Genre: Biopic
Premise: A look at the years leading up to John Wilkes’ Booth assassination of President Lincoln.
About: Booth is one of those scripts that’s been bouncing around Hollywood for a long time. Although all we have to go on is rumor here, it’s said that many who have read it loved it, and that the only reason it hasn’t been made is because it’s a hard sell. Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote the script with Dylan Kussman, has talked openly about his screenwriting career and about how winning an Oscar on only his second movie with “The Usual Suspects” put an enormous amount of pressure on him. He’s spoken about how freeing it was to write the script when he knew nothing about “the rules of screenwriting,” and how that allowed him to make choices he never would have made today. He talks about the subsequent decade long process of being stuck in development rewrite hell on numerous projects, which is why he seemed to disappear after Suspects, and he’s talked about wanting to quit the screenwriting business because of how difficult it is to get movies made (even for an Oscar winner!). Lucky for McQuarrie and us, Tom Cruise called him up one day and wanted to do a movie about Hitler, which has given his career a resurgence. McQuarrie’s favorite movies include, “Deliverance”, “The Verdict”, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, “The Taking of Pelham 123”, “Die Hard”, “Electraglide in Blue”, “Lone Star”, “The Big Country” and “The Lives of Others.” Kussman is primarily an actor, appearing in such films as Leatherheads and X-Men 2.
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie & Dylan Kussman
Details: March 18, 2004 draft – 121 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I don’t know if Booth has hit “cult” status in the screenplay world yet but it is one of those screenplays that people say you have to read. I’ve been meaning to read it myself until hearing McQuarrie talk about it. I don’t know what it was but there was just this sense of…frustration when he discussed it. Maybe it was not being able to get it made but it sounded more like he knew the script had problems. I lost interest after that but finally decided to give it a read.

One of the things that drew McQuarrie to Booth was that he wasn’t your average mentally unstable weirdo stalker who thought killing a famous person would bring him closer to a higher power. He was actually a pretty levelheaded guy. In fact, he was quite popular, one of the more famous stage actors of the time. Booth toured from city to city, directing and acting in his own hit plays, charming any man or woman who stepped in his path. He was also frighteningly handsome, although if this picture below is anything to go by, there probably weren’t too many good looking people back in the 1800s.

We meet Booth on that infamous day, as he’s shooting Lincoln and jumping off the rafters, shouting those immortalized words, “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” which is probably why we’ve always assumed he was a nut. Killing people and shouting out phrases in an ancient language usually means “crazy town.”

We then jump back five years to Richmond, Virginia before it all started. This portion of the story is somewhat Wikipediaish. Booth has a big family. He doesn’t have the best relationship with them. In particular he and his brother Edwin, also an actor, don’t see eye to eye. This conflict stems from their father’s passing, who apparently drank himself to death, which (I think) Booth believes Edwin is responsible for.

Around this time, the Civil War is gearing up, and after seeing a Union soldier hanged for freeing slaves, Booth has an epiphany and rededicates himself to becoming a great actor (I’m not sure what seeing someone’s death has to do with acting either. Though Tom Cruise has taught us inspiration comes from the strangest of places).

Eventually Booth meets up with his childhood friends Sam and Michael, who are off to the war. Booth promises to join them but then makes a second promise to his mother that he’ll never become a soldier. This leaves Sam and Michael pissed and is a critical turning point in Booth’s life, as he will never get over the guilt of abandoning his friends.

However, Booth gets another chance to help out the cause when the Confederacy comes to him and asks if he’ll secretly deliver medicine to the Confederate army on his tour stops. Delighted to be of use, he accepts, and this is probably the most dramatically compelling portion of the screenplay. There’s a great scene where some officers stop him and ask to check his suitcase for weapons, the very suitcase the medication is in. Watching him try and squirm out of it is fun stuff.

As Booth’s star rises, his side falls. It’s looking more and more like the Union is going to win the war, and for that reason, people are coming up with desperate ideas. Booth is no exception. He starts concocting a plan whereby he kidnaps the president in order to bargain for many of the captured Confederate soldiers.

