Doing something a little different today. Roger is reviewing a script from a professional reader. Does he have what it takes to write a great script? While reading a ton of scripts helps your own screenwriting, I’ll be the first to admit it doesn’t ensure success. Each script has its own unique challenges and there’s no guarantee, regardless of whether you’re an amateur, professional or semi-professional, that you’ll be able to overcome them. I look back at shitty scripts of mine all the time and think “This sucks. There’s no way it can be salvaged.” What I love is that Dan was like, “Have at it. Grade it just as hard as you grade everything else. Grade it harder.” One thing I love about readers – they know the value of straightforward criticism cause nobody tells you the truth in this town. I know Dan offers notes, as do I (feel free to e-mail me for prices: carsonreeves1@gmail.com) so if you’re interested, drop me an e-mail.
The rest of the week is Odd Fever. I tackle a straight action script, a moody spooky period piece that a certain star has been trying to get made forever, and at the end of the week, for Amateur Friday, I review…a zombie script?? What the hell is going on?? Anyway, it promises to be a different week at Scriptshadow. Hope you enjoy it!
Genre: Supernatural Thriller, Horror, Drama
Premise: An orphaned teen returns un-aged from a mysterious 10-year journey to battle a powerful minister for control over a gateway to hell.
About: Dan Calvisi was a Senior Story Analyst for Miramax Films for over five years and now runs the script consultation service, Act Four Screenplays. As a professional reader, he worked for Fox 2000, New Line Cinema and Jonathan Demme’s former production company, Clinica Estetico.
Writer: Daniel P. Calvisi
“Donnington” has the type of logline I eat up.
Not only does it mention a gateway to hell, but it has the phrase, “un-aged from a mysterious 10-year journey”. It’s such a bizarre detail (Why is the character un-aged? Where did he go? What happened to him? Again, why didn’t he age?) that captured my imagination and made me want to read the script.
Weaned on horror movies, Ghostbusters and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, I am always very interested in gateways to hell. All of my favorite myths involve characters like Orpheus or Hercules entering such gateways to rescue or retrieve loved ones or creatures from the shadowy, fiery underworld.
And, I’m here to report, this script is about a boy who disappears into such a doorway to claim a mythic mantle and returns to the ordinary world (yep, un-aged and ten years later) with a supernatural boon that may bring death to every other person he encounters in the natural world.
Cool. Who’s the boy?
Seventeen year-old Ben Danvers officially becomes an orphan when his father dies in jail. We meet our protagonist at his father’s funeral, where we also learn that the townspeople hate his father. Donnington is a town devastated by a horrible mine explosion that killed thirty-three people in the early 80s (in fact, the script begins with a creepy cool prologue that captures events in the mine just before the cave-in, which involves a miner fleeing into a red light with a baby in his arms).
Ben’s caseworker has enrolled the pagan teenager (during the funeral, he spouts his knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology to the minister) at a top-notch school, a prestigious private institution called the “Donnington Lamb of God Evangelical School for Christian Leadership and Development”. So, not only do the townspeople express resentment for Ben because of his paternal pedigree, but he’s being placed in an educational environment that violently clashes with his own personal beliefs.
It’s at the evangelical school that we meet Cassie Harken, a goth-y gal who is immediately attracted to Ben, especially when he announces that his topic for his senior term paper will be disproving the existence of Hell. Her own topic for Senior Themes? Vampirism in the bible. This is a match made in the bowels of a heavily religious and right-wing environment, the common denominator being that both characters have a mutual disdain for authority figures.
They bond when they visit the cemetery and start to make myths, or make-up stories about the people behind the names on the headstones of the graves.
At this school, not only do we get to meet Ben’s reluctant teacher, Mr. Grabash, we also witness the school’s painful version of required chapel, which is the daily assembly led by the school’s figurehead, Brother Gabriel.
What’s the story behind Brother Gabriel?
Brother Gabriel is known for dressing all in black and delivering not so much a fire and brimstone sermon to the young sheep at his school, but for pontificating about a place he calls “Outer Darkness”. I suppose the place is related to the Cormac McCarthy novel in that both are about the concept of Hell, although Brother Gabriel also refers to it as a physical, geographical place while McCarthy seems to only be concerned with the moral and emotional metaphor.
Basically, Gabriel makes kids weep by talking about the complete solitude of Hell and paints word scenarios where they must imagine being trapped there, and that it’s too late to call on Jesus for help. It’s important to know that Gabriel and his school rose to power because he’s the only known survivor of the Golgoth mine cave-in of 82. He reminds the kids and the townspeople that not only is survival a miracle, but that his purpose on earth is to save the youth from Hell.
