Lost For Words – Filmwonk Review

Posted on February 7, 2011 | by admin

As frequent readers of the site know, one of the more insightful commenters on Scriptshadow is Filmwonk (now Bohdicat). I don’t always have time to read through every comment, but he’s one commenter I always check in on, as he often points out stuff that I either didn’t have the time to get into or didn’t even think of altogether. So today Filmwonk is getting the full red carpet treatment and not just giving us a comment, but writing an entire review. Make sure to make him feel welcome.

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: A hugely popular American movie star living in London meets an alluring Chinese actress but can only communicate with her via her flirtatious, equally attractive British translator.
About: Writer James Curtis is the younger brother of Richard Curtis, who also had a hand in this script. Tom Cruise and Hugh Jackman have been mentioned as candidates for the male lead. Chinese actress and über-cutie Ziyi Zhang (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) was at one time reported to have signed on as the female lead.
Writer: James Curtis, with Richard Curtis as “script editor”
Details: 114 pages. Dated November 2, 2006. (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).

Hello everyone, Bohdicat here. When Carson asked me to step in with a guest review, I jumped at the chance to review “Lost for Words,” a romantic comedy set in contemporary London. While the script is credited to James Curtis, it was the second credit on the title page – “Script Editor – Richard Curtis” – that immediately caught my eye.
As most of you probably know, Richard Curtis is a major player in the world of British film and television. He was one of the principal writers on the “Black Adder” TV series and is a co-creator of the iconic Mr. Bean. On the cinema side, he wrote the successful “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Notting Hill,” each of which reportedly became the most successful British films ever produced (although that honor has since been eclipsed by, of all things, the Abba musical “Mama Mia”). Curtis followed those up with an even bigger hit, “Love Actually,” which he also directed. Curtis also founded Comic Relief, a charity that has raised millions to help the world’s poor.
However, this isn’t the work of Richard Curtis, but rather his younger brother James (better known as Jamie). Jamie’s credits aren’t nearly as extensive as his brother’s, but it seems he’s been quietly working to establish a writing career of his own. While IMDB lists his only writing credit as “additional writing” on the 1997 stinker “Spice World,” the fact that older brother Richard had a hand in this script was enough to interest me.
The story concerns Charlie Cooper, a phenomenally successful American film star living in London. He’s the kind of guy who can’t go anywhere without being stalked by paparazzi. Picture an unmarried Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt, or Tom Cruise at the height of his popularity (before the couch-jumping episode and the fake wife). Yet, for all his success, Charlie is one lonely guy. Without an entourage of friends, he lives a fairly empty and dissolute life when he’s not off making blockbuster movies. He lives in a posh hotel suite, dresses like a slob, and basically does whatever he wants, even if that means closing down the enormous Tate Modern Museum so he can take in a Mark Rothko exhibit without being molested by adoring fans. And while intimacy is not something he understands completely, he’s not above bedding the occasional female admirer – and there seems to be no shortage of those.
To his credit, Charlie is a pretty good egg. For one thing, he has no illusions about the quality of his films. He knows they’re big on flash and short on sophistication, and he’s more or less okay with that – especially as he doesn’t consider himself a particularly good actor. In fact, while serving as a presenter at an independent film awards ceremony, he good-naturedly pokes fun at his own image.
It’s at the party following this awards ceremony that Charlie meets Chinese actress Lin Zhen. Zhen is a huge star in her own country of over a billion inhabitants, but much less well-known in the western world. The first thing Charlie notices about her is her remarkable beauty. The second thing he notices is that she speaks no English. The third thing he notices is Zhen’s ever-present interpreter, Helen. In sharp contrast to Zhen, Helen is blonde, British, and very attractive in her own right. Charlie quickly falls into the rhythm of conversing with Zhen through Helen, and while their initial conversation is little more than idle chit-chat, he manages, perhaps inadvertently, to charm both women.
Later, as he prepares to leave the party, he sees Helen, now off-duty, on her way out. This leads to drinks at an exclusive club, which in turn leads to flirting, which in turn leads to the inevitable squeaking of the bedsprings back at Charlie’s hotel suite. (Feel free to supply your own sound effects here.) The next day it’s back to business as usual for both of them. For Charlie, this means doing promotional interviews for his latest big-budget film, “The Crown Jewels.”
It’s a big surprise, then, when he gets a call from Zhen’s agent asking if he can meet her that evening to discuss appearing in a film she’s planning to direct. Naturally Helen is there, and once again any conversation between Charlie and Zhen must pass through her. Surprisingly, Zhen confesses that the real reason she called Charlie was that she wants to go out with him – on a date – before returning to China at the end of the week. If this arouses any jealousy in Helen, she conceals it well. Zhen and Charlie do one of those “have your people call my people” things, and the evening ends with Charlie back at Helen’s apartment, with more of the aforementioned squeaking of bedsprings.
Charlie soon finds himself serving as a tour guide to Zhen, who has asked to be shown some of London’s famous sights. Of course, Helen is along as interpreter, although she obviously has said nothing to Zhen about having slept with Charlie. This is Charlie’s first real opportunity to get to know Zhen and he comes away from the experience with an entirely new opinion of her. Zhen is smart, perceptive, opinionated, even funny… not at all what he expected. He may even be developing feelings for her, which makes the fact that he’s been shagging her interpreter something of a problem.
A dinner is scheduled for the following evening, and both Zhen and Helen arrive dressed to kill. Over the course of a long dinner Zhen and Charlie discuss everything from family values to Charlie’s checkered past, and as a result they start to establish a bond. Helen, for all her attempts to woo Charlie – and despite all the skin she’s showing – senses correctly that she’s being pushed out of the picture by her more glamorous movie-star employer. At the same time, Helen continues to be indispensable, as Zhen and Charlie have no way of communicating without her. Ironic, ain’t it?
The following day, with his feelings for Zhen blossoming into something more than mere attraction, Charlie arranges to meet with her again. This time he insists she bring a different interpreter. He gets his wish, in the form of a large, bald Chinese gentleman with whom Charlie most assuredly will not be having sex. Charlie and Zhen spend a romantic afternoon in Hyde Park, culminating finally with a tender kiss – but sadly no squeaking bedsprings as Zhen must leave to attend an important dinner function. The upshot is that Charlie is now completely smitten with Zhen, and she with him… which leaves Helen out in the cold.
When Charlie is next able to see Zhen, it’s on the eve of her departure for China. Helen, unavoidably, is on hand as interpreter, but Charlie decides to press on and profess his feelings to Zhen anyway. Here’s where things get a bit tricky. When Charlie tells Zhen that he wants to find a way to continue seeing her, Helen tells her just the opposite, saying it would be “pointless” for them to see each other again. Out of spite, Helen uses her position as translator to effectively engineer a break-up between Charlie and Zhen that neither of them wants. Both Charlie and Zhen are led to believe that the other wants to end their relationship, and as a result both come away feeling devastated.
That night, Charlie dulls his pain by returning to his old ways and getting drunk. The following day brings a meeting regarding a new project, an animated film in which he’ll voice the part of an evil sperm – yes, you heard that right – opposite Adam Sandler’s “good” sperm. Charlie knows full well that it’s a piece of crap, but it’ll probably make a fortune.