This is actually what was supposed to happen all along until a few days before the kidnapping, when Booth’s conspirators changed the plan to killing Lincoln instead, something Booth was never totally on board with. And while he went through with the killing, his conspirators left him out in the cold. They were supposed to kill the entire presidential body, including the vice president and secretary of state, but they all choked and didn’t go through with it. Which kinda sucked for them, since they ended up getting hanged anyway. And that, my friends, is the story of Booth.

Whoa.

This was a tough read. There’s so much information packed into this novel-esque screenplay that every page you read feels like you’re reading four. Indeed, the student inside me wanted to highlight all the necessary passages for the test I would surely have to take tomorrow. When I do my whining on this site, it’s usually for biopics that make me feel like I’m back in school in the middle of a boring history course, and unfortunately, that’s how I felt here.

My big problem with Booth was that there wasn’t enough drama. There wasn’t enough conflict. In Valkyrie, Quarrie’s last film, there were so many scenes where people were clashing up against each other. You could feel the tension in each of the scenes. Here, it was just a person’s life unfolding before us, and that wasn’t enough for me. That’s why I loved the medicine-luggage scene so much. It was the only time where Booth’s journey was difficult – where his world was challenged and where something bad had the potential to happen.

The central conflict in Booth is internal – specifically his troubled relationship with his dead father. The problem is that the source of that conflict and the reasoning behind it are all very confusing. It’s somehow related to his brother and he’s mad at his brother for not stopping his father from drinking himself to death, so he blames his brother for killing his father but his brother also blames him for it I think and then he’s also trying to live up to his father’s name (who was also an actor) and I think somehow we’re supposed to make the connection between his unresolved relationship with his father and him killing Lincoln but I just didn’t see it. It was way too complicated.

I also found it a strange choice to put the assassination at the beginning. On the one hand, it makes sense. We all know what happens anyway. Why not start the movie off with a bang? The problem with this is, the rest of the story is so slow (and I think deliberately so), that we need something to look forward to. We need that exciting finale to pay off the huge investment we’re putting into this. But since we’ve already experienced the finale, we’re not sure what it is we’re driving towards, why we want to get to the end.

My question is, is Booth’s story worth telling in the first place? As far as I can tell, the bullet points of his motivation are, “He sympathized with the south, felt bad for not joining his buddies in the war, and eventually that guilt caught up with him which resulted in him killing Lincoln.” It’s almost as if what’s interesting about Booth as an assassin, the fact that he was pretty normal, is what makes his story so uninteresting. There’s no deep-set shocking reasoning for his actions. He was a normal guy and decided to do something stupid. I don’t know if that’s enough for a movie.

I think McQuarrie’s a great writer but this subject matter didn’t interest me.

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

What I learned: Now I know that some of you disagree with me on this but I believe, and will continue to believe, that telling a story where the audience already knows what’s going to happen severely handicaps one of your biggest advantages as a writer – the element of surprise. To me, when your audience is 30-40 pages ahead of you (or in this case, 100 pages), you have to work twice as hard to keep them entertained. Sure, if you have super-compelling characters, unlimited obstacles, and every scene is dripping with conflict, you can keep our focus so in the now that we don’t care that we already know what will happen (For example, we loved Apollo 13 even though we knew how it ended) but why make it so hard on yourself? I remember watching Toy Story 3 this year, probably my favorite film of 2010, when the toys are heading towards that incinerator (spoiler), and for the briefest of moments thought, “Oh my God. They’re really going to do this. They’re going to end these toys’ lives.” I was riveted in that moment, on the edge of my seat. Imagine if the opening scene of that movie was a flashforward showing us that those toys had made it out okay. How that would’ve eliminated every drop of mystery from the movie. How it would’ve stolen one of the best scenes of the year. Writing a good story is hard enough. Why handicap yourself?

