On a day where they’ve announced that they’re remaking Lethal Weapon (remaking Lethal Weapon?? Really?) you’re probably wondering why I’m writing yet another article telling you what you SHOULDN’T do. But here’s the thing. I was reading away last weekend, burning through script after script, each one in a different genre, becoming more and more frustrated as each script ended. And I was wondering why I was getting so worked up. I go through bad stretches of scripts all the time. It eventually turns. So why was this bothering me more than usual?

And I realized that in each script I’d read, some basic common mistake was being made. These weren’t unique problems that only pop up once every hundred screenplays or so. These were genre-specific mistakes that I see over and over again. So I thought, hey, if I knew the number one mistake to avoid when I started writing a screenplay, wouldn’t that give me an advantage over other writers?

So lo and behold, that was the genesis for this article. I marked the 15 most popular genres and the most common mistakes I run into while reading those genres. Other readers may have different experiences, but this is mine. So either silently curse me for pointing out, once again, what NOT to do in a script, or use this advice to topple your competition. Here we go!

PERIOD PIECES – Number one mistake I see in period pieces is writers getting lost in their work. We’re cutting to a king in France and a peasant in Russia and a little known uprising in Austria and dozens of years pass and the old characters die and new characters are born and blah blahblahblah blah blah blah. Jumping around to 15 different characters in 18 different countries for 2 and a half hours isn’t going to entertain a reader. It’s going to frustrate them. Instead, find the focus in your period piece. Make the main character’s journey clear. The King’s Speech is about a King who must overcome his speech impediment before giving the most important speech in the country’s history. It’s clean and it’s simple. If you do want to go “sprawling,” remember this: The more sprawling you get, the clearer your main character’s goal has to be. So the story of Braveheart encompassed dozens of years, but the goal (obtain freedom for his country) was always as clear as day.

DRAMAS – Many writers believe drama is a license to lay everything on thick as molasses. Cancer, death, car crashes, disease, abuse, addiction, depression. If you have more than a couple of these going on in your drama, consider taking them out now. Dramas are at their best when they pick and choose which moments to explore, not just hurl it all down in one giant depression sundae. It’s a delicate balance and by no means easy to navigate, but I always subscribe to the theory that less is more in drama.

ZOMBIE/SERIAL KILLER/ROM COMS – What the hell are all three of these doing in one category? That’s easy. All three inspire the same problem. Writers never do anything fresh with these genres. Zombie: Group of people gets chased by zombies, usually in a city. Rom-Coms: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again. Serial Killer: Serial killer leaves cryptic puzzle behind for detectives to try and figure out. I see these plots over and over and over again. You have to come up with a fresh angle! Look at Zombieland. They added comedy, silly rules, a voice over, and a road-trip story to the genre. It was fresh. Look at 500 Days of Summer. It mixed the whole damn relationship up. As for serial killers, I don’t have an example for you because since Seven NOBODY has done anything new with the serial killer genre (NOTE TO ALL SCREENWRITERS: IF YOU WANT TO CASH IN, FIND A FRESH ANGLE FOR THE SERIAL KILLER GENRE). Remember, all three of these markets are super-competitive. So beat em by coming up with something new.

SCI-FI/FANTASY – Most new writers get into sci-fi and fantasy for the wrong reasons. They’re more interested in the macro than the micro. In other words, they care more about the world than their hero’s journey. I remember reading a really ambitious incredibly detailed sci-fi script that didn’t have a lick of story to speak of, and the writer’s one big question to me afterwards was, “Do you think the disappearing mech suits on page 25 are realistic?” Of all the questions they could’ve asked, they didn’t want to know, “Was my main character’s motivation strong enough?” Or “Do you think the connection between these two characters worked?” but if a singular tiny sci-fi geeky machine that had nothing to do with the rest of story was realistic. This is representative of how writers think of these scripts. They’re focusing on the wrong things. Focus on the character’s journey first (The Matrix is more about Neo believing in himself than it is about cool wire-fu) and everything else will follow.

COMING-OF-AGE – Coming-of-Age is a commonly encountered amateur genre because most writers are in their 20s when they begin writing. Naturally, they start writing about their own confusing directionless lives. Unfortunately, this confusion almost always translates to NO STORY! The writer feels content to just let their character wander about, experiencing life and all its eccentricities, believing that the “realness” of the journey will be enough to capture the audience’s imagination. It isn’t. It just makes everything directionless and boring. If you want to write coming-of-age, give your script a hook and a story just like any other genre. A perfect example is Everything Must Go – very much a coming of age story, but structured so as to keep the story on track and so we always know what’s going on.