Ben gets in dire straits with Brother Gabriel while trying to interview him for his term paper. Not only does Gabriel dislike Ben, but he doesn’t appreciate him challenging his authority. To complicate the situation, Ben also learns that Gabriel is also possibly molesting Cassie.
Does supernatural stuff start to happen?
Yeah. One day, at the Jesuit house Ben lives in (where his caseworker finds him lodging) he receives a mysterious letter that has strange symbols and glyphs on it. There’s a phrase that says, “Return back. Mine.” So, accordingly, Ben is drawn to the Golgoth mine, but the townspeople warn him that it’s condemned because of mercury poisoning. Undeterred, he explores the hillside and encounters the Charon-like Duey, the old punch-in clerk from the prologue who now wanders the hills as a sort of guardian. In their first encounter, he demands to inspect Ben’s tongue.
The first act turn approaches when Ben learns about Cassie and Gabriel and when the strange birthmark he has on his body starts morphing into a map on his body. He lines it up with another map and it all leads to a particular entrance of the mine called Raven Hill. Under the cover of night, Ben goes to the mine and encounters three men (perhaps the mysterious authority trio Gabriel answers to at the school) in hazmat suits are inspecting creek water. He’s chased into the mine…
…where he disappears for, apparently, a really long time. Now, for me, this was the most intriguing part of the script. We’re treated to a time-lapse of the outside of the mine, and although we’re not sure how much time is passing, we suspect that whatever is happening must be supernatural. Sure enough, Ben emerges from the mine with a beard and his face is weathered by the elements.
And, he’s holding a lacquered wooden strongbox with iron latches.
It reminds us of the circular, mossy door he fled into in the mine.
What’s in the box?
That’s part of the mystery. No matter what Ben does, he can’t seem to open it. And no matter where he leaves it, it seems to magically reappear wherever he’s at. Yep, it’s an inanimate object that follows him around. There’s also a scene where the villains are searching for the box, and although it’s in plain view, they’re unable to see it. Ben spends the rest of the script carrying the box around with him.
So, ten years passed while Ben was in the mine?
Yep. Ben returns to Donnington to find that the town is eclipsed by the gigantic new mini-mega church that spires up into the sky. He meets Mr. Grabash, who is now a drunken hobo that wanders the streets, and Cassie, who is ten years older while Ben isn’t. She’s super confused, and tells a tale where she thought he disappeared for good.
We discover that Brother Gabriel is now calling himself Prophet Gabriel, and that he’s built an institution that seats fifteen thousand people. Parents from all over the state enroll their kids at the school. Gabriel seems to employ most of the town. Gabriel isn’t too happy to discover that Ben has returned, and the mysterious three men are on alert to snatch him and interrogate him about his experience in the mine.
Which he has no memory of.
He gets mysterious flashes of what happened to him down there, and well, they’re not always pretty.
And, now, Ben is plagued with more strange events. While he tries to discover who Gabriel really is and what he’s up to, he becomes aware of phenomena with the box. Disconcertingly, everyone in contact with him seems to die soon after. There’s a cool detail when he interrogates a photographer and we learn that, in the photos of himself, he seems to have a dark smudge-like tail following him around.
Does Ben learn about the mysterious men that employ Gabriel?
Yep. We learn that they’re part of a consortium called The Alchemy Group, and that they’ve been interested in the mine for a very long time. And they’re very intrigued by Ben and his bloodline.
It all culminates into a bloody finale (one that actually made me sick to my stomach) where Ben may or may not become a popular mythical figure. Pay attention to the clues: references to the Valkyrie, gargoyles, Tartarus and a certain scythe-wielding icon.
Does it work?
It’s a very intriguing mystery. In a good way, it reminded me of “Donnie Darko”. The tone and the element of mystery is both its strength and weakness.
There’s some character and plot stuff that can get confusing at times. Just lots of goals that seem to get lost in the 2nd act shuffle: Ben is trying to clear his father’s name, but he’s also trying to expose Gabriel, and he’s also trying to solve the mystery of not only the mine, but the Alchemy Group, and his true nature. It can feel convoluted.
I also felt that, at times, the author was grinding an axe rather than simply telling a story.
All in all, it’s a cool puzzle narrative that reminded me of “Carnivale” and stuff by Stephen King. It also has a really cool concept at its heart: It’s about a boy whose inheritance is related to the Grim Reaper. And for that, it’s definitely worth reading.