Genre: Spy Thriller/Sci-fi
Premise: A female convict is implanted with the memories of a CIA spy who died under mysterious circumstances.
About: Bold Films acquired this spec a little while ago. The script comes from high concept kings Douglas Cook and David Weisberg, who wrote everybody’s favorite, The Rock, as well as the Ashley Judd – Tommy Lee Jones hit, Double Jeopardy. The two have Will Smith attached to one of their other scripts, Greenbacks, about an American ex-pat in Morocco who stumbles upon a plot to disrupt the world’s economy by counterfeiting U.S. currency.
Writer: Douglas Cook and David Weisberg
Details: 106 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

All right all you spy freaks, I got one for you. Are you ready for CIA agents, double-crosses and a googleplex of chase sequences? Do you go to sleep dreaming of a handheld Matt Damon leaping over speeding trains? If so, Blank Slate is definitely for you. This script is the happy love child of Salt, Safe House, The Bourne Identity and……Robocop? Yes, it takes the familiar spy-chase element and adds a sci-fi twist. Does it work? Let’s find out.

Devon Pope is a CIA agent. But we don’t know that yet. All we know is that she’s been beaten and tortured and shot and now the poor girl is running from somebody. A group of men to be specific. Mustering all the strength she has, she stumbles out onto a street in a last ditch attempt to escape them, only to get PLOWED INTO by a car. She doesn’t explode into a mass of gobbledy-gook like that guy in Robocop but she’s definitely dead. Or is she?

Devon is transferred to a medical facility where Dr. Michael Franks, a neurologist, is waiting. Devon knew something about someone before she died and the CIA is willing to do anything to get that information. But how do you get information out of a corpse? Easy. You transfer their memories into another person. All you need is to find the right person.

Enter Kenzie Stuart, a half-wit murderer taking up permanent residence at the female Shawshank. Kenzie’s here because she popped a few caps into a Walmart shopper in front of her kids. Why she did this is beyond me. All you have to do to kill a Walmart shopper is wait for ten minutes until they have a coronary in their motorized scooter. Then again, that’s why she’s a half-wit, and that’s why she’s the perfect candidate to pull the memory transfer.

A few beeps and a couple of boops later, Kenzie has officially taken on Devon’s memory. Well, parts of it anyway. The technology is a bit like Windows Vista. Some things work and some don’t. One of the problems here is that Devon’s life only comes to Kenzie in flashes. But one thing that comes back nice and clear is her CIA training. So she Angelina Jolies her way out of confinement and all of a sudden the CIA has a 50 million dollar experiment running around with the physical capabilities of Bruce Lee.

Immediately afterward, Kenzie remembers, via Devon, that she left a stash of money in a book at a library. Kenzie likes money so it’s time to renew that library card. The CIA tries to pursue her but it’s not easy anticipating someone’s movements who’s literally of two minds.

The bad guys (or good guys) chasing her are split into two groups. First there’s her boss, the endearing George Onesti. Onesti was one of Devon’s best friends and he wants nothing more than to see Kenzie/Devon back safe and sound. The other is Admiral Jerrold Lance, who is so ruthless in his pursuit to terminate Kenzie, that you gotta wonder if he has some ulterior motives.

The library money doesn’t work out, unfortunately, but that’s okay because Kenzie gets a memory flash that tells her where Devon lived. Surely there will be something to steal there so away she goes. She’s surprised, however, to find Devon’s husband and daughter at the house. Kenzie ties them up and takes what she needs, but then realizes that her pursuers are going to find her sooner or later, and if she wants to survive, she’s going to need to find out who Devon Pope is, and what information she stumbled upon that fateful night.

Blank Slate is a tough script to get a handle on. It’s fast-paced and intense, like every action-spy flick should be, but there’s something missing here. It starts with the premise. I didn’t feel there was enough of a juxtaposition between Kenzie and Devon. Kenzie is a badass who can kick the shit out of anyone. Devon is a badass who can kick the shit out of anyone. Devon, with her training, just does it more gracefully. This mutes the hook to a certain degree, since if you’re going to get the most out an idea where one person’s mind is transferred into another, you want those minds (and those people) to be as different as possible. If they’re both the same (or close to the same), what’s the point?