COMEDY and HORROR – I’ve said this a million and one times on the site. The biggest mistake comedies and horror films make, is to focus on the laughs and the scares as opposed to character development. Comedy and Horror plots don’t tend to be that complicated, which is fine. As long as you have a good hook, you’re okay. But the characters in these scripts are a different story. The audience *has to connect* with them in order for the script to work. Yet writers refuse to dig any deeper into those character’s lives than the width of a tic-tac. So figure out what makes your hero tick. What are they afraid of? What’s their biggest flaw? Then use your story to explore that flaw. Happy Gilmore had major anger issues. The story was just as much about him learning to overcome that anger as it was about winning at golf.

WESTERNS – Back in the heyday of Westerns, the world moved much slower. People had more patience, more time. That’s not the case anymore in this information-overload Twitter-centric multitasking world. So you have to update the way you approach the genre. By far, the biggest problem I see in Westerns is that they move too slow. So speed things up a little bit. Develop your characters faster, get to your story sooner, add a few more twists and turns to keep the audience interested. I’m not saying you have to use Scott Pilgrim pace (though that might be interesting), I’m just saying that the Westerns I read these days assume the patience of yesteryear.  Guess what?  It’s not yesteryear anymore (and yes, I’m aware of the hypocrisy of this statement, seeing as I’m such a Brigands of Rattleborge fan, however I’m going to call that script the “When Harry Met Sally” of the Western world – a great big exception to the rule).

ACTION – The big thing with action flicks is the propensity to depend on clichés. Action writers are almost by definition uninterested in character development, and luckily the action genre is the least dependent on that area of writing, so you can actually get away with it. But if your script is just rehashing all the clichés we’ve seen in action movies of the past (a snappy line when disposing of a bad guy, the girl gets kidnapped by the villain in the end, the bad guy is bad for no reason) then you’re not trying hard enough. Some of these things can be done tongue-in-cheek effectively, but even that’s becoming cliche. The reason that the Bourne movies became so popular was because they updated the creaky action formula of the James Bond films, adding a mystery (a character who didn’t know who he was) making the story more sophisticated and taking itself more seriously. It was different, and that difference lured us in.

SPORTS – Cliché endings. Amateur sports scripts always end up with some variation of being down by 3 runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and the bases loaded. Then our hero hits the grand slam. It’s sappy, it’s predictable, it’s stupid. You have to find some other way. Look at Rocky. Rocky didn’t knock out Apollo to win the heavyweight championship of the world. He just lasted 15 rounds with him. Bull Durhum and Field of Dreams are considered two of the best sports movies of all time and yet there’s no “last at bat” scene. Find a unique way to end your sports story that doesn’t rely on the cliché last minute goal or home run.

BIOPIC – You’ve heard me drone on about this before. Biopic writers notoriously get caught up on the “best of” or “key” moments of the title character’s life, instead of looking for the most *dramatically compelling* moments of that person’s life. In addition to this, the biopic, more than any other genre out there (since our hero IS the genre) needs to have a *compelling character flaw.* Focus on the events in that person’s life that challenge that flaw and that’s where you’re going to find your story. So if your subject’s flaw is a fear of connection, then place him in a bunch of situations where he’s forced to connect with others. If doing this means leaving out the 3rd most famous moment from that person’s life, then leave that moment out.

THRILLER – The amateur thrillers I read don’t have enough story developments. The writer erroneously assumes that keeping the pace of the story up is all he has to do. But if you don’t throw us for a loop every once in awhile, if you don’t up the stakes, bring in a new character, force your character to deal with unexpected problems, then your thriller’s going to run out of steam. Just try to make sure something interesting happens every 15 pages or so. In Buried, we have the bad guys wanting him to make a video, we have the good guys needing his help to find him, we have snakes, we have sand seeping in. Some new story development is always happening to keep the story alive. Make sure you’re packing the same amount of story density into your thriller.

Genre: Action
Premise: A woman must fight off hundreds of yakuzas all sent to do one thing – kill her. The hook? The entire battle takes place in her apartment.
About: Yale Hannon spent ten years as a script coordinator on TV shows, working on such series as Parenthood, In Treatment, Vanished, and Big Love. What a nice story to see Hannon finally break through with his own script. Everly finished in the middle of the pack of 2010’s Black List.
Writer: Yale Hannon (Story by Joe Lynch & Yale Hannon)
Details: 92 pages, March 23, 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).