Please contact Dan at dan@actfourscreenplays.com for the script.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: There’s a quote by Richard Kelly that I’m pretty fond of, “For me, for fantasy to truly work, there has to be an undercurrent of absolute realism.” When you have birth marks morphing into maps, a character disappearing into the underworld for ten years and returning with no memory of the experience, an ornate box that you can’t open but follows you around no matter where you leave it, and encounters with a supernatural realm that culminates into a boy becoming a scythe-wielding mythical figure, it’s important to ground everything in a realistic setting with characters that feel like real people. I think Donnington could benefit by not only making its setting, the town, more realistic, but by depicting the town in such a way that makes it feel like an actual character. From “It’s a Wonderful Life” to Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” to the more modern “Lars and the Real Girl”, there’s something to be said for giving a community, a collective of people, a character arc. Donnington is a town that has suffered a great tragedy and has turned belly-up, but the setting never quite felt realistic. I think it could benefit from being fleshed out more. How do you do this? You depict more characters from the community who have different backgrounds. For example, I’ll point to Karl Gajdusek’s “Pandora”, which portrayed multiple characters who inhabited a town. They were all different ages and from different social stratas with different jobs. All together, the varying perspectives felt like a tapestry of characters that gave weight and soul to the setting. I’m not advocating turning this script into an ensemble piece, but if “Donnie Darko” can make a town feel like a character, so can “Donnington”. At one point, a character says, “God left this town long ago.” It’s a literal Ichabod (the departure of God’s glory). For the audience to believe that a setting is truly cursed, first they have to truly believe the setting.
note: Okay, comments seem fixed.
Genre: Comedy
Premise: A flight attendant who refuses to grow up gets stuck escorting an uptight 14 year old boy cross-country.
About: It’s always interesting to get some background on a writer after I read a script. Whenever I see this much skill, I figure the guy has to have been at it for awhile. Wasn’t surprised then to find out Justin Adler has been writing and producing television for quite some time, working on such shows as Futurama, Sons and Daughters, Samantha Who, and Better Off Ted. Scripts this good don’t just appear out of thin air, so I feel somewhat vindicated knowing how much time Adler’s put into his craft. The Escort sold earlier this year to Dreamworks.
Writer: Justin Adler
Details: 113 pages – Draft A (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).
It seems like I’m always looking for the next funny thing amongst a sea of unfunny things. So sparse are the laughs these days, both in the theater and on the screenplay front, that I’m beginning to wonder if my laugh buds were kidnapped. I watched Date Night the other night. That had to be one of the most unfunny comedies I’ve seen in recent memory. I mean, I get that it’s “Date Night” but it’s Steve Carell. You figure he wouldn’t volunteer his likeness to a total piece of garbage, right? Wrong! You know when you write the scene where your characters have to do a stripper dance in front of a crowd that you’ve officially given up, not just on that script, but as a writer. I mean give me a break.
I went to see The Other Guys and thought it was decent but there’s something wrong when Mark Whalberg is making you laugh harder than Will Ferrell. Also, who the hell’s decision was it to kill off Samuel Jackson and The Rock? They were the funniest thing about the movie. And the movie is called “The Other Guys,” implying that it’s going to be “The Other Guys vs. The Main Guys.” Nope, they went ahead and killed off the best thing about the movie. Can the idiot who made that decision please stand up?
In short, a good comedy was needed.
Well, along comes The Escort. Now The Escort’s not perfect. Like any comedy there are hits and there are misses, but this thing hits way more than it misses, and stands toe to toe with “Crazy Stupid Love” as the best comedy of the year (“30 Minutes Or Less” rounds out the Top 3).
We start out on Gary Decker, a 14 year old stuck in a 35 year old flight attendant’s body. Despite spending most of his time flying around the country, Decker’s going nowhere fast. While he tells anyone who will listen that he’s going to be a pilot, the truth is Decker’s five year, ten year, and 20 year plan amounts to banging as many chicks as possible and making just enough money to pay the bills.
In fact, when we meet Decker, he’s crammed into one of those airplane bathrooms trying to have sex with a woman. I say “trying” because this female Atuk is 300 pounds and it’s impossible for him to maneuver his man business into the proper parts. The situation escalates until people outside get a whiff of what’s going on, and Decker’s busted in yet one more of a long line of screw-ups.