Now obviously their intelligence levels are miles apart. Kenzie is dumb as a rock. Devon is the smartest person in the room. So that difference had potential. But any effort to bring attention to this was limited to Kenzie opining about how weird it was to feel smart. We don’t ever get to *see* the benefits of her being smart because Devon’s memories are the driving force behind all of Kenzie’s actions, not Devon’s intelligence.

The narrative also feels clumsy because each of Kenzie’s actions is conveniently dictated by a Devon memory right when she needs it. So as soon as the library sequence is over, Kenzie remembers where Devon lives. As soon as she leaves Devon’s house, Kenzie remembers where she worked out. I thought this should’ve been messier, more difficult to discern what to do or where to go next, as it would’ve forced Kenzie to make some choices, in turn making the story less predictable and the narrative less convenient.

The script must also overcome a protagonist who’s difficult to root for. Kenzie is ruthless and unpleasant in most of her interactions with others so I found it hard to get behind her. Part of this is that we know so little about Kenzie and what we do know is pretty horrific. She killed a mom in front of her kids. She ties up Devon’s husband and daughter. I don’t mind anti-heroes or unconventional protagonists but I wanted at least one reason to care about and root for her.

To me, the best moments of the script were the character moments. When Kenzie starts remembering Devon’s life and realizing its messy imperfections. When Devon’s husband asks Kenzie about things he never knew about his wife and Kenzie must decide whether to offer that information or protect it – all in the spirit of what Devon would’ve wanted. When Kenzie gets more insight into her friendship with her old boss, Onesti. These were the moments where I felt closest to the character, and the moments that truly explored this potentially fascinating concept – the idea of being injected with another person’s memories.

Also, from a technical standpoint, the story is well-constructed. The central question – what happened to Devon – is a question we want answers to and will turn the pages until we get them. And by keeping our antagonists right behind Kenzie the whole time, the read is very quick, which, as you all know, is the key to any good spec script.

In the end, I think there’s a movie here. But we’re going to need to know more about Kenzie to make it work. She seems like she’d have a fascinating backstory and if we knew her better, it would elevate every other aspect of the script. I’ll be interested to see where this goes after it’s developed, but couldn’t get into it in this current draft.

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

What I learned: Remember, whenever you write a protagonist who’s abrasive or mean or contains any anti-hero like elements, you need to consider how you’re going to make your audience root for them. In both Cool Hand Luke and Pitch Black, two of the more popular anti-hero movies, both of those characters were selfish in their own ways, but they were also charming and funny, which made us forget about what assholes they were being. I don’t think a charming Kenzie is right for this particular story, but there are other things you can do. Speaking of the Bourne films, Matt Damon is a pretty abrasive, selfish, at-times-assholish, character in Good Will Hunting. But we see a) how much he loves his friends and b) what a miserable childhood he had, and that helps us sympathize with him. There wasn’t a single characteristic in Kenzie that made me identify with or care for her.

Got a spec that was picked up recently for tomorrow’s review. I have a script from an Oscar winner that’s gone unmade for seven years which some people have called “amazing.” I have a recently sold thriller that’s landed one of Hollywood’s newest stars. I also have a script that’s reuniting some Hollywood legends. Gear up and get ready. It should be a fun week. Now here’s Roger with a script from Johnathan Lemkin.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: Jane Whitefield is a one-woman witness protection program who engineers the disappearance of people who are in danger. When the Las Vegas mafia hires a psychotic couple who use everything from sex games to attack dogs to track her down, she’s forced to leave her fiancé not only to protect her client, but to protect her new family.
About: From the Hollywood Reporter: “The project originated from a series of novels by author Thomas Perry that trace the fictional life and experiences of [Jane] Whitefield. Those novels include ‘Shadow Woman’ –- understood to be the basis for the film –- ‘Vanishing Act’, ‘Dance for the Dead’, ‘A Taste of Strawberries’, ‘The Face-Changers’ and ‘Blood Money’. Several writers have had their hand in the adaptation, including Jonathan Lemkin, Graham Yost, Ron Koslow, Elizabeth Chandler and Cynthia Mort.” Producer Mark Gordon and Paramount Pictures were courting Halle Berry for the role of Whitefield. You may recognize Lemkin as the writer of “The Devil’s Advocate.”
Writer(s): Jonathan Lemkin, based on the novel “Shadow Woman” by Thomas Perry
Details: Revised Second Draft dated November 26, 1997.