This script sounded too bizarre to be true. A woman stuck in an apartment fighting off hundreds of Yakuzas? Why would Yakuzas want to kill a woman so badly that they’d send hundreds of themselves to do the job? And, um, what is a Yakuza anyway?

Let’s face it. This is geek fantasy at its finest. One woman. Hundreds of warriors. Guns, sweat, and blood. Visions of Matrix, Kill Bill, and Sin City dancing in our heads. Reality isn’t exactly top priority in these instances. And usually, when you throw reality out the window, Carson jumps with it. Who wants to watch 90 minutes of fight porn?

Okay, don’t answer that. Sorry.

30 year old Everly has just been raped by half a dozen men when we meet her. What a wonderful way to meet a hero. She’s holed up in the bathroom of her apartment, barely able to move, the incessant taunts of the men from outside barreling through the door like bullets. They want her back out there, where they can finish their job then do what they came here to do – end her life.

Of course Everly would never be in this position if she hadn’t made some previous mistakes. See Everly used to be involved with a man named Taiko, a Japanese mobster who owns half the city. Then one day, presumably after she realized – you know – that she was schtooping a guy who kills people for a living, she decides she’s going to turn him in to the DEA. Except in this case, the DEA was on Taiko’s payroll.

There are two truths in this world: Never expect a monogamous relationship from a girl named Candy and never double cross a guy named Taiko. Especially if he’s a mob boss. I have personal experience with both of these mistakes so just trust me.

Taiko is so pissed, in fact, that he’s decided to not only kill Everly, but to make her suffer like no one has ever suffered before. And he ain’t stopping there. He’s going to lop off Everly’s mother’s head and put her daughter into a lifetime of prostitution…and probably kill her afterwards just for kicks.

Now Everly’s a tough cookie. She can handle pain. But when Taiko brings family into it, all bets are off.

So she calls up her mom (who by the way, is one of those moms who’s eternally disappointed in their children’s life choices – although in this case I think she may have a point) and tells her to come to her apartment with her daughter. It’s the last place Taiko will expect them to go, and therefore the safest place they can be.

In the meantime, she pulls out one of her many stashed guns and blows through the bathroom door, taking out all the dudes who thought it was funny to rape her. She succeeds, but this only pisses off Taiko more. So he sends a bigger wave of henchmen to take Everly out.

For those wondering how in the hell you shoot up an apartment and not have the entire force bearing down on you within five minutes, well, it turns out Taiko owns this building. Everybody who lives here works for him in one way or another. So instead of these folks calling the police for help, they’re answering Taiko’s calls, to KILL EVERLY.

Everly fights off wave upon impossible wave of these psychos until her daughter and mom arrive. She hurries them into her neighboring friend’s apartment while somehow fighting off even more waves of baddies. Finally, Taiko realizes he has to stop fucking around, and sends in The Sadist. The Sadist is clearly the highlight of the film and maybe even the reason the script was written.

Basically, he’s some fucked up Japanese guy with a lot of masks and a lot of chemical concoctions and even carries with him a slave in a cage. Think of him as a combination of Sling Blade (the Japanese version), that dude in Animal Kingdom, Buffalo Bill from Silence Of The Lambs, and Charles Manson. The Sadist is Taiko’s personal guarantee that Everly will suffer history’s most long and drawn out death.

When it’s all said and done, the entire apartment is leveled to the point where it looks like a tornado, a bomb, an earthquake, and a tsunami hit it all at once. There’s no floor, no ceiling, and of course, Taiko has to show up to finish the job himself. Will he succeed? Or will it be Everly who wins?

A spade is a spade right? Everly is long on stylized action and short on story. But I have to give it to Yale. He injects just enough reasons for this story to exist (surviving, saving the daughter) that it works. Not only that, but you can see this as a movie. In fact, I see directors drooling over this script. There’s just so much craziness to play with. It’s kind of like Kill Bill without all the slow parts. And I’m guessing that after seeing Everly, Tarantino may be drooling as well, wondering why he didn’t think of it first.

If there’s something that places this above all the wannabes – and make no mistake about it, it’s easy to fail here – it’s the “impossible” factor. When you write a story, you want the goal to seem impossible for your main character. The more impossible it is, the more gripping the story tends to be. It’s like watching a football game where your team is down 21 points in the 4th quarter. You know they’re probably going to lose – but dammit you want to watch to see if they win.

I mean just the sheer number of people trying to take Everly out has us in constant flux, wondering how she’s going to pull it off.

