Genre: Horror/Ghost/Mystery
Premise: A family moves into their dream house in the suburbs, only to find that the house has a horrifying past.
About: David Loucka’s been writing for a long time, penning films as far back as 1989, when he wrote the Michael Keaton starrer, “The Dream Team.” Still, work was pretty erratic until recently, where he’s gone on a tear. In addition to writing Dream House, Loucka is writing the The Ring 3D and The House at The End of The Street. Basically, if there’s a dream or a house in it, Loucka’s writing it. Dream House has already finished production and stars Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz. It’s directed by Jim Sheridan, who wrote and directed, “In The Name Of The Father,” “My Left Foot,” and one of my favorite films, “In America.”
Writer: David Loucka
Details: 116 pages – July 18, 2005 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).

Reading Dream House was like plopping down in front of the TV on Sunday to watch your favorite football team, watching them run back a kickoff for a touchdown on the opening play, then proceed to get massacred over the next 2 hours, only to see them mount an incredible comeback in the last quarter that puts them in position to miraculously win the game. So the question is, did Dream House win the game? You’ll have to read on to find out. But I have to say, this is definitely one of the stranger screenplays I’ve read in awhile.

Will and Libby are a married couple with two daughters who have a few problems in their relationship, not unlike most couples. Will’s a hardcore workaholic, a fiction editor who’s lucky to slump into the house by 10 o’clock. Libby’s a simple housewife who just wants the best for her family.

Our story begins right after Libby threatens to take the girls and leave if Will doesn’t start giving them more time. The realization rocks Will into realizing what’s important, so he agrees to move his business out of city and into the suburbs, where he can be with his family and repair the damage he’s done.

They immediately find a broken down but beautiful house in the middle of a great suburb for an unbelievable price. But after moving in, strange things start to happen. There are weird cubby holes within the house where dead animals are strung up to the ceiling. They hear strange shuffling noises downstairs at night. Peeling away the old wallpaper, they find pentagram signs and horrifying drawings. Something is not right with this house.

But when Will goes back to the real estate agent who sold him the home, she professes to not know who he is. In fact, whoever Will speaks to either looks at him strangely or runs in the other direction. What the hell is going on??

Eventually (and we’re jumping into spoiler territory here), Will finds out that a man shot and killed his family in this house twenty years ago. The house has been abandoned ever since. Even worse, Will finds out that the killer is not in jail. He’s staying at a minimum security mental institution. Technically, he could show up at any second and blow them all to pieces. And then there’s the possibility that the town may have put him in this house on purpose. But why?

It’s hard to discuss Dream House without getting into spoilers but I’ll try and stay as spoiler-lite as possible. Still, be prepared for me to reveal a few plot twists.

Basically, Dream House is two separate stories, and I think that’s what makes the script so unique. The first story is, “What’s going on with this house and what do they do about it?” Normally, this thread would dictate the majority of the plot, a la what they did in Poltergeist. But Will actually solves this mystery pretty early on, and by the midpoint the story is effectively over. While it’s a strange choice, I’m glad he did it, because we start to figure out what’s going on pretty early (major spoiler – let’s just say it’s Shutter Island-esque), and all I kept thinking was, “Oh God, he’s not going to make us sit through another 70 pages of this even though we already know the twist, is he?”

So then this entirely new story starts, where we move from a freaky thriller into a bonafied ghost story. It’s a really strange choice that doesn’t quite work but it doesn’t quite not work either. The radical shift forces you to reevaluate everything you’ve read. And while I understand people throwing up their arms and saying, “Oh, give me a break!” once I committed to it, it actually got pretty good.

That’s because you thought you had it all figured out. As far as you were concerned the ending was a foregone conclusion. So when that ending came a full 60 pages early, it was like being abandoned. “Um, okay…what now?” I mean I challenge anybody to figure out this ending twist before it happens. Now I think Loucka could’ve done a better job setting it up, but this is an old draft, so he very well might have fixed it.

This story presents a myriad of problems for a writer, some of which were addressed well, others which weren’t. The first is logic. This goes back to my Wanderlust review but you have to have characters that think logically in stories. They can’t abide by this mysterious movie logic because “that’s how people act in the movies.”  That route gets you a lot of people throwing popcorn at the screen and calling “Bullshit!” (or at least it did in the 70s.  Now it just gets you more cell phones being turned on). I mean once you start finding Pentagram signs behind wallpaper, dead animals in cubbyholes, that no one’s occupied your house for 20 years because a family was murdered in it, and your realtor is saying she doesn’t know who you are – I mean aren’t you getting the fuck out of that house, like NOW? Logic dictates yes. But movie logic prevails, and as a result we lose faith in the writing. 