Man, I love me some Lemkin.

I went to the wayback machine and chose this script not because I had read the novels by Thomas Perry, but because the screenwriter was Jonathan Lemkin. Previously, I reviewed his excellent specs $$$$$$ and Howl. Both are great reads, one a Die Hard-esque actioner with a cool concept, and the other is probably the best werewolf script I’ve ever read. They’re both page turners, they’re both fun, and you walk away from both knowing that you just might have learned something from both a born storyteller and a craftsman.

The question is, Rog, is The Guide a page-turner and does it work as well as those other two scripts?

Indeed, it is a page-turner. I blasted through it pretty fast, and although I don’t think it’s as great as those specs I referenced, it is a prime example how deft plotting and fast pacing can create a narrative drive that will carry a reader to ‘The End’, whether they feel lukewarm about the protagonist or not.

To be honest, it felt like there was something missing from the protagonist, Jane Whitefield. It’s not that she felt underdeveloped, but, rather, she wasn’t nearly as interesting as the villains. In fact, it even feels like the villains have more page-time than the hero, and that’s not really a complaint but more like an observation. Hell, maybe it was even a conscious choice by the producer and Lemkin. I found the psychotic duo fascinating and unique while I found the hero, merely, I dunno, inscrutable.

In that way, it’s kinda like The Silence of the Lambs, where the villain is a monster so intriguing every other character seems to pale in comparison.

If you approach this script from that perspective, that this thing is really about the monsters, then you’ll definitely enjoy the read. If not, you won’t really discover anything new, especially if you’ve read a lot of thrillers. However, it’s still a solid read and there are lessons to be learned, especially if you’re interested in that magical thing we call ‘narrative drive’.

Who is Jane Whitefield?

She calls herself a “guide”, a one woman witness protection program. She helps people in perilous situations and uses her resources to extricate them from danger, assisting them with documentation and credentials so they can start new lives.

While her strength may be engineering these escapes and eluding the bad people who put her clients in danger, her flaw is her overbearing need to protect these people at all costs, including her own life. She’s a fierce chica with Seneca Indian roots, and much of her wisdom in the matters of evasion is woven with her knowledge Indian legend, folklore and history.

Pete Hatcher is an accountant for a Las Vegas casino who suddenly finds himself in the deep-end of the mafia hit-man pool. Seems like his bosses no longer trust him, and no matter what Hatcher does, his former employers see him as a loose end to their operation. When we meet him, he’s running from two goons and escapes into a theater inside Caesar’s.

Inside the theater, he rendezvous with Jane, who has set-up his disappearing act. After he exits the theater, he’ll find a black Ford in a reserved space. He’s supposed to drive to Cedar City, Utah, leave the car a couple blocks away from the airport, hop a rental to get there and he’ll find a prepaid ticket in the name of David Keller. He should get to Denver by dawn, where he can live safely under a new identity she’s arranged for him.

Hatcher literally becomes part of the sexy magician’s disappearing act on stage, and he vanishes right in front of the mafia goons in the audience and he finds himself on his way to Denver, all thanks to Jane.

Turns out Jane’s no push-over either. When cornered by the mafia muscle, she uses brains to bait them, and deceptive brawn to break bone and shatter cartilage to forge her own escape.

She makes it back to her headquarters in Deganawida, New York, where she accepts a marriage proposal from her old highschool beau, Dr. Carey McKinnon, with her client safe and sound in Colorado.