In the meantime, Helen, seeing Zhen in emotional pain and having suffered a fit of conscience, confesses all to her – the shaggings AND her deliberate sabotage of her final conversation with Charlie. With Zhen packed and ready to fly back to China, she and Helen descend on the photo studio where is Charlie is posing for publicity photographs for (presumably) a last-ditch effort at reconciliation.
Normally this is where things would wrap up neatly, with Charlie confessing his undying love, Zhen forgiving Charlie’s indiscretions, and Helen bowing gracefully out of the picture. But, as it happens, the photo shoot involves Charlie posing with a bevy of bikini-clad models. This may be unremarkable for a movie star of Charlie’s stature, but to Zhen it’s a glimpse of the sort of man she fears Charlie really is – shallow, self-absorbed, incapable of making a commitment. Charlie begs Zhen to stay, but she leaves anyway, heading directly for the airport.
Months pass. Charlie expands from summer blockbusters to more sophisticated independent films, but finds he’s more miserable than ever. It seems like his brief experience with Zhen – which didn’t even include getting laid – has left him a changed man.
Finally, he decides to take matters into his own hands. With a goofy waiter from a local Chinese take-out restaurant along as his interpreter, he flies to Beijing. He seeks out Zhen, who at the moment is both directing and appearing in a new film. Zhen is initially cool to the idea of reconciling, but with some tender persistence she begins to warm to it. With the help of a clever computer program that translates between English and Chinese, they begin a new dialogue – one that doesn’t require bringing a third person into the mix. The film ends with Charlie carrying Zhen over the threshold of his big London house – a house he owns but has never lived in, because until now, it never felt like “home.”
On Scriptshadow we’ve seen a number or scripts where the premise was strong but the execution fell short. Here we have just the opposite: a script where the execution is top-notch, but which is built around a premise that, in my view, leaves something to be desired. “Lost for Words” is a worthwhile read, but it falls short of being really good by the narrowest of margins.
Before I go any further I should mention that I am a great admirer of Richard Curtis. In particular, I think “Notting Hill” is one of the finest romantic comedies ever written; it literally changed my ideas about the genre and made me a Curtis fan for life. Believe me, it’s not easy to criticize the work of someone whom you consider a master – or his baby brother, for that matter.
Considering how much I like “Notting Hill,” it’s odd to note how strikingly similar “Lost for Words” is to it, both in its premise and execution. It absolutely “feels” like a product of the Richard Curtis school of screenwriting, regardless of who wrote it. Unfortunately it also suffers greatly by comparison.
Now, romantic comedies are a different animal, and you can’t judge them the same way you judge other genres. The central question is almost always something along the lines of “will he get the girl?” Instead of the fate of the free world or evisceration by zombies, there is usually no more than the happiness of the protagonists at stake… and that’s okay.
That being said, a rom-com calls for a likeable protagonist. He may – and frequently does – have character flaws (what would “Annie Hall” be without Alvy’s neuroses?) In fact, a protagonist may be downright annoying (think Jack Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets”). But on some elemental level we must still like him enough to want to see him succeed. So here’s my first beef with “Lost for Words:” Charlie is hard to like.
Mind you, Charlie is hardly awful – he doesn’t steal candy from babies or mistreat animals – but as a romantic protagonist he has a big strike against him, ironically, in that he has way too much going for him. He’s handsome, famous, ridiculously rich, and women basically throw themselves at him on sight (the last woman who threw herself at me had hairy knuckles and an Adam’s apple). It’s hard to understand why I should care about someone who enjoys a life far beyond what I ever expect to achieve. In fact, as I read this, I kept thinking to myself “gee, I wish I had HIS problems.”
I feel that Charlie needs something to balance out my perception of him as a person who has acquired much with very little effort but who gives nothing back in return. Imagine, for example, how different Charlie would seem if he supported a half-dozen orphanages in Africa, but did so anonymously. It would add a whole new dimension to his character.
Compounding this problem is the fact that the eventual object of Charlie’s affection – once poor Helen has been discarded like yesterday’s London Times – is also a person of great stature, a star known to a billion Chinese. Now, I realize that this criticism goes to the basic premise of the film, but hear me out. When I first read this, I was fairly certain that Helen – the British interpreter – would be the one to end up with Charlie, for the precise reason that she WASN’T rich or famous.
The pairing of a rich and powerful person with someone of lesser circumstances seems to be recurring theme in the Curtis universe but not here – consider Julia Roberts’ movie star with Hugh Grant’s bookshop owner in “Notting Hill,” for example, or Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister with Martine McCutcheon’s tea-tray-toting Natalie. Right or wrong, I think audiences enjoy seeing someone move beyond their station, romantically speaking, whether that person is Cinderella or a workaday London interpreter. On the other hand, the idea that one famous actor would knock boots with another requires no stretch of the imagination whatsoever – it happens all the time.