Also, you have to be careful with how many “What the fuck is going on?” moments you put in a movie like this. Too many and the audience gets impatient. For example we get about ten scenes with Will wandering around town, asking people what’s going on, only to have them respond, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and run away. The first couple were creepy and fun. From that point on, it’s like, “Alright already, we get it.  People aren’t helping him.”

As far as why this movie was greenlighted, look no further than my old article on actors attaching themselves to projects. (spoiler) What does Daniel Craig get to play here? Why, a crazy person! And what actor doesn’t looooove playing a crazy person. As cheap as this sounds, if you have a good idea where the main character is crazy, write it. Actors WILL want to play it.

Someone mentioned the other day Blake Snyder’s well-heeded warning of “double jeopardy,” the notion that you can make a movie about aliens, you can make a movie about vampires, but you can’t make a movie about alien vampires. I think there’s some of that going on here, though not as obvious. This is a mystery about a family stuck in a strange house. But then it becomes a ghost story. No doubt there’s something that feels sloppy about it. But I think Loucka just barely manages to tie it all together in the end. I was genuinely interested to see how it was all explained. This script is not without problems.  But it’s just such an odd duck that I have to recommend it. 

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

What I learned: I love writers who can set up characters and relationships and situations efficiently. A lot of writers will set things up by having their characters blab on and on about it until it’s drilled into our heads twenty-fold.  Not recommended.  Here, Loucka needs to get across that Will and Libby have had some recent issues in their relationship. So we start off with Will on the train. Loucka describes him as “There’s a slightly distracted look to him as though he can never leave office problems behind.” Will then gets off the train to meet his wife, daughters, and the realtor, and the first thing the wife says to him isn’t “Hi.” She doesn’t smile at him. She says, “I wasn’t sure if you’d make it.” In less than two combined lines of screenplay real estate, Loucka has shown us that Will is a workaholic and that that addiction has severely affected his marriage. It’s great writing.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: An urban couple hit by the recession move into a hippie compound.
About: Co-writer Ken Marino and co-writer/director David Wain are the writers responsible for one of the better comedy screenplays I read in 2008, Role Models.  Their new film, Wanderlust, will be produced by none other than the current Godfather of film comedy, Judd Apatow. The film will star Paul Rudd, Jennifer Aniston, Malin Akerman, Alan Alda, and, I assume, many others. Wain and Marino have been working together for over 15 years, starting on the MTV show “The State.” Before their big studio breakout “Role Models,” they wrote the cult classic “Wet Hot American Summer,” and the more recent The Ten, which consisted of ten shorts based on the Ten Commandments.
Writers: Ken Marino and David Wain
Details: 117 pages – January 21, 2010 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).

Didn’t know much about Wanderlust. Just saw that a pretty interesting cast was being signed up to star in the film and thought I’d give it a shot. Once I realized what it was about, I admit my first thought was, “Doesn’t this sound dated?” Then again, querying the movie memory banks didn’t bring up any similar films so maybe it doesn’t matter. They say the best movie ideas are the ones where you hear them and say, “No, they have to have done that already.” Despite all that, something about the idea didn’t quite sit with me. But I charged ahead and tried to keep an open mind.

George and Linda, two uptight city-dwellers, have finally found their dream condo (all ‘less than 1000 square feet’ of it) in New York. They can’t afford it but like any good American, they don’t let that minor detail get in the way of buying the place.

Now none of us carry a crystal ball around with us but it doesn’t take a crystal ball to know that the newspaper business isn’t on the up-and-up. And unfortunately, that’s where George is employed. Since Georgie didn’t get the memo about the internet, he’s shocked when the company downsizes and he’s fired. Since there’s no way they can afford their place anymore, they’re forced to follow the same path as millions of other Americans and foreclose.

Regrettably, the only place George and Linda can stay is at George’s obnoxious brother’s place in Atlanta. However while driving down there they stop at a Bed and Breakfast for the night and when they wake up, realize it isn’t a Bed and Breakfast at all, but a hippie compound!

Naturally, they’re freaked out, but there was something strangely peaceful about their night there. So when the hippie folk invite them to stay and live with them, the two talk it over and against all reasoning and logic decide to give it a shot. I mean, it’s gotta be better than staying with Brother George, right?

(I don’t know. I know people a lot worse than Brother George, and I’m pretty sure I’d sleep in their damn cellar over sleeping with hippies.)