Or, so she thinks.

If Jane’s the escape artist, who are the hunters?

The hook here is having the ultimate guide and escape artist hunted by the ultimate serial killers. They’re eerie, uncanny. Super criminals who are so good at what they do you can’t help but wonder if they’re supernatural shape-shifters, an idea that comes into play towards the end when Jane and Hatcher are being hunted on foot in the Canadian wilderness.

Earl Bliss and Linda Thompson live in a gated community with security walls around their house, and when we meet them, Earl is feeding a bloodhound to his two rottweilers, “Halt! Aufhoren mit!”

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“I wanted to see how the two of them work when they’ve got something cornered. I think it could come in handy some time. I think I could beat two of them.”

Linda is naked in the kennel, a well-muscled machine, and she tells Earl, a big Okie of a guy, that he’s going to have to bury the thousand-dollar bloodhound. Inside their immaculate house that’s all stainless steel, Nautilus equipment and armory, they begin to make violent love when they get a call from Vegas.

Seems like they’re being hired, at the all expense-covered cost of seven hundred thousand dollars, to find Hatcher and make him really disappear. They pack handguns, tranquilizers, cuffs, listening devices, linesman’s phones, kevlars vests and a British Arctic Warfare suppressed rifle and head to Hatcher’s old Vegas condo, where they CSI the place and find very little.

They agree that Jane is good, and they sit on the balcony and begin to coldly deduce where Hatcher went. They break out a map, and go back and forth with possible theories and scenarios. I’m not gonna lie, it’s a bit chilling how quickly they solve how and where Hatcher went, and it’s at this point in the script where you realize that Jane is going to be hunted by Sherlock Holmesian serial killers.

In Denver, through clever subterfuge, they manage to get Hatcher into the trunk of a car, but thanks to local law enforcement, they’re forced to give up their bounty, but not without killing a police officer first.

Hatcher escapes and calls Jane, and that’s when our geography-trotting cat-and-mouse game begins.

So, what happens?

Jane leaves her concerned fiancé, who has just learned about her mysterious “consulting” business, and meets up with Hatcher in Wyoming.

At Hatcher’s apartment in Denver, our villains trace calls made on Hatcher’s landline and discover that whoever is helping him lives in New York. Earl and Linda split up. Linda heads to New York to investigate this elusive guide, and Earl stays on Hatcher’s trail.

While Earl hunts Jane and Hatcher with his big rifle, attack dogs, and roided-lackey Lenny, Linda, through social engineering, disguises and computer hacking, discovers who Jane is and that she has a fiancé.

She purchases a house in Carey’s neighborhood and befriends Jane’s fiancé. The plan? Well, Jane’s client list is going to be worth serious money to our two hired killers, and she’s going to twist him to find Jane’s whereabouts so they can torture her, get the list, then dispose of her. The fiancé is Linda’s card in the hole, in case things get dicey.

And they most certainly do, as Jane and Hatcher learn that these two will never stop until they’re both found, so the hunted must make the decision to become the hunters. What follows is a tense game of survivor as Jane, on foot in the Wyoming-Canadian wilderness, has to figure out how to best Earl, his weapons, his dogs and his man-servant, Lenny.

If she’s able to do that, she has to make it back to New York so she can save her fiancé from the other half of the psychotic duo who has discovered all her secrets.

Does it work?

It’s a fun little thriller that kept me reading till the end, mostly because I wanted to see if Jane was going to survive this whole Earl and Linda ordeal. I was more interested in seeing if she would save her fiancé rather than Hatcher, because those were the emotional stakes of the story.

While there seemed to be impossible odds and Linda and Earl set-up some tense traps and scenarios, some of the escapes seemed pretty circumstantial or pat, a little too easy for the fast-paced plot. These include police arriving to mess everything up, mistaken targets and, yes, bear attacks. Well, the bear attack thing is pretty cool and its woven into some character stuff with Jane and Native American legends, but still, what can you do?