 Rachel McAdams for Helen?
So, my second major issue with the script is that Charlie goes for the wrong girl – or at least a strong argument could be made to that effect. To address this the writers could give Helen some negative quality – a quality not immediately apparent, of course, but one that would come to the surface in due time – that makes her clearly the poorer choice. The trick would be to do this without making her into Cruella De Vil, for to do so would change the essential nature of the story too much. My suggestion would be to make her a bit of a bigot under the skin. Yes, she looks great and says all the right things in mixed company, but in private it turns out that she doesn’t really care for the Chinese, or Black people, or gays, for that matter. It would be an interesting turn given the interracial nature of Charlie’s romance with Zhen.
Finally, there’s issue number three, which ties in directly with issue number two. Charlie’s an American bloke. Zhen is Chinese. Neither speaks the other’s language. How plausible is it that these two would fall in love – honest-to-gosh LOVE – if they couldn’t even communicate without the aid of an interpreter? Even though I realize this story takes place in the rom-com universe and not the real world, I have a hard time accepting this. Note that in romantic comedies there’s almost always some obstacle that separates the two principals and which must be overcome. Here it’s the language difference (and to a lesser extent the cultural gap) that separates Charlie from Zhen. As a device this is less than ideal – first because it doesn’t literally separate them (both are free to travel and spend time with each other, so in the most basic sense it doesn’t separate them at all), and second, because there is an obvious solution (one or both of them could learn the other’s language) but it’s laborious and, well, just not very romantic. If this story took place in the 1950’s, with Zhen under the thumb of that era’s repressive Communist regime, one could imagine the real obstacles that would face our star-crossed lovers. Instead we have today’s happy-thank-you-shop-at-Walmart Communists. It’s enough to make you pine for the bad old days.
I have a few other quibbles. First, I think the fact that for almost the entire movie our romantic leads converse via an on-screen interpreter might make for a tiresome experience. (Or maybe this will play better than I am imagining it.)
Second, there’s a small scene where one of Charlie’s old friends from the U.S. shows up and begs him to commit to a movie he’s trying to get financed. I’m not sure what purpose this scene is intended to serve, but it does nothing to illuminate Charlie’s character or to move the plot along, so I don’t know what it’s doing there. Perhaps someone could enlighten me.
Third, the scene where Charlie visits with his parents, who have come to London to attend a convention, is neither fish nor fowl. Yes, Charlie has issues with his parents, but they’re not serious enough to warrant deeper exploration or light-hearted enough to make for good comedy. Charlie seems to feel underappreciated simply because his parents acknowledge the achievements of his brother back in the States – whom Charlie points out “earns a hundredth of what I do.” How petty is that statement? I think it’s a fair bet that Charlie’s parents do appreciate his achievements – he is one of the top actors in the world, after all. And if they don’t… fuck ’em. When you make twelve million a picture, you can buy new parents.
Fourth, Charlie does something near the end of the script that seems so unwarranted that it stopped me dead in my tracks. He fires his trusted personal assistant, Karen, for no other reason than he feels annoyed by her honest response to a question. That, in my opinion, was a shitty thing to do, and for me it seriously compromised whatever good will Charlie had built up over the previous 98 pages.
Finally (and this is more of a general observation), the fact that Charlie seems to have no friends is something of a bummer. Again, using “Notting Hill” for comparison, consider how much Hugh Grant’s friends contributed to that film. There’s a memorable scene where Grant’s character brings movie star Anna (played by Julia Roberts) to a homey dinner party given by his friends – and their reactions were priceless. And let’s not forget Grant’s odd Welsh roommate, who got some of the film’s biggest laughs. There is no such constellation of friends in “Lost for Words,” with the net effect being that it’s simply not as funny as it should be.
So why do I give this a “worth the read” instead of a “wasn’t for me?” Honestly, I was torn. I initially intended to give this the poorer grade, but after reading it through a second time – I had a review to write, after all – I started to see a lot of subtle touches that I appreciated as being the work of a fine writer – or maybe two. In the end, while “Lost for Words” failed to engage me emotionally (as I feel a romantic comedy should), it is a well-crafted script with much to recommend in it. To use a clumsy metaphor, it’s like a Ferrari with an engine that doesn’t fire on all twelve cylinders. It’s not working now, but if someone with the right tools and the right know-how would just get under the hood and fix it, the result could be something wonderful.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: It’s not enough to have good writing skills if your premise is shaky. Make sure your premise is bulletproof before wasting months writing your script. Take the time to create multidimensional characters and make sure their actions are motivated by character and not arbitrary. And if you’re writing a romantic comedy, please make your protagonist someone your audience will really root for.
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10 Things You Can Learn From The Greatest Contained Action Thriller Of All Time

Posted on February 3, 2011 | by admin

Die Hard. Some people say Jaws changed the way movies were made. Others say Star Wars. But an argument can be made that Die Hard had just as much of an influence on movies as both of those films, maybe not so much culturally, but definitely in how studios approached the tent pole film. The irony, of course, is that those same studios used Die Hard as their action template without realizing what made it great. Yeah, it has splosions. Yeah, Bruce Willis was perfect casting. Yeah, the action scenes were great. But the reason Die Hard is so awesome is because of its script.