Meanwhile, we meet Ethan Wilder, an anal 35 year old businessman stuck in a 14 year old’s body. Ethan would rather shop at Brooks Brothers than Abercrombie, which is probably why he’s suffered through a mostly friendless childhood. Ethan’s pissed because his father and evil step-mother are sending him off to boarding school. Ethan used to have a good relationship with his dad, but once his bitch step-mom showed up and conceived the golden boy (a six year old devil-child named Kingsley), it’s like Ethan doesn’t exist anymore.
To make matters worse, his father was going to fly him out to boarding school, but his step-mom convinced him to stay and help prep Kingsley for an acting audition. Since Ethan’s a minor and can’t travel alone, he’ll be assigned an “escort” to make sure he gets there okay.
And that, of course, is where Decker steps in. The heffer-humper’s been demoted to the bottom of the totem-pole and that means performing such annoying tasks as “escorting” minors. When the two meet, it’s hate at first site. Ethan thinks Decker’s a childish moron and Decker thinks Ethan’s a stuck-up annoying little bitch.
After several arguments, one of the plane’s engines fall off (which I hear is never good) and they’re forced to make an emergency landing in Charlottesville. When Ethan explains to the head flight attendant how Decker treated him, it’s the last straw for the company, and they fire him.
But when a call home helps Ethan realize his family is a bunch of dickheads, he concocts a plan to go live with his mother. He runs after Decker, apologizes, and offers to pay him if he’ll take him to Albany where his mother lives. Decker’s reluctant but doesn’t exactly have a lot of income options, so he accepts.
Along the way they encounter a hurricane, some overenthusiastic Civil War reenactors, some old flames, some new ones, and a ton of disagreements. Decker does his best to teach Ethan how to loosen up and Ethan does his best to teach Decker how to grow up. These two pretty much hate each other and would disagree about the color of grass if the topic came up. But by the end, they form a strange bond and learn a lot from one another.
Where to begin with how much I liked this. There’s just so much Adler did right. First, he took a time tested premise, the road-trip comedy, and gave it a new spin. A man and a teenager. We haven’t seen that before.
He also adds irony to his characters, which I tell you guys to do whenever you can. Decker is the child even though he’s the grown-up. And Ethan is the grown-up even though he’s the child.
Adler also starts his characters as far apart on the spectrum as possible. Not only do Decker and Ethan’s hatred for one another give the second act a lot to work with (The second act is the “conflict” act so it helps if your characters are nowhere close to finding common ground) but by placing them so far apart, there’s an inherent desire from the audience to see if they can overcome the impossible.
Also, the script has a ton of heart. Even though it’s a goofy comedy, the core emotional issue here – Ethan’s abandonment – is heavy and real. I mean when Ethan finally gets to his mom’s and we see her reaction….it’s heartbreaking.
The time Adler spends on this makes the central relationship between Decker and Ethan that much stronger, because now, Decker represents something more than an escort. He represents a friend, a father-figure, and really the only person who actually cares about Ethan. When you make that extra effort to nail the emotional component of your screenplay, all of the comedy is funnier because we actually care about what’s happening to the characters.
Adler also does a great job peppering the script with setups and payoffs. There are a dozen moments between Decker and Ethan that seem insignificant early on, but come full circle in the third act. I loved the porn magazine stuff, for example. It’s something that could’ve been cheesy but when it pays off later, I have to say it really worked. I LOVE a good setup and payoff, and this script has tons of them.
There’s really only one thing that doesn’t work for me and that’s Decker’s flaw. Over the course of the story, Decker only has sex with old, ugly, or fat chicks, and we find out that the reason is he abandoned the girl he loved when he was younger, and he doesn’t ever want to hurt someone like that again, so he only engages in meaningless sex where he knows he’ll never fall for the girl. For a script that does such a great job setting up an emotional backstory for Ethan, I was surprised at how insincere and false this choice was. It felt like Adler sacrificed authenticity for laughs, and that hurt what was otherwise a flawless character study.
Outside of that misstep though, this was pretty awesome. I have a feeling four months from now we’re going to be seeing The Escort near the top of the Black List. This is really good comedy writing, and therefore a great script to study if you’re into the genre.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The Escort makes a tiny slip-up early on. Decker doesn’t like kids, which helps set up the eventual conflict between him and Ethan. The problem is, Adler doesn’t show us this. He has Decker say it a couple of pages before Ethan shows up. “I hate kids,” he says. And because he says it, it falls flat. This is age-old screenwriting advice but it’s so true. SHOW don’t TELL. I can’t tell you how much more impactful it is on a reader to SEE a character take on an issue as opposed to being told of an issue. It would be like Han Solo saying “I’m a badass,” instead of SHOWING him kill Greedo. This is a mistake I see a TON of beginner writers make. They have their characters offhandedly say something like “I took a year of karate lessons” and then later in a key scene kick someone’s ass. It feels false because we never SAW them perform karate. I’m not saying it’s a huge deal here in The Escort, but I did think we needed to SEE Decker get in a fight with a child (or a group of children) to really sell his inability to connect with kids.