All in all, a solid thriller for those who enjoy crime and detective stories, but this is a tale where the monsters outshine the heroes.

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

What I learned: Heroes are sometimes only as interesting as their villains. I wasn’t that intrigued by Jane Whitefield. A character that can escort people to safety like Arnold in “Eraser”? Perhaps she has a caretaker and God-complex, but it’s nothing that gets me excited. However, psychotic trackers that are as good at finding and killing people as Sherlock Holmes is at solving crimes? Suddenly, I’m interested. In this case, it seems like a wise move to give the antagonists just as much screen and page-time as the protagonist. For your own scripts, ask yourself who’s more interesting? The hero or the villains? How do you find balance between them? Sometimes, you have to make your story as much about the bad guys as you do about the good guys.

Why a star (almost) chose to play this role: Jane Whitefield is a gal that shepherds people out of impossible danger and situations to havens of safety. She’s playing God. But, I think the movie-stealing roles here are for Earl and Linda. They’re psychotic villains in the vein of Hannibal Lector, Chigurh and The Joker. They genuinely scare and unsettle.

We don’t usually discuss TV on this site but when Scorsese creates an HBO series, I think it’s worthy of our attention. So, did you watch Boardwalk Empire tonight? And if so, what did you think?

Genre: Heist/Action
Premise: A group of famous magicians combine their talents to perform a trio of heists.
About: This is a spec sale picked up by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. See Me is written by Edward Ricourt and Boaz Yakin. Yakin wrote the 1989 version of The Punisher, The Rookie, and directed Remember the Titans. Ricourt’s career has been a little shorter. He was a member of Marvel Studios’ writing program and wrote last year’s Black List script, Year 12, about earth 12 years after of an alien invasion.
Writer: Boaz Yakin & Edwart Ricourt
Details: 117 pages – May 2009 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 the world of screenwriting, it’s becoming harder and harder to come up with a truly original high concept. “Aliens invade earth” can only be used so many times. Now You See Me is the most original high concept I’ve heard in awhile. I know this because I’m far from a “bank heist” guy, but boy did I get excited when I heard about this bank heist. Unfortunately the problem with these great-sounding premises is the writers usually screw it up within the first 20 pages by giving us the most obvious version of the story. Well I’m happy to announce that that’s not the case with Now You See Me. They don’t just come up with the concept – they execute it.

See Me opens up with a great scene. Our four protagonists are up on a Vegas stage performing their first of three limited engagements. There’s Michael Atlas, our illustrious leader, Roderigo, a master craftsman of magical devices, London Osborne, a testy hypnotist, and young Alex Hero, a sleight-of-hand master. They name themselves the “Four Horsemen” and because each has become the most popular magician in their field, the fact that they’re teaming up has the world buzzing.

After Atlas works the crowd with his disappointment over the fading economy, he invites a random audience member up on stage. Wouldn’t it be nice, he ponders, if they could get back some of that money that’s been taken from them? Behind them are a series of video screens displaying security camera feeds of a bank. But not just any bank, a bank in Paris, the very bank this audience member belongs to. Atlas’ cohorts perform some vanishing trickery, and the audience watches in shock as Atlas and the audience member APPEAR in the video feeds. In the bank. IN PARIS!

They march their way into the vault, take all the money inside, and the next thing you know, money is RAINING FROM THE CEILINGS of the auditorium. REAL MONEY. The audience scrambles about, grabbing as much as they can, and our magicians walk off stage amidst an air of mystery.

But it gets better. The authorities call up the bank in Paris. Indeed, their vault has been robbed of the same amount of money stolen in those security videos. The cops are flabbergasted. How can that have possibly happened?

Dylan Hobbes, an FBI agent who’s overworked his way right out of a marriage, is tasked with figuring that out. He’s dead set on booking these guys but that’s not going to be easy when our heroes have a couple of thousand alibis. I mean you can’t keep people in custody for teleporting to Paris, robbing a bank, and teleporting back, can you? So after a lot of strong-arming, he’s forced to let them go.