So I decided to go back to the granddaddy of contained (action) thrillers and see if I couldn’t learn a few things from it. It didn’t take long. Die Hard is chock full of screenwriting tips if you pay attention, and I’m happy to highlight ten of them for you here.

BE CREATIVE WITH YOUR TICKING TIME BOMB
Every action movie should have a ticking time bomb. But that doesn’t mean incorporating one of those cheap digital timers with a big flashing “120 minutes” on it. Instead – just like every element in your screenplay – you should look for a fresh alternative. Here, the ticking time bomb is the seven locks to the safe the computer expert is hacking. It’s a clever countdown device we’ve never quite seen before (or since) and that’s why it works so well.

SMART INCORPORATION OF EXPOSITION
Most action writers think that the blood-soaked testosterone-fueled action genre gives them license to unload exposition onto the page like a garbage truck does garbage. “The audience won’t care,” they argue. “They just want to see explosions.” Errrr…wrong! Bad exposition eliminates suspension of disbelief, which in turn makes all those “explosion” scenes less exciting. So don’t fall into this trap. Be smooth in the way you unveil exposition. Take the scene in Die Hard where McClane is in the limo. We have to get some key exposition out about John’s on-the-rocks marriage before we get to the building. A lazy writer might’ve had an unprovoked McClane start rambling on about his broken marriage. Instead, the Die Hard writers make McClane resistant, practically “forced” into giving up details to his overly nosey limo driver. In fact, the limo driver is revealing (with his guesses) almost as much about McClane’s marriage as McClane is. “You mean you thought she wouldn’t make it out here and she’d come crawling on back, so why bother to pack?.” “Like I said Argyle, you’re fast.” It’s little details like this that elevate an action script.

ONE-LINERS
Ahhh, the snappy action one-liner. An 80s film staple. But no film has ever approached Die Hard in this category. In fact, 95% of one-liners you hear in action movies these days are groan-worthy. So how does Die Hard still hold up? Simple. McClane’s one-liners stem from his situation, NOT from a writer wanting to add a funny line. When you watch Die Hard and hear McClane say, “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker,” you genuinely get the sense that he’s trying to add levity to the situation. He’s using humor to deflect the seriousness of his predicament. In other words, he’s not a mouthpiece for a clever line thought up by a writer, which is what every single one of these one-liners has been since Die Hard came out (please see The Expendables for numerous examples).

THE BAD GUY IS A WORTHY ADVERSERY
Hans is one of the greatest bad guys of all time. How can we learn from him to make our own bad guys memorable? The key to Hans working is that he’s a worthy adversary to John McClane. He isn’t some paint-by-the-numbers thug. Die Hard is one of the few action films I can remember where they made the villain as smart as the hero. Not just on paper. But you actually SEE IT. We see the FBI cutting the last lock to the safe, the only lock Hans didn’t have access to – all part of his plan. We see Hans pretending to be a hostage when he runs into McClane. By doing this, the audience has real doubts about whether our hero can outsmart this guy, which in turn pulls us in even more.

SOMETIMES THE STORY DICTATES WE DO THINGS WE DON’T WANT TO DO
Ideally, especially in an action movie, you’d want to introduce your main character with some sort of action scene that gives us insight into who they are. Unfortunately, the direction of the story may not afford you this opportunity. In Die Hard, a lot of the key things we learn about McClane early on are through dialogue. On the plane with the other passenger, in the limo with Argyle, on his conversation with his wife when he gets there. Sure, it would have been nicer if we could’ve *shown* these things instead of been *told* about them. But the situation is what it is. You need to get your main character to the building and you need the audience to know some things before he gets there. If a similar setup is required in your movie, embrace it and do the best you can with the situation. Forced to tell something through dialogue? Make it as seamless and interesting as you possibly can and move on.

DON’T FORGET TO SHOW WHAT YOUR HERO IS FIGHTING FOR
In 110 pages of story, it’s easy to forget what your hero is fighting for. In this case, McClane is trying to save his wife. If, then, we don’t see his wife for sixty minutes, we start to forget what his ultimate motivation is. In Die Hard, around the mid-point, Holly goes to Hans and asks him if she can get a couch for her pregnant friend and bathroom breaks for the rest of the hostages. It’s a small and seemingly insignificant scene, but it reminds us and reignites our passion for why John McClane must succeed.

ONE OF THE BEST SCENES YOU CAN WRITE
One might argue that the most memorable scene in Die Hard is when Hans pretends to be a hostage. Part of the reason we love this scene so much is because it’s such a clever move by our villain. But this is actually a setup for a scene that works almost every time you use it in a screenplay: We the audience know something that our main character doesn’t – that he’s in danger – and there’s nothing we can do to help him. The tension this creates in a scene – the helplessness we feel – works on an audience almost every time, so if you have the opportunity to use it, do so. Just make sure we like your hero. Obviously, if we don’t, we won’t be too worried when he’s seconds away from getting a bullet in the chest.

CHARACTER GOALS UP THE WAZOO
There are numerous character goals in Die Hard driving the story. That’s why, even though this is just a contained action film, it feels a lot more complicated and elaborate. McClane is trying to save his wife. McClane is trying to contact the police. Hans is trying to open the safe. Hans is trying to kill McClane. Hans is trying to find the detonators. The reporter’s trying to get the story. The FBI is trying to stop the terrorists. Al is trying to help McClane get out alive. Everybody’s got something to do in this movie and whenever they achieve what they’re trying to do, the writers give them something new to do. If too many characters run out of pressing things to do in an action script, put a fork in your screenplay, cause it’s done.

THINGS GET WORSE FOR OUR HERO AS THE SCRIPT GOES ON
In every action script, you want it to get tougher on your hero the closer he gets to the finish line. McClane’s feet are heavily cut, making it difficult for him to walk. Hans figures out that Holly is John’s wife and takes her hostage, making it more difficult to save her. In the final confrontation, McClane’s only got two bullets left, making his escape unlikely. Keep stacking the odds against your hero as he gets closer to achieving his goal.