I’m liking it. :)
Genre: Crime/Mystery
Premise: The murder of an old man opens up a bleak trail of long buried secrets and small town corruption for a worn out police detective and his squad.
About: Overture Films has purchased the remake rights to Jar City, a popular Icelandic mystery film that was good enough to nab a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Michael Ross, who penned the remake, is also writing “Near Dark,” the remake of Kathryn Bigelow’s vampire film. His first writing credit was the horror film Turistas. Before that Ross was an editor on such films as Wrong Turn and 2001 Maniacs. Going back further, he assistant edited Meet Joe Black and Jerry Maguire, and was an assistant for Wes Anderson on Bottle Rocket. Jar City landed on the 2008 Black List with 4 votes.
Writer: Michael Ross
Details: 127 pages – October 29, 2008 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).
With all the hoopla over “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” I was totally down for another mystery in the same vein. Someone suggested I read a script that made some noise a couple of years back called Jar City, which contained a lot of that dark moodiness present in other films from that part of the world, such as the Millineum trilogy and “Let The Right One In.”
The American adaptation plucks us out of Iceland and puts us in the deep south Louisiana town of “Bayou Cane.” 30-something Daniel Thibodeaux is living every parent’s nightmare. His six year old daughter, after a long illness, has died of a rare blood disease. Daniel is devastated but to make things worse, he feels that he is somehow responsible, that his blood is the blood that gave her the disease. Work, love, and his day-to-day life are no longer important to him. All Daniel cares about is finding out how this disease made its way into his daughter so that maybe he and his wife can have another child someday.
Across town, in a seemingly unrelated event, an old man is found dead in his basement, bludgeoned to death with some kind of instrument. 50 year old Martin Ford, a veteran detective, assumes it at first to be some squabble over owed money, probably drug-related. But after going through the man’s things, Ford finds an old polaroid picture of a girl’s gravesite from 30 years ago. It’s the first in a set of clues which indicate that this murder goes much deeper than an old dead man in a basement.
Ford is dealing with his own personal demons as well. His daughter, 19 year old Eva, is a junkie who will do anything to support her habit. Ford must make the difficult decision every day to either give her more money for her habit, which he knows will someday kill her, or allow her to get that money on her own, which he knows means prostituting herself. In some cases, the very perps he’s taking down are the same ones paying his daughter for sex.
The script jumps back and forth between Daniel’s search into his daughter’s blood disease and Ford’s search for the old man’s killer. The emphasis, however, is put on Ford’s thread, as that’s where the main investigation is.
Ford eventually locates the sister of the child whose gravesite was in the polaroid. She implies that the old man, along with the sheriff and a couple of other men were running around town raping any girl they could find. She believes that the dead girl is the illegitimate daughter of one of these men. So Martin begins a process of elimination to figure out which one of the three men was the rapist. On top of that, their involvement still doesn’t explain why the girl died in the first place, which is a mystery in itself.
Concurrently, we learn that there is a long running blood disease that has been killing off the people of New Orleans which dates back to the first settlers of the area. Daniel begins to believe that his daughter’s death is somehow related to this disease. But that doesn’t make sense, as his bloodline has nothing to do with those initial settlers.
Eventually, these two storylines clash, and we get our sort-of big twist ending. Now it took me a couple of times through to understand what had happened but if this is indeed the twist, I must say it feels like a cheat. (MAJOR SPOILER) What we learn is that the two storylines were not, actually, running concurrently, but that the Daniel storyline had already happened, so that when the flashback “reveal scene” comes to see who killed the old man, it turns out, in fact, to be Daniel, at the end of his investigation into who was responsible for his daughter dying of the disease.
It all makes sense, but the deliberate manipulation of time at the audience’s expense feels more like a writer manufactured twist than the more satisfying story-related kind. So I felt a bit cheated.