George and Linda are quickly thrust into the hippie life, complete with bathrooms without doors, an economy that’s run on arts and crafts, and the rule of universal possession (George quickly learns that *his* car is now *everyone’s* car).

But we get down to brass tacks when creepy but good-looking Seth, the leader of the compound, takes a liking to Linda, while the “Wicker Man” like beauty, Eva, becomes infatuated with George. You see, out here in Hippie World, sex is like…free, man. If you want to lay down with a lady, you do it. There are no societal confines. Love thy self and love thy neighbor and love everybody…thy else…who…thy…wants to love…or something. Man.

At first George is thrilled by this amazing opportunity, while Linda isn’t so sure. As they become more entrenched in the way of the Hip, however, it’s Linda who gives in to all the free love, and it’s George who realizes, “What the hell was I thinking by agreeing to stay in this rathole?” If they could construct a device where readers could talk to characters I might have been able to tell him that 50 pages ago and saved him a lot of trouble. However that device hasn’t been invented yet, and therefore there’s a good chance George has now lost his wife to a bunch of freaking hippies.

The first question that pops into your mind when reading Wanderlust is the one which, when answered, will determine the success of this movie: Do you actually buy into this premise? One of the hardest things to navigate when writing comedy is, how convincing do you have to be? A part of you says, “Well this is just a comedy, so anything goes.” But there’s still a level of realism that has to be established before you can let loose with your comedy. Many people refer to this as “grounding” a comedy.

I mean do you really believe a neurotic intelligent city couple are going to spend one night in a compound and think, “Hey, why don’t we live here?” Wain and Marino do a good job setting up the couple’s predicament, but still, “being low on funds” and “being so low on funds that I’m going to live in the middle of a forest and dress in rags” are two different things.

If you look at Apatow’s most successful films, movies like Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, even though they’re comedies, there’s a level of believability built into each premise. A woman gets knocked up by a loser on a drunken night out. There’s a part of her that’s going to want him around to help with this baby. The 40 Year Old Virgin, as silly as it gets, is still a plausible situation. Some guys at work realize you’re still a virgin and want to help you get laid.

My feeling is always this when it comes to comedy. The more the plot is tied into a particular story element, the more logical (as opposed to ‘comedic’) that story element needs to be. So in this case, since the story element (choosing to live in a compound) is directly tied into the premise, it has to be convincing.

Of course there’s no science to this stuff. Sometimes if an audience loves a couple enough, they’ll be more forgiving with a hard-to-buy setup. But no matter where I was in this story, I kept coming back to that question, “Would these guys really be here?” And I kept thinking, “No way in a million years.” And I think that’s what prevented me from really getting into this story.

My only other observation is I thought Seth should’ve been more of a phony – more of a villain. It’s not really clear whether Seth believes any of the hippy shit or is just using it as an excuse to bang hippie chicks. The indication, though, is that he believes in it, and I just thought he could’ve been so much more evil and fun if he was a phony, using this opportunity to run his own little mini-cult.

I didn’t think Wanderlust was bad. I just never totally bought into it. I didn’t like how our characters could get up and leave at any moment, yet despite numerous instances where it would make perfect sense for them to do so, they’d stay because the movie needed them to. There’s definitely some funny stuff here, and I’m sure Apatow will be exercising his now famous “improvise everything” technique resulting in an even funnier film. It just wasn’t for me.

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

What I learned: Create your own opportunities. As a 21 year old glorified assistant at MTV, David Wain’s idea for a show was shot down, so he grabbed a camera and some friends and went and shot the show on a Hi-8 camera anyways, bringing it back to the MTV people, who liked it so much they ended up using it. Opportunities are everywhere people. You gotta go grab them.

If you have those Blood List scripts, keep sending them in.  My mailbox definitely isn’t bloody enough.  This week is the week of the amateur as Roger reviews an amateur script today and I review one Friday (Amateur Friday got moved forward a week).  In the middle, we’ll have…some other scripts.  How’s that for a teaser?  Hey, I’m tired.  I just spent the entire day walking back and forth to the front door giving kids candy.  HERE’S ROGER!

Premise: After committing a massacre in an Indian village, a cavalry troop finds their remote fort under siege by vicious flying reptiles seemingly sent to avenge the massacre. Fort Apache meets Aliens.

It’s a genre mash-up I have an affinity for. Something about those big, wide open spaces and shots of vast, rugged terrain framed by doorways seems like a rich setting for scares, thrills and a healthy dose of repulsion. There aren’t many of these suckers. For me, the most notable as of late are JT Petty’s “The Burrowers” and perhaps Antonia Bird’s “Ravenous“. The latter is definitely a Period Piece, but I suppose it can be debated whether or not it’s a Western. In screenplays and literature there’s always Zahler’s “The Brigands of Rattleborge” and McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian“. I guess people attempt to write these genre mash-ups but I rarely come across a script that pulls off this particular brand of alchemy.

