craven still has this or if it’s back in Alleca’s possession, but someone please make this now. An extremely cheap movie to shoot that will be better than 99% of the shit out there. Alleca is easily the best screenwriter at age 22 that I’ve ever seen.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 25!)
[ ] genius
What I learned: Here’s some advice from Alleca himself: “I guess that would be my one piece of advice to Emerson students if anyone’s interested: Your internship is GOLD. Your entire college career has been leading up to it. You need to be ready to blow people’s socks off. You (or your parents, if you’re lucky) aren’t spending 35k a year so you can learn to use a 16mm Bolex and analyze film clips. What you’re buying is access to free equipment to shoot your own films (not to mention hundreds of willing actors) and an easy way to score a tasty internship in LA. If you graduate from college with nothing but straight As on your report card and a framed degree, then you got fleeced, my friend. Especially if you’re a writer or director, it’s a fantastic opportunity to show as many important people your material as possible and get a leg-up. Be ready for it with as many quality samples of your work as you can (either short films or a few completed, polished feature scripts) and choose it carefully. Don’t go for high profile places just for the sake of name value. Go somewhere that it seems like people would be open to looking at your stuff and treating you like an equal rather than purely as an underling.”
Genre: Biopic/Historical
Premise: A look at the life of the great Napoleon Bonaparte.
About: Kubrick believed nobody had ever made a great historical film and he planned to be the first. But his expensive dream project kept falling apart, even at the height of his popularity. The point of contention seemed to be the budget, which was obviously enormous due to all the battle scenes and extras needed. Had Kubrick lived into this new digital era where the 17 year old who works at the local 7-11 counter can create a 20,000 person digital army on his Dell Laptop in minutes, he surely would’ve made this – probably after Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick’s research on Napoleon is legendary. He believed that Napoleon was the most fascinating person to ever live and wanted to get him right. Therefore he sent an assistant around the world to literally follow in Napoleon’s footsteps (”Wherever Napoleon went, I want you to go,” he told him), even getting him to bring back samples of earth from Waterloo so he could match them for the screen. He read hundreds of books on the man and broke the information down into categories “on everything from his food tastes to the weather on the day of a specific battle”. He gathered together 15,000 location scouting photos and 17,000 slides of Napoleonic imagery. A book has even been written of the efforts called Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made
Writer: Stanley Kubrick
Details: 154 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).
Carson + Biopic = thputthhhh (spitting noise)
That’s usually how it goes at least. And on top of that, I appear to be the one non-Stanley Kubrick fan in the universe. I mean, I respect the guy’s talent and all. But his worldview is way too bleak for me. So when I looked at this 154 page tyrannosaurus, I nearly spontaneously combusted. It was as if someone decided to dump all the elements that I hated into a screenplay cup and forced me to drink it.
Napoleon did have one thing going for it, however, and that’s that I knew very little about the man (no pun intended). I knew he was a great war tactician. I vaguely knew something about his ego leading to his demise. But that was about it. At the very least, I’d be surprised by the story.
Napoleon is a pretty traditional treatment of the biopic genre. We meet Napolean at age 6, and follow his life until his death. His childhood and early adult years are nothing to write home about. He goes to military school at age 16. He’s a good soldier – a good leader. When one of his captains shows an ineptness at handling an approaching mob, Napoleon casually steps in and writes up a tactical maneuver to defeat them. It works without a hitch, and the higher ups note that they may have someone special on their hands.
This begins a series of scenes where Napoleon rapidly rises up the ranks, winning pretty much every battle he’s a part of. And there were a lot of battles. Back in the late 1700s, everybody was at war with each other. The British hated the French. The French hated the British. Russia hated everybody. We may bitch about war now but back then there was so much war that someone may have lived an entire life without ever experiencing peace.
Eventually Napoleon met and fell in love with a beautiful young woman named Josephine. It was a match made in heaven. If heaven were hell! Maybe it was a part of his Napoleon-complex but Napoleon had, like, zero game. He wrote Josephine hundreds of letters smothering her in his love, to the point where she was disgusted by him.
This led to an infamous affair with another French military official of which everyone on the planet seemed to know about except Napoleon, mostly out of denial. When he found out, he became set on divorcing Josephine, but she begged him to stay with her and because Napoleon was secretly a softie, he called off the divorce.
In the meantime, Napoleon was making Genghis Khan look like a pussy. His appetite for war was insatiable. And he was revolutionizing it with every battle. Napoleon stressed mobility over everything else, allowing his armies to move in ways no other armies had moved before. He won so many battles that he basically became a God which eventually allowed him to anoint himself Emperor of France. His success was such that nobody tried to stop him, despite the absurdity of the act.