Overall though, I think the script has some good things going for it, especially the tone. I don’t know what those Icelanders eat over there, but they sure know how to write “creepy.” There’s a pervading sense of hopelessness simmering underneath the story, and it’s done in such a way where the story doesn’t drown underneath that depression, but rather it accentuates that creepy vibe.
You combine that with a heavily layered narrative, and this isn’t just another run-of-the-mill procedural. This thing runs deeper than a desert well. I mean the writer is clearly trying to say something about birth and parents and children and death and how things aren’t always how they seem. Now I’m not going to pretend like I understood all these layers, but I knew they were there. :)
Despite all this, I’m still asking myself, “Why didn’t I enjoy this as much as I feel I should’ve?” And I guess the big problem for me was that the investigation itself was pretty average, hampered in part by the confusing dual-storyline. Everything works here. But the lack of any exceptional twists and turns makes it almost too “real world,” like you’re watching this thing unfold over a few days via articles on the news . I was expecting to be shocked at some point. But that never happened.
The biggest issue with the script, however, is that Ross (or, I should say, his source material) depends too heavily on the twist, and doesn’t put in the necessary legwork to make it resonate. Daniel has nothing to do here. His investigation chugs along at the speed of a Louisiana afternoon and after awhile you start to wonder why we’re even cutting back to him at all. It became clear to me after the reveal that the only reason we were spending time with Daniel was so that we didn’t forget him once the ending came. There is virtually nothing for him to look into during his scenes and that left an entire 25% of the movie feeling empty and pointless.
This was a hard one to get a handle on. Jar City had just enough juice, just enough mystery, to keep me reading til the end, so for that reason it’s worth checking out. But it only barely gets a passing grade as I wanted more back from my investment.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Whenever you’re writing a script with multiple storylines, like Jar City, you have to make sure each storyline warrants its existence. This is easier said than done, because it’s the nature of these multi-storyline beasts that some story threads are better than others. But the reason these movies don’t usually work is because 2 of the storylines are great and the other 3 suck. To avoid this, treat each storyline as if it were its own individual movie. In other words, Daniel’s investigation into his daughter’s blood disease doesn’t have enough going on to support its own movie. Your job is to make that storyline deep enough and compelling enough that you COULD base a movie solely on that. Never leave one of your story threads out to dry. The audience can sense it and they’ll turn on you.
Back in the day, only a chosen few – those employed by the studio or those who worked on the film – had the privilege of reading a script before the movie came out. As such, only a few people were able to boast about their dead-on assessment of a great script or dribble out excuses for why the amazing screenplay they found turned into a giant piece of komodo dragon dung. However now, with the proliferation of screenplays on the web, anybody can do it! As you know, I haven’t shied away from giving my opinion on a few screenplays, and since the site’s been up, a lot of those projects have since made it into theaters. So I thought, why not go back and compare my original take to the eventual result. I’m not trying to make some grand statement here, but it’s time to own up to where I was wrong and gloat about where I was right. So I give you…ten screenplays I reviewed on Scriptshadow, their critical and box office fate, and why they either succeeded or failed. My box office assessment for each film is relative to that film’s production budget, marketing budget, and star power. Obviously, a little movie like 500 Days of Summer doing 30 million is different than, say, Mission Impossible 4 doing 30 million.
TENURE
Original Rating: Impressive (#8 on Top 25 list)
Box Office: N/A (no wide release)
Critical Reaction: N/A (no known reviews)
What happened: This one hurts because I really loved this script. But I know a lot of you didn’t – often questioning why I placed it so highly in my Top 25. A lot of it had to do with me going to a liberal arts college and therefore relating to these characters. But Tenure died on the festival circuit, never gaining that critical buzz required to get it a limited release, and in the end went straight to DVD. When I finally saw it, I thought it was a decent little movie, but not as good as I remembered the script being. Part of this is due to Mike Million, the writer/director, still finding his way as a director, and part of it is due, I believe, to the heavy Wes Anderson influence. Anderson has a very specific vision, so anything trying to emulate him comes off as a not-nearly-as-good version of Wes Anderson. I still love this script and I still look forward to future Mike Million endeavors, but maybe you guys had a better feel for this script’s chances at success than I did.
THE HANGOVER (not reviewed)
Original Rating: Impressive (#13 on Top 25 list)
Box Office: (Great) 277 million
Critical Reaction: (Very good) 78% RT
What happened: Although I never got a chance to review The Hangover on the site, it was part of my original Top 25 (I think it was number 13). The script read about as well as a comedy script can read, which captured the imagination of Todd Phillips, and he’s the man who took this from hot script, which there are plenty of in LA at any given moment, to iconic film which will be considered one of the greatest comedies of all time. I’ve said this before but The Hangover is the perfect marriage of concept and execution, and it goes to show what can happen when you nail those two holy grails of screenwriting.