The other driving force here is one of the oldest story devices in the book. Make us hate your bad guy. Make us want to take that fucker down. BUT! Don’t forget to also give your villain proper motivation. I was just talking about this with some writers the other day. If your villain is bad just to be bad, he won’t work. There has to be a REASON he’s bad. In this case, Everly double crossed Taiko. That’s why Taiko is so relentless. He’s not just trying to kill Everly cause he’s a bad guy.

Everly has some problems. I would’ve liked a twist or two. This script goes pretty much according to plan. And man is it a chore to read through at times. You’d have a better chance finding Emelia Earheart than you would a full page of dialogue in Everly. This is only a 95 page script, but because it’s so much action, it reads like it’s 135. I would strongly advise anyone writing an action heavy script to please keep the paragraph chunks lean, since failure to do so results in novel-itis, a disease you don’t want your screenplay to catch.

But other than that, this is a cool screenplay, and probably a movie you’ll see on the big screen within the next couple of years.

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

What I learned: This is the very definition of the kind of script I see a lot of unknown writers break in with. Unique hook (1 girl, hundreds of attackers). Marketable (who can’t see this trailer?). Clear singular goal (survive). Contained space and time (one apartment, one night). By no means do I think Everly’s execution is perfect, but that’s the advantage of writing this kind of script – you keep the story so simple that your mistakes don’t matter nearly as much as they normally would.

Genre: High School
Premise: Two best friends at Providence high school, Gabriel and Kayla, find themselves preparing for their lives after graduation. But when their relationship becomes more than friends, all of their plans will have to be reevaluated.
About: Another “write what you know” tale. (from Wikipedia) In his sophomore year at USC, Schwartz wrote Providence as a homework assignment. He entered it into a local contest and won. Unfortunately, the prize was quickly revoked; to be eligible he had to be in his junior year at the time. Schwartz says “I dropped it in a box – I was a sophomore. And I got a call over the summer saying I’d won, and I’d won five thousand dollars. I was like, “This is awesome!” Then they called back, like, the next day and said you had to be a junior to enter and not a sophomore, so they were rescinding it. I was pretty pissed.” Nevertheless, with help from connections through his fraternity, he generated interest in Hollywood to buy his screenplay. In 1997, Tristar bought the script in a bidding war for $550,000 against $1 million (while he was still a junior). Schwartz got an agent and subsequently wrote a TV pilot called Brookfield for ABC/Disney while he was still studying at USC. It was a boarding school drama about wealthy kids in New England and was his first TV pilot script; it sold only a few months after he had sold Providence. Brookfield was produced starring Amy Smart and Eric Balfour but never aired. Schwartz then dropped out of USC to work full-time and wrote another pilot called Wall to Wall Records, a drama about working in a music store for Warner Bros. TV that was also produced but never aired. Later, at 26, he became the youngest person in network history to create a network series and run its day-to-day production when he ran The O.C.
Writer: Josh Schwartz
Details: 107 pages – Nov, 19, 1997 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).

We’re back with another break-in script. This time from Josh Schwartz, creator of the O.C., Gossip Girl, and Chuck. All shows a lot of you probably haven’t watched (although I know there are a few Chuck fans out there). However fanboys should not despair. Josh wrote the upcoming X-Men flick, X-Men: First Class, as well. Makes sense when you think about it, since all the participants are supposed to be young and that’s clearly where Josh’s sensibilities lie. Regardless of all that, it’s always fun to look back and see what script broke someone in, even if my expectations for the creator of Gossip Girl aren’t exactly sky high.

Well count me surprised. I dug Providence from the very first scene. When I was a Freshman in high school, I remember going to my first school assembly. I’d never been to an assembly before and had no idea what they were. But with myself and 2500 other kids crammed into an auditorium, the lights went out, the latest hip hop song started blasting through the speakers, and 40 of the hottest junior and senior girls in drill team uniforms you can imagine came charging onto the floor. It was like the Lester Burnhum auditorium scene in American Beauty, if I was high on both speed and ecstasy. A sensory overload that took me into another dimension. For the next 7 minutes, I didn’t know which way was up, and to this day wonder if God gave me a glimpse of heaven in those 7 minutes.

Providence doesn’t hit us quite so severely over the head, but opens with a dream sequence where our awkward high-strung hero, Gabriel Gordon, is back in his 8 year old body, looking up at the stunning 18 year old Ashley Adams, a high school goddess who’s leading Gabriel through a football field of students. It’s the yearly assembly, the only one where every student, from ages kindergarten through 12th grade, came together, and here he is, the luckiest second grader in the universe, being paired up with his dream girl, Ashley Adams. We’re told about this moment through voice over, and the way Gabriel describes it was very similar to the way I remember my own assembly.