DON’T PUSH YOUR LUCK
I’ve been slurping the Die Hard kool-aid all article. In parting, I have to take one shot at the film. There’s a famous line in a Kenny Rogers song that goes, “Know when to fold’em.” At a certain point, you’ve gotten everything you’ve needed out of your screenplay. When that happens, it’s time to say “The End.” In Die Hard, there’s a really cheesy forced moment in the final scene where Terrorist #1 bursts out of the building and Sergeant Al shoots him. It was one beat too many and almost ruined an extremely satisfying ending. You always want to leave your audience wanting more. Resist that “one last unnecessary moment” and type “The End” instead.

And that’s that. Now before I leave, I want to pose a question to you guys, cause the truth is, I’m not sure what the answer is. Die Hard has one of the most cliché moments in all of action films in its finale. Bruce Willis points a gun at our villain who’s pointing a gun at our damsel in distress. Could you ask for a more obvious final scenario? And yet, I was riveted. I was terrified for Holly and I was scared that Willis wouldn’t be able to save her. Outside of the obvious, “We liked the characters,” can you explain why this moment, despite being the very definition of cliché, still worked?

And tune in next Thursday where I break down Die Hard 2 and give you 10 examples of what NOT to do in an action film.

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Get Back

Posted on February 2, 2011 | by admin

Genre: Comedy/Sci-Fi
Premise: A pair of Beatles fans stumble upon a time machine and seize the opportunity to go back in time and prevent Yoko Ono from meeting John Lennon.
About: Chris McCoy hasn’t broken into the “produced credit” category just yet, but he’s been pretty busy since he debuted on the 2007 Black List with this screenplay, doing lots of assignment work and having a bucket of projects in development. Get Back has garnered some heat lately with Mark Waters (Mean Girls, The Spiderwick Chronicles) attaching himself as director and setting a tentative start date of June, 2011.
Writer: Chris McCoy
Details: 115 pages – the Black List 2007 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).

I took note of Get Back a couple of years ago when I read the premise. Could it be? Let it be? A time travel comedy that actually sounded worthy of taking on Back To The Future? My hopes were quickly dashed though when I saw the writer. McCoy had written one of my least favorite scripts of that year, Good Looking. Although an original concept, the execution made me feel like the walrus. From what I’d read of his, I just didn’t see him being able to explore this concept in an original way.

But I decided to take a chance on Get Back anyway and boy am I glad I did. It looks like this is the same situation we were discussing last week. The difference in quality between a spec script (Get Back) and assignment work (Good Looking) is night and day. You can see the passion on the page here that you just didn’t see in that script.

20-something Ted Archer works in a record store. He’s a bit of a hipster, but not in an annoying way. He just loves the way music used to be made and the way people used to listen to it. Even if he won the lottery tomorrow, he wouldn’t change a thing about his life. He’d still be in here every day, listening to the great songs of yesteryear and selling albums, itunes be damned.

Peruvian Piero Chacon, Ted’s best friend, isn’t much different, but to add insult to injury, he’s so stuck in the world of yesteryear that women won’t even look at him. They don’t understand the clothes he wears, the words he uses, the things he likes. This man belongs in a first class cabin on Pan Am airlines in 1969, smoking a cigarette and not having a care in the world – not in Snooki-dominated 2010.

To demonstrate just how weird these two are, they’ve spent the last couple of years looking for a rumored spaceship prop from some 1970’s funk band who ditched it after a concert. It’s said to be in a nearby forest, and Piero and Tim are going to cover every square foot of that forest until they find it.

Imagine their shock when they finally come upon it! And imagine their additional shock when they find a strange dashboard on the inside with destination years on it. Holy shit, Ted and Piero have just found a time machine!

The two debate the ramifications of this find, and pontificate on the most valid uses for it. After agreeing that “killing baby Hitler” would be too difficult, they both agree that the single most horrible thing that happened in history is Yoko Ono meeting John Lennon and breaking up the Beatles. So Tim’s journey is set. He’s going to go back to London in 1966 and prevent John Lennon from meeting Yoko Ono!

So back they go, but get there too late, and must watch as the most fateful meeting in history occurs right in front of their eyes. What can they possibly do now? It doesn’t take Ted long to figure it out. In order to prevent this relationship from proceeding, he will need to get Yoko Ono to fall in love with him. Ted uses every trick in the book (i.e. telling her he’s predicting something called “the internet,” which fascinates Yoko) and soon the competition is on.

Unfortunately John Lennon gets so bummed out by Yoko’s interest in Ted that he decides to quit the Beatles.  The guys, via browsing through Piero’s ipod, realize that this destroys half the Beatles’ catalogue and nearly destroys the entire future of music.

As a last ditch effort, Ted has to find a way to have Yoko fall out of love with him and back in love with John, all by the time a young James Brown plays his first funk concert, which is the only fuel that can send the spaceship back to the future. Complicating all this is that Ted actually starts to like Yoko himself!

Okay, truth?

This is a shameless copy of Back To The Future.

But dammit if it isn’t a blast.

If I could only use one word to describe “Get Back” it would be “fun.” The script is fun. It doesn’t do anything exceptional and every choice made only helps you realize just how genius Back To The Future was, but this is just different enough from that film to get you your Back To The Future fix and still feel like you’re experiencing something new.

First, I was surprised at how clever the script was. When I first considered the idea, I didn’t know if it had legs. I figured Ted and Piero would get to London and go through a bunch of pratfall-like hijinx to push John and Yoko apart and then…that would be it. So I loved that John and Yoko got together right away and that Ted’s only choice of stopping them was to win Yoko over – the one person he hated more than anyone. *And* that he had to go against John Lennon – the one person he loved more than anyone.