THE BOUNTY (THE BOUNTY HUNTER)
Original Rating: What The Hell Did I Just Read?
Box Office: (okay) 67 million
Critical Reaction: (abysmal) 7%
What happened: I count this as one of my bigger on-target calls. This script was awful. And I mean awful. Every part of every scene in every act in the entire screenplay felt like it was conceived of by a retarded studio monkey who’d never told a single story in his life. No realism. No emotion. No originality. No inkling or desire to build characters that actually exist in real life. If you told me I had to either watch this movie five times or inject myself with a bottle of bleach, I’d be bleeding white for a month. And while yes, 67 million is more than I thought it would make, not even the international b.o. and dvd sales argument is going to convince me that this movie made money. It did exactly what the star power of Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler should do coupled with a 40 million dollar marketing campaign and not a penny more. Once you come up with a concept, start building a believable framework for your story to exist in. Your characters should not be aware that they’re in a movie and can therefore make up their own rules and do whatever the hell they want because no realism applies. You follow that advice and you’ll never end up with a movie that gets 7% on Rotten Tomatoes.
LAW-ABIDING CITIZEN
Original Rating: Impressive (#19 on Top 25 list)
Box Office: (Okay) 73 million
Critical Reaction: (Poor) 29% RT
What Happened: Law-Abiding Citizen was one of the fastest reads of the year. With two of the best screenwriters in the business, Frank Darabont and Kurt Wimmer, contributing, it was like being whisked through Scriptopia on a magical flying carpet made of brads. But I made a critical error in judging this screenplay. The ending fucking sucked. And I gave it a pass, which I shouldn’t have. The reason being that all of the great twists and turns in the movie were dependent on the final reveal. When the final reveal turned out to be a cheat, it meant that everything in the script was built on a house of cards. The story was one giant lie. Adding insult to injury, when Gerard Butler and Jaime Foxx came on and decided to stretch their acting muscles instead of play the roles they were best suited for, I knew the film was dead. Gerard Butler cannot play a crazy psychopath. Jaime Foxx as a straight guy is a waste of his talents. Add in a vanilla director in F. Gary Gray, and the film all of a sudden looked like a bad B action movie from the 80s. But I think in the end this came down to the script, which had major problems which were not addressed. I was so high on the first two acts that I didn’t realize nobody wrote a third.
KICK-ASS
Original Rating: Wasn’t For Me
Box Office: (Okay) 48 million
Critical Reaction: (Strong to Very Good) 76% RT
What Happened: The more I go back to this script, the more I don’t like it. I rented the movie the other week to see how it compared to the read and sure enough, my mind started wandering at the exact same moment it did in the script, right after the “figure out my powers” first act. There IS – NO – PLOT in Kickass. After he becomes a superhero, I have no idea what the movie is about, what his goal is, what the purpose is, what the plot is. Eventually Generic Bad Guy A is thrown at us to give the film a finale, but we don’t know this guy and we don’t care about this guy so we don’t care. I know my assessment is killing Roger, since he loves this movie, but I’m not surprised the film didn’t break out. You could’ve included all of the cool stuff you already had, and just built an actual story around it that would’ve entertained non-comic book geeks AS WELL as comic book fans. Instead, this movie tries to be too exclusive, putting way too much emphasis on unimportant things, like a 12 year old girl saying “cunt,” and that killed its chances at mainstream success.
SALT
Original Rating: Impressive (#21 on Top 25)
Box Office: (Good) 110 million as of August 14
Critical Reaction: (Okay) 58% RT
What Happened: Salt was to the action spec read what The Hangover was to the comedy spec read. Darn near perfect. There were some who suggested that this read well as a spec, but wouldn’t translate onscreen. So it was nice to see it plopped down in a summer full of franchises and sequels and hold its own. My only real qualm here is changing the lead character to a woman. I’m not against the main character being female of course but it was originally written for a male character and that bizarre switcheroo where they changed everything around to suit a female lead stripped something away from the story. Also, Angelina Jolie and her family and her weirdness and her lips and boobs have completed her transformation into a parody of herself. She doesn’t feel real anymore and I think the film suffers as a result. But either way, this is a huge victory for the spec sale market, as rarely do we find our creations smack dab in the middle of the summer season doing well.