From that moment on, the script had me. I just totally identified with this character. And I’ll be the first to admit, it resulted in my overlooking a lot of the script’s deficiencies.

Anyway, Gabriel isn’t 8 anymore. He’s 18. His best friend is Kayla Evans, one of those pretty girls who has no idea they’re pretty. But Gabriel doesn’t see Kayla that way and she doesn’t see him that way either. They’re just best friends who’ve always gotten along.

Providence surrounds the duo with quite the cast of characters. You have Gabriel’s dictator of a little sister, Sarah. His dad, whose running regimen is more important than the family. Gabriel’s best friend, Vince, who’s skipping college so he can start a cult. And there’s Kayla’s best friend Whitney, who’s in love with a five year old. Despite the broad nature of these characters, Schwartz manages to make them work in a weird if not forced way.

One night, while innocently hanging out at a Halloween Party, Gabriel and Kayla accidentally kiss. But they quickly decide they don’t want it to be accidental, and kiss more. And then they quickly decide that instead of this just being a lot of kissing, they want a relationship, but want to make sure that their friendship isn’t ruined if the relationship fails. So they make up these rules. Can’t say I love you. Can’t kiss in front of others. Can’t break plans with friends to be with each other. Which is fine at first (isn’t it always fine at first?) but when things start getting more serious, all of these rules start getting challenged.

The point of contention is that Gabriel wants everything protected for the future and Kayla just wants to experience the now. It’s only when Kayla starts challenging these notions that Gabriel realizes how important being “in the moment” is. The problem is, when this finally gets through his thick skull, his philosophy likewise gets through to Kayla, who now values preparing for the future.

Man, timing sucks.

It’s one of the things I liked about Providence. The script moves along a predictable path for most of the way, but once it gets to that last act, you really have no idea what’s going to happen.

I also liked the theme of the movie but more importantly, what I learned about theme in the process. I think one of the reasons writers are afraid of theme is that they’re afraid of being tasked with coming up with some profound statement about the world. It’s like they have to invent a new theory that no one in history has come up with before. Yet a lot of the themes that work are deceptively simple, like this one. Providence’s theme is “Live in the moment.” That’s all. It’s brought up in some of the conversations. It’s tied in to the main character’s flaw (Gabriel is more concerned with the future than the now) and that’s it. It’s subtly explored and the reason it works is because it’s a theme everybody can identify with.

So it’s a good reminder that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to theme. Just pick something that’s meaningful to you and that’s relevant to your characters and go with it.

The script wasn’t bullet-proof by any means. There’s no true hook to the story. It’s just a regular high school movie (and I’m assuming that’s why it never got made). Schwartz made some classic young writer mistakes, such as carrying scenes on for a page or two longer just to get a few more jokes in (on Page 26). The broad stuff was bordering on too broad (girls liking 5 year olds?) We even get that awful cliché of the female lead being a photographer. Though in Swartz’s defense, I have no idea if this was a cliché back in 1997.

Still, Providence is the strange love child of The Graduate and 90210. There’s obviously something here and it’s why the script was discovered and started Schwartz’s career. This was definitely the surprise of the week.

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

What I learned: I don’t usually like dream sequences. They tend to be hacky excuses to throw a bunch of weird imagery together. However, I do like them when there’s a progression to them, where each dream builds upon the previous dream. Here, we keep coming back to the scene where Gabriel as an 8 year old is holding Ashley Adams’ hand at the rally, and we want to know what happens next. In that way, it’s like a mini-movie. And just like any movie, we want to know what happens next.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Four best friends in their 70 head to Vegas for a bachelor party.
About: Dan Fogelman, screenwriter of Scriptshadow favorite Crazy Stuipid Love and recent Black List entry, Imagine, sold Last Vegas earlier in the year. In related news, Fogelman also sold his Wednesday Jack In The Box receipt for high six figures to Warner Brothers. Speculation is rampant about what was on the receipt. My sources tell me it was 2 tacos, a Jack’s Crispy Chicken with cheese, and an Oreo Milkshake. Receipt review to come. The producers of Last Vegas seemed to have moved on from Fogelman and handed the script over to Rom-Com scribe Adam Brooks. Brooks has penned such films as Definitely Maybe and Practical Magic. It looks to be a certainty that Jack Nicholson will be cast in the lead, and you should expect Morgan Freeman to be there as well.
Writer: Dan Fogelman (rewrites by Adam Brooks)
Details: 111 pages (Oct. 5, 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).