I actually thought McCoy could’ve done more with this. Yoko’s really weird. And Ted’s present day annoying girlfriend was really conservative. If we could’ve stressed that Ted needed to find someone as “out there” and unconventional as himself, and Yoko could’ve filled that role, and he really genuinely fell in love with her, that could’ve made things really interesting in the end, when he has to go home. The way it stands, he only sorta falls for Yoko, keeping the stakes low and making their break-up at the end way too easy on him.

Actually, the entire ending is pretty clumsy and makes you appreciate just how perfectly constructed Back To The Future is. For example, instead of the lightning bolt scene, the spaceship is fueled by “funk.” This is pretty well set up and McCoy does as much as he can with it, but it still feels awfully clunky when he has to go to this James Brown concert with a spaceship propped on the stage and wait for enough of this mythical funk to fuel the ship so he can jump back to the present day.

Piero also gets short shrift here. I loved that we had a Peruvian lead in a script (don’t think I’ve seen that before) but he’s basically relegated to giving the movie something to cut to while we set up the next beat in Ted’s storyline. His romantic storyline also develops way too late, although I did like how it ended.

Trying to walk in the shadow of one of the best constructed screenplays of all time is not easy. I’ve read a lot of really bad time travel comedies hoping to find the next BTTF. Hot Tub Time Machine, for example, was nothing short of embarrassing. This is a thousand times better than that. It just needs some tuning up on the details, particularly the ending. And Ted could use some beefing up too. What we liked about Marty was that he was a dreamer. He wanted it all. And we wanted to see him get it. Ted’s a little more subdued, his dreams more down to earth, and as a result, he lacks a lot of the energy that made Marty so fun. Then again, you don’t want to make the exact same movie so maybe it’s better this way. This is a really fun little script that has a ton of potential – potential it may have fulfilled in the three years since McCoy wrote the original draft. Let’s hope so cause this definitely needs to become a movie.

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

What I learned: Does your title only sound clever once people read your script? Or does your title stand on its own? “Get Back” is a boring title if we know nothing about the concept. I would never pick this script up off a pile. Here’s the thing though. When you read the script, you realize the title’s actually quite clever. The problem is, *you have to read the script to realize that*. I’m okay with a writer doing this as long as they’re aware of it. But if you want to give your script a better chance of getting read, make sure the title is exciting on its own, not dependent on the read.

Also, check out my breakdown for the Back To The Future 2 script that never was here.  

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Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close

Posted on February 1, 2011 | by admin

Genre: Drama
Premise: A young boy goes on a journey through New York City to find the truth about how his father, who disappeared in 9/11, died.
About: Based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was adapted by Eric Roth, who won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Forrest Gump in 1994. He also co-wrote the screenplays for The Insider (1999), Munich (2005), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), all of which were nominated for Oscars. Roth was born in New York to a studio executive and a film producer. He got his masters from UCLA Film School. In a side note about Roth, he is one of the unfortunate group of investors in the Madoff Ponzi scheme, and has admitted to losing all of his retirement money in the scam. Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock star in “Extremely Loud.” 12 year old Thomas Horn, who won Jeopardy Kids Week in 2010, will be playing Oskar.
Writer: Eric Roth (based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer)
Details: 137 pages – March 17, 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).

 Eric Roth

Eric Roth is very much an anomaly in screenwriting circles. He more or less does things his own way and doesn’t subscribe to fancy-schmancy screenwriting theory. He simply sits down and writes what comes to mind. Once asked what a writer should do if they hit writer’s block, Roth unassumingly offered, “Change the weather in the scene. That’s what I do.”

Not exactly shocking. Roth’s adaptation of Forrest Gump bucks numerous screenwriting trends, and you’d be hard pressed to find much structure in Benjamin Button. This makes him a hero to some and a hack to others. The “do it yourselfers” love that they can point to a successful screenwriter who ignores convention. The “structuralists” argue that that’s the reason why his stories are all over the place.

I’ll never forget listening to an interview with Roth where he was asked why we hadn’t seen any spec screenplays from him. Roth was genuinely confused by the term. “Spec?” The interviewer actually had to explain what a spec screenplay was to Roth. He had no idea. After being told what it was, he explained that he had been paid to write a script right out of UCLA and has been working ever since. Eric Roth has never worked on an idea of his own. Make of that what you will.

Oskar Schell is a 10 year old boy who wishes his anus could talk. In other words, Oskar’s weird. He’s the kid who gets picked on at school, the guy snorting up jello through a straw. He’s a loner through and through.

Oskar’s best friend was actually his father. “Was” because his father was one of those unfortunate souls who died in the twin towers on 9/11. Now Oskar, his mother, and his grandmother (who lives in the adjacent building and who Oskar communicates with via walkie-talkie) are taking it one day at time, trying to make sense of how and why this happened.

Oskar, in particular, is devastated by his father’s absence, to the point where he combs international websites with videos of people jumping out of the towers, hoping he can break through the blurry pixelated dots to locate his father. Oskar needs to know how his father died that day so he can stop inventing his death. He needs closure.

One day, Oskar finds an old vase in his mother’s closet and accidentally breaks it, only to find a key inside accompanied by a letter to someone named “Black.” Believing that this key will open something that sheds light on that fateful day, Oskar plans to visit all 500 Blacks in New York City, to find out which one this envelope belongs to. If he can get a couple visits in every week, it should only take a few years.

During this time, Oskar meets his grandmother’s mystery tenant, an old man who can no longer speak. Oskar’s put off by his weirdness, but it’s not like he’s breaking any Facebook friend records, so he asks him to join him on his journey, and “The Renter” (as we come to know him) accepts the invitation.