That’s when we meet Thaddeus Bradley, a broken down old curmudgeon who’s seen more magic than Harry Potter’s underwear. Thaddeus is a magician’s mortal enemy – one of those “exposer” types who peels back the curtain on magicians’ secrets to make a quick buck. It turns out he taught Atlas everything he knows. And he knows how he pulled off his robbery. The trick is catching him in the act of the other two. He offers his services and even though Hobbes hates him, he has no choice but to let him join the team.

We then follow the Four Horseman to Atlantic City, where they expose a greedy insurance scammer, and finally Los Angeles, where they try and pull off the biggest robbery ever.

Now You See Me has the kind of spirit summer movies used to have. There’s no sex-starved vampires, rushed sequels, or superheroes here. It’s big, it’s fun, and – gasp – even attempts to make you think a little. That’s not to say the script doesn’t have problems (it’s noticeably top-heavy) but the fun-factor helps it overcome them.

The strongest aspect to me is how they approached the story. If I told you I had a script about magicians who were bank robbers, the first thing you’d probably imagine is a group of magicians, some caped, some with masks, breaking into banks, throwing down smoke bombs, disappearing and reappearing inside vaults – in other words the most straightforward interpretation of the idea. The fact that the writers approach this in a completely different way – where the characters create a spectacle of their heists, performing them in front of hundreds, makes this way more interesting than anything I could’ve imagined. It’s a good reminder that whenever you have an idea, you want to sit down and look at all the ways you could execute it. The most obvious way is not always the best way, and that little extra effort you put into figuring that out, is going to pay huge dividends in the months (and maybe years) you spend on the script.

I also thought all the magicians were great. They’re not particularly deep but the mastery each has over their respective crafts gives them this heroic quality that really makes you want to root for them. Audiences like characters who are really good at what they do. I don’t know why but that’s always been the case. And to solidify the love-fest, it was a clever coup to not only have them steal the money, but give it back to the public. I mean who doesn’t like Robin Hood (unless, of course, Russell Crowe is playing him)?

Now You See Me does most of its character exploration with Dylan Hobbes, the workaholic FBI agent who never received the memo about ‘family time.’ This is probably the only character that fell flat. Dylan’s problems are generic and uninteresting and there don’t seem to be any stakes attached to them. There are all these scenes with him and his wife/ex-wife (I’m still not sure what she is), talking about how he works too much, but there’s never that ultimatum. He never gets that “It’s either your family or your work.” If you’re not going to challenge your protagonist’s flaw, then why have it in the first place?

I suppose the only concerning issue here is the progression (or I should say “degression”) of the performances themselves. The opening performance in Vegas is awesome. So much so that the other two can’t possibly live up to it. And they don’t. The second performance, in particular, which exposes a shady insurance magnate, doesn’t even set up the magnate ahead of time. So when he’s exposed, a mere 1 minute after we meet him, we don’t care. Had they set him up earlier as a true bad guy, that would’ve helped. I like that the third robbery takes place at a unique location, but that location is so cold and grey and dead, it doesn’t feel right. These guys are putting on a show. The final performance needs to be visual and cinematic and exciting. Not some ugly brick warehouse out in the middle of nowhere. Also, the order of the cities seems off. Vegas is the crown jewel. Shouldn’t it be saved for last?

But these problems are the equivalent of having bad food at a wedding reception. Who the hell cares about the food? You just wanna get drunk and have a blast. And “See Me” gets you wasted.

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

What I learned: Be careful starting your script out too big. True, you want to rope in the reader right away. But if your opening scene is the best scene in the script that means it’s all downhill from there. Spielberg has said that his only problem with Hereafter is that it starts with a bang and ends with a whimper. I couldn’t agree more. The movie starts with this awesome tsunami sequence and then doesn’t have a single scene that comes close afterwards. Now You See Me is not in that category, but I think it’ll have to raise the level of its second and final performances if it truly wants to be a great movie.