In my endless pursuit of everything Dan Fogelman, I finally got my hands on Last Vegas. However of all Fogelman’s projects, this was the one I was the most wary about. Seeing as I don’t yet depend on adult diapers, a movie about a bunch of old fogies reliving the golden days at a Vegas bachelor party sounded like it could be kind of good, but also kinda of bad. But with Fogelman (and now Brooks) at the helm, I was pretty confident they’d make it work.

Those not familiar with Brooks’ work should go rent Definitely, Maybe when you get the chance. It’s easily the most mature romantic comedy I’ve seen in the last decade. The problem with the movie is it has that big goofy Ryan Reynolds smirk on the cover coupled with Little Miss Sunshine Girl doing her post Sunshine musical chairs run, making a really good movie look positively terrible. But I’m telling you, if you’re even mildly into romantic comedies and you haven’t seen it, check it out.

Now when you write comedies with old people in the leads (Space Cowboys, Cocoon, The Bucket List), there’s a lofty hurdle to overcome: Not letting the story get too depressing. Inevitably, death is a strong theme in these movies, and if every ten pages the audience is reminded that they’re going to die, there’s a good change word of mouth is going to die as well.

This is why I was so pleasantly surprised with 2008 Black List script, Winter’s Discontent, easily the best “old folks” movie not yet made. The whole film is about one thing: getting laid. It’s told with a zest for life that most teenage flicks would envy. I had the same high hopes for Last Vegas. Personally, I think Bucket List meets The Hangover is a winning combination. Unfortunately, that’s not what we get in this draft of Last Vegas. At all.

The biggest surprise about Last Vegas is that it goes almost exactly how you think it’s going to go, except a lot slower. It’s like our characters are stripped of their tap shoes and dropped into a vat of quick sand. The character introductions are too long. The story takes forever to set up. The initial Vegas scenes have nothing going on. The character conflict is too basic. It’s like the script has been raped of fun.

And that’s when I sat back and realized, “Oh boy, this is like the worst writing assignment ever.” Old folks going crazy in Vegas *could* be good. But after writing in all two minutes and thirty seconds of trailer moments (Getting wasted at a club, partying like Entourage at the pool, old guys macking on chicks, and Jack Nicholson involved in some Viagra joke) what the hell do you do with the other 108 pages? I think Fogelman and Brooks were asking the same question.

Oh yeah, what’s this movie about? Well, we have have eternal ladies man Bill, stick up his ass Paddy, wisecracker Sam, and voice of reason Archibald (who will be played by Morgan Freeman of course). The four have been friends forever and at the ripe old age of 70, Bill is getting married for the first time (to a 30 year old). So they go to Vegas for a bachelor party.

The main source of conflict is between Bill and Paddy, which began because Bill didn’t show up for Paddy’s wife’s funeral a couple of years ago. So Paddy spends the entire trip bitching at Bill, and this may be the script’s biggest problem. Paddy is so effing annoying. It’s bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch. He just will not stop whining. He’s like that friend at work who can’t shut up about how much he hates the job, yet he never quits.

Anyway, the two meet an older female singer named Diana (who I’m willing to bet a thousand dollars on will be played by Susan Sarandon) and they both fall for her, which of course only adds to their existing conflict.

Sam, in the meantime, has received a “hall pass” from his wife for the weekend, and I’m sorry but I’m putting a moratorium down right now for all writers. If a girlfriend or wife gives your main character a hall pass, THEY HAVE TO USE IT. They can’t meet someone at the last second, sparks fly, get two seconds away from sex, then decide that they love their wife too much and no longer want to use the hall pass. I’ve read that ending in about ten different scripts.

There is one winning moment in the script, and that’s in the first act when Billy interrupts a eulogy he’s giving to propose to his girlfriend – a true Jack Nicholson moment – but it’s unfortunately the only memorable sequence in the screenplay. Everything else is very basic Las Vegas staples.

I am not giving up on Last Vegas, but someone needs to slap the electric paddles on this corpse and jolt the fucker to life. Everything here needs to be bigger. That’s what Winter’s Discontent figured out. In movies like American Pie or The Hangover, the energy is so over the top with the young characters that we’re practically begging for slow moments. With old people we’re limping from the get-go. So we don’t want to slow down.  Yet we slow down numerous times for character moments here and it brings everything to a dead stop. 