He soon turned his sites on defeating his arch-nemesis Britain, who France had been warring with for something like 200 years. His plan was to cut them off economically. Napoleon became best buddies with Alexander I, the emperor of Russia, after France defeated them. And his terms for victory were very simple. Don’t trade with Britain anymore. The idea was to weaken the island so that when the time was right, he’d be able to strike. But after awhile, the unpredictable Alexander felt he was losing out from the trade just as much as the Britons, and simply stopped following the terms.
Napoleon realized he had no choice but to take down his old buddy, and marched a huge army into Russia, planning to take over Moscow. Surprisingly, the Russians decided not to fight back and when Napoleon got there, the city was deserted. Napoleon had won without even raising a finger. But there was a problem. Alexander refused to sign the treaty.
I’ve never heard of this tactic before but it turned out to be a good one. You can’t march an army into another country, spending millions of dollars on the campaign, and then just walk back home without a signed treaty. So Napoleon marched on to St. Petersburg to take that city instead. This turned out to be his undoing, of course, as most of his army died during the trek in a relentless Russian winter. Napoleon’s legacy never recovered after that.
First thing I noticed about this – and something I didn’t expect at all (I had never read a Kubrick script) – was just how silky smooth the writing was. Having come off that monstrosity that was “The Cradle Will Rock,” where Orson Welles assaulted me with his minefield style of writing, I just assumed that this is how the old-timers did it. But Kubrick was apparently ahead of his time, keeping everything lean, to the point, and very easy on the eyes. I’m telling you, go read ten pages from each of these screenplays and you’ll see the difference between an easy to read script and an impossible to read one.
But really, the reason why Napoleon works is because Kubrick stresses the micro over the macro. Whenever you tackle a huge subject, it’s really easy to get lost in the bigness of it all, stressing the famous battles or big races or memorable performances or whatever that subject was famous for. But what the audience is going to connect with – the thing that’s going to pull them in – is what happens on the personal front. What happens behind closed doors.
Napoleon’s complicated relationship with a wife who doesn’t love him creates a sympathetic figure out of a man who basically lived for bloodshed. That’s not easy to do. And instead of the focus being on huge battles between France and Russia, Kubrick instead focuses on what happens afterwards, when Napoleon and Alexander became great friends, a likewise complicated relationship that Napoleon similarly misjudged.
And I think that’s a theme Kubrick was going for here and another reason the script worked so well. Napoleon was a master at understanding thousands of people at a time, but incompetent at understanding those same people individually.
Kubrick also made the choice of adding a narrator for the story and really, if you’re writing a period biopic, I don’t know how you can do it any other way. There’s just so much shit that the audience needs to know, and you’re jumping through time so often, that you need that all-knowing booming voice to orient you. So if you’re writing that big period piece, you’re probably going to need a narrator.
I think where Napoleon falters is in the one spot that every biopic falters. You are a slave to history. Despite my celebration of the micro here, when you’re making a movie about a great war figure, you want to end your movie with a major battle. But even though that would’ve been ideal from a story sense, it’s not how history was written. Instead, Napoleon chases an army that refuses to fight him for 20 pages, waits another 10 pages as their leader refuses to sign a treaty, heads off to another city for 10 pages, watches his men die, goes back to Paris which has been taken over, tries to take it back himself, and eventually gets exiled to an island. Instead of getting that big climactic third act, everything just fizzles away. And it’s a real shame. Because it’s built up as these two old friends about to throw all their might at each other in what will be one of the great wars of all time. Then one of them runs away? Try throwing that into your next fictional final battle climax.
So I was a little disappointed in how this script ended. But man, Kubrick is a really good writer, and his love for his subject matter is unparalleled. This isn’t some dyslexic confused romp like Oliver Stone’s 8 versions of Alexander, but a real story about a real man. And one that needs to be made. You don’t even need to rewrite this thing. You could film it as is. What is Hollywood waiting for?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I gleaned this piece of knowledge from How To Write a Movie In 21 Days. When you write a story, there’s a knack to start that story from far away. But for a story to work, you have to tell the story from up close. Napoleon is a great example of this. When you think of Napoleon, you think of his fame, the huge battles he was a part of, his adoring country. But these aren’t what give us an emotional connection to the story. It’s the man inside those battles. Who he is. His passions, his flaws, his relationships, his idiosyncrasies. Tell your story from “up close” and the “far away” will emerge with more meaning.