500 DAYS OF SUMMER
Original Rating: Impressive (#15 on Top 25)
Box Office: (Very Good) 32 Million
Critical Reaction: (Very Good) 87% RT
What Happened: The power of doing something DIFFERENT. 500 Days is what happens when a writer asks, “How can I approach this genre in a way that it’s never been approached before?” That simple but magical question can give you a huge advantage over your writing competition. Of course, you still have to go out and execute it, and I don’t think the movie is nearly as good as the script, but critics and independent cinema lovers saw something cool about an anti-romantic comedy and flocked to arthouses as a result. If anything, this is a prime example that high concept can work even in independent “serious” cinema. So always favor a logline that’s going to “pop” over one that sits there, no matter how independent a movie you want to write.
MEMOIRS (REMEMBER ME)
Original Rating: Impressive
Box Office: (Poor) 19 million
Critical Reaction: (Poor) 27% RT
What Happened: If I’m going to suck it up and admit I was dead wrong on anything, it would be this script. Here’s the thing, the first 95% of this script sucked. I realize that now. It was the worst kind of film-school writing. An angsty protagonist who gets in fights for no reason then reluctantly gets involved with a girlfriend who he has a “difficult” relationship with because he can’t open up, kind of like Good Will Hunting minus compelling characters, sharp dialogue and a good story. The relationship scenes, in retrospect, were some of the most boring and tedious I’ve ever read. Having said that, in the script, I still believe the twist ending worked. But in the film, they eliminated some key setup details so that a “shocking” ending turned into one that just pissed off and offended people. After thinking it over, I realized that my “what I learned” from this review was wrong. I said something to the effect of “If you wow them with an ending, it doesn’t matter what you wrote before it, because the ending is the last thing they leave with.” Well, the truth is that nobody cares about your ending if you’ve lulled them to sleep with a nonexistent plot and boring-as-hell characters for two hours. And that was the case with Memoirs.
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
Original Rating: Double “worth the read”
Box Office: (Good) 16 million through August 14
Critical Reaction: (Great) 95% RT
What Happened: The only regret I have about reviewing The Kids Are All Right is not rating it higher. This script was awesome. It’s smart, it’s funny, it has great characters, great dialogue. Basically the opposite of Memoirs. And it makes you feel good after reading/seeing it. There are some pretty intense emotional issues here but unlike a lot of these ultra-depressing indies, The Kids Are All Right wants you to leave the theater thinking and smiling. It’s also one of the best screenplays to read if you want to write three-dimensional characters. It really puts an emphasis on making every character in your story important. With the way the festival circuit has become in recent years, where not even name actors guarantee a limited release, The Kids Are All Right breaking through and becoming a small indie hit reignites my belief that a great screenplay is the starting point for a great movie.
GREENBERG
Original Pick: Wasn’t For Me
Box Office: (poor) 4.2 million
Critical Reaction: (good to very good) 74%
What Happened: Oh boy. I’m going to try and not let my personal feelings get in the way of assessing this flick but I really really hate Noah Baumbach’s work. In Baumbach’s world, everybody hates each other, everybody thinks the world is pointless, people shit on each other for no reason. The world sucks. You suck. I suck. He sucks. We all suck and nobody knows anything. We’re all idiots. And we all suck. Margot’s Wedding was about the closest movie I’ve seen to cinematic nails on a chalkboard. You can see why I’m not surprised, then, that this movie failed even by toned down independent film standards. If you write depressed characters with no goals in life and who nobody would ever root for and throw them into a story with no point, and deluge your script with long meaningless dialogue scenes that masquerade as poignant takes on life, your movie is going to fail. I’d like to personally invite all 74% of the people who gave this film a passing grade to my place so I can ask them what the hell they were smoking when they watched it.
And that, my friends, is it. While I see a few scripts on the list that I rated too highly, I’m still waiting for the first shitty script I reviewed to became both a critical and box office success. Obviously, Hollywood can pump enough marketing muscle into a movie like G.I. Joe to make it successful, but everyone above the age of 12 knows it sucks, which only reestablishes my faith that if you write a great screenplay, people will take notice. Your movie will get made. Audiences will go see it. But considering only about 1/10 of the scripts I review are impressive, writing a bonafied “great” script is still very difficult. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how Top 25 mainstays like The Social Network, Everything Must Go, Buried, and Source Code, do when they’re released. All four are gambles in their own right, so we’ll see if their scripts give them a long shelf life. Until next time, keep writing. :)