You know me. I’m Mr. Character Development. But the character development here just felt like a bunch of old guys complaining with each other. Maybe if those moments were more compelling than Paddy bitching the whole time, they would’ve worked, but my feeling is that if this thing is going to sing, it needs its characters to want to have fun.

The script also got me thinking of a mistake a lot of intermediate and even pro writers make. Sometimes a premise is so obvious that you give it an obvious treatment. And even though everything’s right where it needs to be and the structure would give Robert McKee a hard-on, it’s plagued by an obviousness that kills it. When these guys meet George Maloof and he sets them up in his best suite, I felt like I’d fallen into a pit with every discarded Vegas script ever written. You definitely want to give the audience what they want (the promise of the premise) but if it’s exactly what they want, they’re going to lose interest.

That’s why The Hangover was so popular. You have tigers in bathrooms and naked Chinese men flying out of trunks and chickens and babies and Mike Tyson. You got everything you wanted out of the premise, but not exactly how you thought you were going to get it. I’m just not seeing any imagination in Last Vegas, and that’s contributing to why it reads so slow.

This project has a lot going for it. You put Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Chirstopher Walken and Dustin Hoffman in an old man’s Hangover, people are going to show up to see it. But if all it is is a bunch of old guys complaining with each other, the box office might be looking at an early funeral.

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

What I learned: Is the treatment of your idea too obvious? Stories are a bit like train rides. You take a bunch of people from point A to point B. However sometimes you gotta stop the train and let the people explore a little bit. Have’em get stuck in a town overnight or lose their luggage or get robbed. The most memorable thing about a trip is never the stuff you planned ahead of time. It’s the unexpected things that are always the most exciting.

Genre: Horror-Thriller
Premise: (from writers) After a member of their expedition sustains an open flesh wound, a group of mountaineers find themselves being stalked by a vicious high-altitude Snow Beast.
About: 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.
Writers: Art McLendon & Beau McLendon
Details: 93 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).

First thing’s first. We need to address this logline. You don’t want to be too specific in your logline with a detail that’s ultimately unimportant in the grand scheme of your story. In other words, you don’t want to say, “sustains an open flesh would.” If you’re going to get specific, it needs to be about the character or a really important piece of the plot that’s part of the hook. Otherwise, leave it out.

But as far as the idea goes, this is a good one. Being trapped up on a mountain with a giant snow monster hunting you, is not only an idea I can see selling but one of the rare scripts that goes on to get made as well. Who can’t imagine a dozen great moments where a group of climbers is getting hunted by a Yeti?

Now that doesn’t mean you can just throw anything on the page. You still gotta execute. So do Art and Beau execute?

Simon Trudeau is a British Journalist who mysteriously wears a black ski mask when he does his news stories, the latest of which is about a hiking team that disappeared up in the remote Himalayan Mountains a couple of years ago. His cameraman is constantly annoyed by Simon’s insistence on wearing the mask, and its integration into his presentation is a regular point of contention.

Cut to 2 years ago where we meet the team that disappeared. We have Paul Brody, the leader, barrel-chested Gus Osborne, the tomboyish heart and soul of the group Anabell Cross, and her handsome sun-beaten boyfriend Mitch Russell.

The thrill-seekers are trying to hike their way to the peak of the 6th highest mountain in the world, but are upset to find out they’re not getting the Michael Jordan of guides like they expected. Instead, they’re getting new kid on the block, Nima, a 19 year old Tibetan who’s more nervous about screwing up than his group is about making it to the top.

But they’re all big tough guys (and girls) so they shrug it off and start up the mountain. Unfortunately things go wrong quickly. Mitch gets injured, and even though his wound isn’t that bad, it seems to coincide with a series of roars that follows the group up the mountain. Not your typical mountain lion roars either. These roars are decidedly more…angry.

Lima looks skittish, and when the roars get closer he admits that this may be a monster that hangs around on the mountain. His people call it a “Dzu-teh” which is pronounced “Psycho Snow Monster.” Naturally our team is pissed and wants to know why the hell they weren’t told about this BEFORE they went up the mountain. Uh, well duh, because it’s bad for business! (my assessment, not Lima’s)

Eventually, they run into this snow beast, and without hesitation it grabs Mitch and runs off. The group wonders what they should do now and after some heavy discussion, they decide to go after Mitch (I’m sorry but I would’ve been running down that mountain faster than Usain Bolt). Since snow beasts get plucky when you stroll into their lair, this turns out to be a bad idea.