What I learned: I’m a firm believer in treating B-material like A-material. Just because something has monsters in it doesn’t mean it can’t have heart or a powerful story. I think the key is creating a protagonist who is looking for something more than just defeating the monster. In Aliens, Ripley wanted to be a mother. She had a hole in her heart for a child. Newt filled that hole. When Newt was endangered, the stakes went through the roof. Create a character who has a void in their heart they yearn to fill, and let the plot become an obstacle to try and prevent them from filling that void. If you do that, I think you’ll find that the theme will rise to the surface as you write and polish and shape your story. That’s my two cents, anyways.

If you’ve been hanging around the site this week, you’ve been hearing of “The Blood List,” an informal list of the best horror scripts of the year.  Last year’s was posted, and this year’s has just been released.  So, what’s on the list?  Download it yourself and see, although I think a fault of the list is that, unlike The Black List, they don’t give loglines.

If you know the loglines for some of these scripts, please post them in the comments section.  And if you have any of the scripts, please send them to me.  Maybe we can wrangle this thing together. I have Chronicle and a few others, but that’s it.  Enjoy.

THE BLOOD LIST 2010

Genre: Horror
Premise: A young priest who does not believe in the Devil travels to Rome to study at an Exorcism School.
About: Oh yeah baby. It’s Halloween Week! Why the hell was I thinking of reviewing Wanderlust on Halloween Week? Instead I’ve decided to review a more appropriate script, The Rite. The Rite will star Anthony Hopkins, Alice Braga, and an unknown actor in the starring role (at least he’s unknown to me). It’s directed by Michael Hafstrom, who directed 2007’s fun Steven King adaptation, 1408. Michael Petroni adapted the screenplay from a book by Matt Baglio. In 1994, Petroni moved to Los Angeles to study screenwriting at the AFI Conservatory, graduating in 1996. While at AFI, he wrote and directed his first feature, Till Human Voices Wake Us, starring Guy Pearce and Helena Bonham Carter. He also wrote The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys and the new upcoming Narnia flick, The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader.
Writer: Michael Petroni (based on the book by Matt Baglio)
Details: 123 pages – April 2008 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).

No offense to some of the recent writers whose scripts I’ve reviewed, but man can you tell when someone knows how to write. Writing isn’t about dictating real life events word for word. It’s about constructing those events in a dramatically entertaining way for an audience. It’s about knowing when to step on the gas and when to ease up. It’s about ratcheting up the conflict when the audience wants it, and keeping it subtle in the meantime. Yesterday my reading experience was pure frustration. I kept thinking, “Is this good and I’m just not getting it?” Today reminded me what real writing reads like.

These days, all you need to do is look around to see to see how many people are acting out their most sinful thoughts. We’re devolving as a species, and the devil is using it as a means to get inside of us. Over 500,000 possessions were reported last year. Priests are our last line of defense against this growing problem. For that reason, in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI instructed all bishops of the Catholic Church to appoint an exorcist in every diocese world wide. But before these exorcists can operate, someone has to teach them.

Thomas is an intelligent 24 year old embalmer for his father’s lifelong business, a funeral home. Close to retirement, he wants Thomas to take over when he leaves. But Thomas has other plans. He wants to get an education. He wants to live a normal life.

But a normal life requires schooling, and his father has made it clear that you don’t need an education to run a funeral home. If Thomas is going to go to school, he’ll need to find the money himself. That’s when he comes up with a plan. If you pledge your life to God, the church will pay for your education. In a move that would surely guarantee his spot in Hell if Thomas believed in such a place, Thomas plans to get his four years of education, then, before taking his vows, say “thanks but no thanks.”

As the climax for his plan approaches, one of the priests sees Thomas perform an amazing act of God without a shred of fear. He believes Thomas is destined for bigger things and suggests he consider becoming an exorcist. Thomas is reluctant, but the priest convinces him to go to Exorcism School in Rome for two months. If he doesn’t like it, he’s lost nothing.

Once at this school, Thomas is thrust into lectures about exorcism protocol, exorcism subjects, and the spookiest of the teachings, documentation of past exorcisms. But even the most spectacular of cases – and some are truly horrifying – are yawn-inducing as far as Thomas is concerned. He knows there’s a rational explanation behind everything and all this nonsense about God and the Devil are clouding these priests’ ability to judge.