In the meantime, Oskar has to come up with clever ways to escape his house without his mom finding out that he’s running around New York. The relationship between the two is strained at best. They always got along, but the death of Oskar’s father exposed that the link between them was bridged by him, and that without that bridge, they have nothing to talk about.

Oskar meets tons of characters along the way, including a guard who works at the Statue Of Liberty and lets him come up and look out at the city. But most of his search is met with shrugged shoulders and apologetic smiles. Despite Oskar looking for some grand answer to it all, he may have to accept that the answer may never come.

It’s rare that I just get to talk about how a script affected me b/c it’s rare that a writer is so good that they can make me forget I’m reading a story. But this script did it. In a lot of ways it reminded me of when I read The Social Network, where I just forgot about form and structure and character and got transported into another universe via Roth’s wizardry.

Roth has a strange way of writing that I can’t quite put my finger on, but it’s its singular and unique and when you’re reading him, you go with it. Maybe it’s because he ignores convention. I don’t know. But there’s some really heavy stuff here that Roth has to sell and you never once question it.

Now make no mistake, there are some key things in place to make this story work. First and foremost is the character goal driving the action. Oskar is trying to find out what this key opens, and the connection he has with his father, shown through flashbacks and voice over, makes that goal extremely strong. I mean, I don’t know if I’ve felt this much love between two characters in a screenplay before.

Also, Oskar is the ultimate underdog. He’s a 10 year old kid with no friends who lost the most important person in his life. I mean who’s not going to root for this guy? (Note that Roth’s other most popular character, Forrest Gump, was also one of the biggest underdogs in cinema history).

But it’s the details and the crushing scenes in this screenplay that will leave you thinking about “Extremely Loud” long after you’ve finished it. (Spoilers) First and foremost the final answering machine message scene. I mean, I can’t remember the last time I felt so devastated reading something. The explanation of what happened on that last call? Grab your Kleenex girls AND boys, as you’re going to need it.

And rewinding his father’s “possible” jump from the towers so that he’s going back up into the building instead of falling down? I mean wow. I needed to wipe away some man-tears after that one.

On a lighter note, one of the nice touches here is being able to see what Oskar imagines. The trailer on this movie is going to be phenomenal. We’re going to have helicopters carrying the world’s biggest blanket, dropping it on the twin towers. We’re going to have thousands of coffins with rockets attached to them shooting up into the sky. We’re going to have a half-man/half-robot waiting to talk to Oskar. We’re going to have the “Sixth Borough” out on its own island next to Manhattan. The imagination in this story is incredible, and you really feel like you’re being taken into another world with every page.

This is easily the best thing about 9/11 that I’ve ever read. Probably the best decision Roth (or Foer) made was installing as much humor as there is here – and there’s a lot. Cause the truth is, people are tired of how emotionally draining 9/11 is. They see it and they just want to escape. But Oskar’s view of the world is so funny that this devastating tale is bearable – even enjoyable. And somehow – I’m still not sure how Roth does it – it never feels false. Everyone says “Don’t do voice over. Don’t do voice over.” But man, for writers who know what they’re doing, it can be the most powerful part of a screenplay – as some of Oskar’s musings in this story are.

So was it perfect? No, and I think that’s because this is an early draft. This is 137 pages long and it feels like it. I think Roth gets a little carried away with giving us the father’s backstory.  I mean, there are some great moments in there.  There’s just too much of it. I liked how we’d get a flashback scene with them every 20 pages or so to remind us what Oskar was fighting for. But right now there are like 20 scenes with the dad, and I think that can easily be cut in half. For this reason, the middle act drags until The Renter shows up.

Also, the mom storyline needs to be fleshed out and better defined. We know these two don’t get along, but we’re not exactly sure why. So their eventual reconciliation doesn’t have nearly the punch that it should have.

There were a few other things that bothered me. Roth can get a little long-winded at times. But the key here is that this script made me feel something. It’s hard to finish this screenplay and not feel affected in some way. Reading through so many average scripts, I sometimes forget how hard that is to do. Someone else told me that this script makes Extremely Loud a front-runner for an Oscar in 2012. I don’t know if I’d go that far but it certainly has the seeds to grow into something great.

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

What I learned: When comparing three of Roth’s most high-profile scripts, something sticks out. The combination of a heavy underdog and a voice over is a powerful one if you have the skills to pull it off. The underdog thing is obvious. Everyone roots for an underdog. But the additional voice over takes that connection between us to a new level. Because the main character is talking to us, we feel like we know him, and you’re always more likely to root for people you know. This approach was used to perfection in both this script and Forrest Gump. Contrast that with Benjamin Button, which was a good but not great film. It had neither. Benjamin was sort of an underdog, but not really, as he basically grew into a handsome young man. Also (if my memory serves me correctly) it was Cate Blanchett who did the voice over, not our hero. Are these the reasons Button is not as memorable as these two stories? I don’t know. But it’s certainly worth noting.

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Are We Officially Dating?

Posted on January 31, 2011 | by admin

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A group of 20-somethings must deal with the ever-complicated logistics of commitment.
About: Are We Officially Dating made the 2010 Black List, landing somewhere near the middle of the pack. Thomas Gormican, the writer, graduated from Brown University. He began his career at GreeneStreet Films in New York City. Afterwards, he partnered with Charles Wessler and the Farrelly Brothers to produce a short-films-compilation (Movie 43) in the vein of The Kentucky Fried Movie, to be financed and distributed by Overture Films.
Writer: Thomas Gormican
Details: 112 pages – 10-22-10 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

 Would James Franco make a good Jason?