During this time we keep cutting back to our British journalist Simon, who updates us on what they know about the disappearance through hindsight, all the while refusing to take off his ski-mask. Dzu-teh ends up picking off our doomed hikers one by one until there’s only one left – and it becomes a battle to the death.

“Ascent: Day 3” has some intense and really fun action sequences, taking the simplistic “Descent” approach to its story, where a group of adventurous people do something adventurous only to get stuck battling their worst nightmare.

However the Descent approach only works if you have a group of compelling characters and those characters are legitimately stuck, and I’m not sure the characters in “Ascent” are either. In Descent, once they were down there being stalked by these “whatever-they-were,” they had nowhere to go. There only choice was to fight for their survival. In “Ascent,” there seemed to be a lot more choices, since they are out on this huge mountain.

I liked the idea of Mitch getting taken, and the team having to make that decision of whether to save him or head down the mountain and save themselves, but I didn’t know anything about Mitch other than that he was Ana’s boyfriend. So sure, in the story world it makes sense that you’re going after your boyfriend, but to me, the audience, I don’t care about this guy because I know nothing about him.

Contrast that with a movie like Aliens, where when Newt was taken, we know a whole boatload about her situation and her struggle. She may have been annoying at times, but you never questioned Ripley’s desire to save her amidst an almost certain death if she does.

There just needed to be more going on with these characters. The action genre does not give you license to ignore flaws and backstory and personality and secrets and family situation and ideology and motive and everything else that adds to a character’s weight. I brought up Pitch Black in my Ark review and I’ll do it again here. Look at Johns. The guy had a secret (he wasn’t a cop – he was a bounty hunter), he had a past (he’s been chasing Riddick for a long time), he had problems (he was some kind of drug addict). You got the sense that there was really something going on with the guy. Outside of Anabell (and Simon – who I’ll get to in a second) I didn’t see that here.

And even though there *was* something going on with Ana, it didn’t seem to stem from her character. We had this whole backstory about how she always wears a whistle because her sister didn’t have a whistle or something and her sister died because she didn’t have a whistle. It’s there to give the character depth, yet it doesn’t have anything to do with the character. It’s backstory for backstory’s sake.

Good backstory is born from who a character is – and that’s usually identified through her flaw. The character of Lana in Risky Business is a hooker. Her flaw is her inability to trust or get close to people. That’s why she’s a hooker. Because it’s all business. Later, when Joel asks her, “Why did you run away from home?” She just looks at him and says, “Because my stepfather kept hitting on me.” The reason that backstory resonates with us is because it’s born out of her flaw. She doesn’t trust anybody because the person she was supposed to be able to trust the most tried to take advantage of her. So when you’re digging into that backstory moment for your character (which I recommend keeping as short as possible – like Lana did here), make sure it’s born out of your character’s flaw. If you do, your character will feel a lot more authentic.

The other big problem I had was with Simon. This whole idea of him having to wear this mask felt kinda gimmicky and didn’t make a lot of sense. Had he really spent the last couple of years as the masked news reporter? Or was this more recent? If it was recent, and his (spoiler) burn injuries had just happened, why would his cameraman be clueless about them? When a newsperson gets into a horrifying burn accident, people usually find out about it, especially people you work with.

Also, when he takes off the mask at the end, it’s supposed to be this cathartic character transformation but Simon is the least important character in the movie, so it makes no sense that he’s getting the most attention when it comes to a character arc.

In addition, Simon poses problems for the fear-factor of the screenplay. Instead of being stuck up on this mountain with our characters scared out of our wits, we get these nice cushy time outs with Simon that allow us to catch our breath and feel safe. Imagine The Descent or Paranormal Activity with us cutting outside to a news reporter every fifteen minutes. The movies wouldn’t have worked. The whole point is that we’re stuck in the same situation that our characters are stuck in.

I’m being pretty harsh on Ascent but that’s only because I see a lot of potential in the script. I could totally see this as a movie if a few things were changed around and more effort was put into the characters. Yeah this is one of those fun movies you simply sit back and enjoy, but you can’t enjoy a film, no matter how relaxed it is, unless you have that connection with the characters.

So good luck to Art and Beau on the next draft. Hopefully I’ve given them some ideas on how to make Ascent better. :)

Script link: Ascent: Day 3

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

What I learned: It’s so important to have conflict between your characters in these kinds of films. If everyone likes each other (which seems to be the case in Ascent), you’re going to put the audience to sleep. Remember, it’s not so much the monster that should cause the fear. It’s how the adversity caused by the monster brings out the conflict within the group. Read The Grey to see what I mean.