The head priest senses Thomas’ skepticism and decides to send him off to one of their more “unorthodox” priests who does his work off-campus.

Indeed Father Carmine lives by his own code. There’s a protocol to go through before performing exorcisms. You have to see if a patient is mentally unstable. You have to rule out multiple personalities or trauma or psychological issues. Carmine couldn’t care less about that shit. If he thinks someone’s possessed, it’s time to slam a cross onto their forehead and batter them with the word of God.

It just so happens Thomas walks in during one of Father Carmine’s exorcisms, a young 17 year old pregnant woman named Rosaria. The event is horrifying, this young girl doing and saying the most unimaginable things. But even after what he’s seen, Thomas still believes that her problems can be explained away through abuse and trauma.

The rest of the story centers on Thomas and Carmine’s relationship as Carmine takes him through the daily treatment of his clientele. Even when these subjects bring up personal issues about Thomas’ life, he is convinced they’ve either done research or heard information about him from other parties. He knows that it is impossible for a person to be possessed by the devil. Of course, at some point, this conviction will be tested, as he will have to perform the exorcism to end all exorcisms, a task so impossible he will need to believe if he has any chance in succeeding.

I really really liked this screenplay. First of all, this is exactly what I was talking about when I reviewed our last exorcism script. In that review, I talked about how every exorcism movie is about some priest coming into a town to perform an exorcism on some woman. EVERY ONE! Borrr-ing. So taking the exorcism idea and coming at it from the angle of a school was, in many ways, genius. It’s a great reminder that finding a new angle to a tired subject matter just requires a little thought.

Also, as dumbed down as this sounds, this script proves how effective the “crazy mentor character” is. I was talking about this in my review of The King’s Speech the other day (with the part that Geoffrey Rush plays). There’s something about a mentor who does things “his own way” that’s simply fun to watch. It works here with Father Carmine, it worked in The King’s Speech, it’s one of the reasons Karate Kid is so popular. About the only time it hasn’t worked is in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.

The construction of Thomas’ character here is also well done. We have a built in fatal flaw – he doesn’t believe. He has a complicated unresolved relationship with his father that we keep going back to. He’s resistant to the job, which infuses most of the scenes with conflict. We understand where the character’s been. We understand where the character wants to go. So many times I don’t know who a character is in a screenplay so it’s refreshing when the writer takes the time to map him out like he does Thomas here.

I think the one challenge for the script was the tricky notion of putting a priest in Exorcism School who didn’t believe in God. This was an essential component to the script working, yet not a logical situation. Petroni (or Baglio) decided to use this desire for education as the reasoning behind why someone who didn’t believe in God would join the priesthood, and it’s admittedly the one conceit you have to make in order to buy into the premise, but I think he gets away with it. And I have to admit, it was a lot more interesting than the tired choice we’re used to seeing , which is to have someone close to the priest die right as he’s starting his journey.

Another dramatic mainstay the screenwriting gurus will tell you is that your main character should have a goal and that that goal should drive the plot. So in The Exorcism, the goal is to exorcise the demon from the girl. In Borrelli’s script, it’s the same thing. This approach keeps the point of the story crystal clear to the audience. But The Rite doesn’t do this. There is no single goal for our protagonist, which gives the story an uncertain quality. We’re not quite sure where it’s going. Which is good if it works, but usually if this goes on for too long, an audience will check out. So how does The Rite make it work?

Well Petroni shifts the focus of the movie from a physical goal to an internal question. Will Thomas believe or not? The answer to that question becomes the driving force of the story. It’s a risky move that I see fail way more than I see succeed because it just doesn’t give the story the same driving force a goal does. But because the characters are so compelling here, because the situations are so interesting, and because we want to find out what happens with Thomas, Petroni makes it work.

If I had a beef with the script, it’s that the ending gets a little crazy. One of the effects of focusing on several exorcisms instead of one is that you have to resolve them all, and with Thomas running around at the end to see all these threads to their conclusion, the finale feels a little scattershot.

But overall, I enjoyed this way too much to let that bother me. A highly recommended read.

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

What I learned: A big reason why this script works is that it’s steeped in conflict. Thomas and his father don’t agree on his direction in life. Thomas doesn’t believe in God. Thomas doesn’t believe in Exorcism School. Thomas doesn’t agree with Carmine’s methods or practice. Everywhere you look in this script, two diametrically opposed ideas are colliding, and it’s the resulting conflict that brings so much entertainment to the ride. Remember, as a story teller, conflict is always your best friend!