The male bachelor afraid of commitment sub-genre is probably the most crowded sub-genre in the spec screenplay market. Makes sense, right? There are a lot of males between the ages of 20-30 writing screenplays. It’s only natural, then, that they write about what males between the ages of 20-30 think about. For that reason, if you’re going to add your name to this list, you better make sure your script is one of two things: 1) very well written or 2) a completely new take on the genre. I always advocate for #2, since people are more likely to pass around something that’s fresh and original. If you’re going to go with #1 though, know this: Even if you execute your story to perfection, there’s still a good chance it’s never going to be seen as anything other than an average comedy, and that’s exactly what we have here with “Are We Officially Dating?”

Jason is 28 years old, charming, handsome, and deathly afraid of commitment. He’s specifically afraid of the “So…” I think we all know the “So…” The “So” is when a woman has had enough of the fun, and after a particularly enjoyable sexual encounter sneaks in, “So….where is this going?” Yeah, Jason would rather sleep in an oven than deal with the “So…” So, as soon as a relationship gets to that border between fun and serious (The Great Wall of Commitment?) he bails.

Completing the bachelorhood lifestyle are Jason’s two best friends. There’s Mikey, a doctor whose wife just started banging their lawyer. Because Mikey has little respect for himself, he still allows her to use him for medical advice. Then there’s Daniel, whose best friend Chelsea is “one of the guys.” But when he sleeps with her, he too must deal with the question of whether to commit or keep it casual.

Jason’s problems start when he takes the cute Ellie home for a night of sexual adventure, only to realize she’s a hooker, only to later realize she’s not a hooker. They start hanging out, having fun, and in between these fun escapades, the guys, a la a younger better looking Seinfeld cast, discuss their predicaments in comedic detail.

Eventually Jason starts falling for Ellie, but when she gives him the “So…” he freaks out and tells her he can’t make a commitment. Jason then learns that Ellie is seeing a hot new author (both characters work in the publishing industry) and of course realizes that he loves her. He then becomes Stalk Machine 3000, breaking down cryptic updates on Ellie’s Facebook page like archeologists would hieroglyphics, eventually getting to the point where, as one of his friends puts it, he “looks like somebody Jamie Foxx would play in a movie.”

Jason has to pull it together to win Ellie back but there’s a chance he’s gone too far and that he’ll never experience the joy of a loving committed relationship.

 Maybe Blake Lively for Ellie?

I don’t have anything against “Are We Officially Dating?” There aren’t any big problems here. There’s a nice work goal that keeps the story on track. There’s plenty of conflict between the three pairs of characters. The dialogue is decent. The comedy wasn’t suited to me but I definitely laughed. What plagues “Dating” in my opinion is that there’s nothing new about it. I’ve read this exact kind of script two hundred times before. Was Gormican’s version of the story better than those other 200? It was better than most. But even though well-written, you can only read the same story so many times before it stops affecting you (and hence, another argument why you should find a fresh take on the genre).

There were some smaller issues here for me. Ellie isn’t a very exciting character. One of the things I constantly see in these male-written rom-coms – especially ones which sympathize with the male hero’s fear of commitment – is that the female leads aren’t very strong. And I’d probably make that argument here. Ellie is treated more as an ideal than a character. The focus is on what the guys think of her, of their situation, and of the developments on Jason’s side of the relationship, rather than Ellie herself. This is particularly true later on, when Ellie disappears for most of the third act. We’re focused more on Jason going crazy than what’s going on with Ellie.  For this reason (spoiler!), when he gets her in the end, we don’t feel it, cause we don’t really know the girl. 

I also found it strange that Jason was pursuing Ellie early on, despite the fact that he so adamantly didn’t want a relationship. The explanation we’re given for his contradictory actions is that he “wants her on the roster,” though it’s never explained what that means. So it felt like a cheat.

A lot of you are probably wondering, “Well then how did this get on the Black List?” It’s a fair question. I think it’s because it gets all the little things right. A big problem I see in amateur scripts is that writers don’t know how to get the script to the point where it’s being judged solely on the story. They haven’t learned all the little things required to make the story stand on its own.

For example, they may not know how to set up their main character. When we meet your main character, you need to tell us exactly who that character is, what their strength is, what their flaw is, what the central problem in their life is. We need to know this so we understand what it is our character will need to overcome during the course of the story.

I don’t see that in a lot of amateur scripts. Instead I see character introductions with our protagonist doing arbitrary things that tell us very little if anything about the character. The writer erroneously assumes that since *they* know who their character is, that it will just magically leak out onto the page. But it doesn’t work that way, and as a result, the whole movie’s point is muddled. We don’t know who our main character is, why they’re existing, what they’re trying to overcome, and how it relates to the plot, because nobody’s ever told us. I see this ALL. THE. TIME.

Are We Officially Dating begins with Jason explaining exactly what’s wrong with him. He’s a commitment-phobe. He avoids relationships. There isn’t a single doubt in our mind what’s going on with this character after that scene. And I realize that Gormican chooses to TELL us and not SHOW us this information (we can debate that another day), but the point is, when that opening scene is over, you don’t have any doubt in your mind who Jason is – and that’s important.

There are a lot of little things like that in a screenplay that you have to get right JUST TO HAVE YOUR STORY MAKE SENSE TO THE READER. And that’s why a lot of amateur scripts don’t stack up to “Are We Officially Dating?” even though there’s nothing particularly new going on here.

These are always the toughest reviews for me to write, because the script didn’t make me feel anything one way or the other. It showed a good command of the craft, but that’s about it.

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

What I learned: Up above, I went on a long rant about making sure we know who your main character is in his introductory scene. Well, I wanted to make sure you knew that there are times when you DON’T want to do this. In particular, when your character has a deep mysterious background. So say you’re writing a Western and start on a drifter riding into town. The appeal of this character might be his mystery. It might be counter-productive, then, to tell us everything about him right away. Instead, you’ll want to install little pieces of his backstory and problems throughout the story.  Just make sure that the revelations about his secret past are worthy of being initially kept from us (in other words, make sure they’re damn interesting).

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