Genre: Action/Thriller
Premise: A small group of correctional officers and inmates must band together to fend off a mysterious attack when their prison bus is sabotaged on a remote stretch of highway.
About: This script originally went into select production companies late last year – which landed the writer, Terrance Mulloy, meetings all over town. This new revised draft went wide a few weeks back, garnering the interest of a few A-list producers, and as a result, the writer is now working on a variety of projects. Terrance is repped by UTA and FilmEngine.
Writer: Terrance Mulloy
Details: July 30, 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).
Back in the day, I used to trade barbs with Terrance on a few screenwriting message boards. I remember him steadfastly defending Avatar two full years before it came out, standing by it through thick and thin (including the advanced screening debacle), and him insisting that the movie and 3-D were going to be the next big thing. I told him 3-D was a gimmick and that people would never accept wearing bulky glasses in a theater. I think it’s safe to say Terrance won the Avatar 3-D battle, but I may still win the 3-D war. :)
Anyway, I was excited when I heard that Terrance was making some noise in Hollywood with his spec script, “Priority Run.” That’s one of the great things about the message boards, is you actually watch, in real time, as writers emerge and find their way into the industry, which makes you realize it’s not impossible – that it can be done. Anyway, I set out to find the script myself and finally, I have it in my grubby little hands.
Priority Run centers around single mother Anna Wilson, a correctional officer at a New Mexico state prison. Anna’s been working around the clock and feeling guilty for neglecting her daughter. So she carves out some much needed vacation time to make it up to her. Unfortunately, the captain’s got other plans. The facility has a priority run – a handful of monster criminals they need relocate to another prison – and the captain wants the experienced Anna on the bus. She says no thanks but it turns out not to be a question. I guess that trip to the aquarium will have to wait.
Anna’s joined on this ride of terror by a jumpy rookie named Calloway, a seasoned vet named Jim, and a generously pudgy driver, Keppler. The prisoners they’ll be transporting are some mean ass motherfuckers, the kind of guys who would make those pussies on Con Air give up an aisle seat. But none of these men comes close to William McBride, who’s what you’d get if you crossed Riddick, the Hulk, and Charles Manson. This guy’s his own fucking Armageddon.
So away they roll on this seemingly routine mission, when out of nowhere, in the middle of the desert, they lose radio and cell phone coverage. This is followed by some dark SUVs in the rear view mirror and all of a sudden this routine mission is looking decidedly un-routine. Sure enough, the cars close in and manage to flip the bus over into a ditch. However, this wasn’t exactly in the plans for the bad guys, as the flip positions the bus in such a way where Anna and the others have perfect cover. Flip fail.
But she and her men are now in a number of predicaments, starting with what they do with the prisoners. Do they unlock them? Can they trust them? They know if they just leave them locked up, they’ll be killed. But who’s the bigger danger? The guys outside the bus or the ones inside? Also, Anna doesn’t know what these bad guys want. Could it be they’re after one of their prisoners? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better to keep them locked up? Whatever the handbook says, it clearly never covered this situation.
As the story unfolds, prisoners are indeed let go and start making up their own protocol. Some guys make a run for it, and just like you’d expect, they don’t get very far. They also learn the real reason behind why they’ve been targeted, which may or may not involve one of the officers. Eventually, they have to make the biggest decision of all, whether to release William McBride. He may just be their only chance at survival, but that’s only if he doesn’t kill them first.
Priority Run is a good old fashioned action film. This isn’t Butter. Men shoot each other. Other men die. We like it.
One of the things I dug right away was the attention to detail. Terrance really sets up the correctional facility and the bus and the prisoners so that you believe this run is happening. Too many writers figure it’s an action film so who the hell cares if it’s authentic. But if we don’t believe in the world you’ve created, we’re not going to believe your story.
I also thought putting a woman at the center of this all was a great choice. Who worse to be in charge of a group of delinquent overgrown muscle-bound killers than a supposedly “week” little woman. It gives the story that “same but different” element which separates it from your average DTV Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle.
Nor is this overstylized nonsense. Anna’s just a working-class woman trying to support her child any way she can. She can’t run up the wall like Trinity or brandish double Berettas like Salt. She’s just a hard-nosed chick in a bad situation trying to survive so she can see her daughter again.
What surprised me was that this kind of thing really happens. They have women officers in male prisons believe it or not. Knowing what I’ve seen on some of those History Channel prison documentaries and how easily a prisoner can kill an officer, this was pretty shocking to me.
My issues with the story center around two things. The first is McBride. I think it takes too long to get him out. I love stories where a character has to depend on the worst possible person to help them out of a jam. That’s why Pitch Black was so good. They needed to depend on the crazy fucked up serial killer who cared about no one but himself to get out alive. Speaking of Pitch Black, imagine if they didn’t let Riddick out until 3/4 of the way through the story. That’s kinda how it felt here. I understood why Terrance did it. The location is extremely small – a bus – so if you bring him out too early, where do you go with him? It’s not like he has an entire planet to roam around on like Riddick did. But still, McBride is the draw here. He’s the potential break out star of this film, and it doesn’t feel like he gets the star treatment. For a large chunk in the middle, he disappears completely, and I don’t think that should happen.
My other main issue was that the plot lacked that one big twist to bust it over the top. Not to keep bringing up Pitch Black, but I loved all the little surprises that film had – when they found out the planet would be bathed in dark soon, that that’s when the aliens came out to feed, when we find out that Johns isn’t a cop, when we find out the boy is a girl. The script never lets you relax which is what made it so fun. In Priority Run, the only real twist is when we find out why they’re being targeted. And it’s not that surprising because we’re expecting an explanation anyway and the explanation is a mite predictable. I think Priority Run could benefit from a few more surprises.
But overall, this is a really fun ride. It’s a blast to see all of Terrance’s influences as he writes, which also happen to be my own: Die hard, Aliens, Pitch Black, The Road Warrior. And Terrance has all sorts of fun writing it, embracing an aggressive entertaining style that starts with the very first line of the script: “Buckle Up.” If Terrance plays his cards right, he could be one of the go-to scribes for Hollywood’s big action films. Really good stuff here. But I still think 3-D is going to die. :)
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Watching Terrance break in, it brought me back to one of the questions posed by a commenter Monday. He asked if a “nobody” writer could ever hope to get his scripts read in Hollywood. I thought Dan’s (writer of Monday’s script) answer was excellent, so I’m re-posting it here:
If you work hard enough you can get your script into many hands in the biz. It will take time and a lot of hard work so you need to be really dedicated to your craft and career.
Join a writers’ group and an online community; read (many) other scripts and give notes and network with fellow writers in your position; you can all trade info and referrals when they come up. Use their notes (and ideally the notes of a pro reader, if you can spend a little extra money, and a pro writer if you can find one who will agree to read your work) to REWRITE and improve your craft. Enter some contests, see how you do, get some feedback. REWRITE. Improve your craft. Write another script, show it to your group, enter a few more contests. REWRITE.
Assuming this script is squarely in a commercially proven genre with a defined audience and at a low budget (hint hint) then post on Inktip.com; gauge the response, hopefully you’ll get a few requests, maybe a few bites. Attend a conference or film festival, do more networking, meet people who may have ins with a manager or a producer so you can make a few more submissions.
When you’re ready, get the WGA list of managers and agents that accept unsolicited material and submit to them. See how you do. You may get some notes, you may not. You may want to REWRITE an existing script based on feedback or you may want to work on a new script that is more focused on a commercial audience and genre so a Rep will look at it as something easier to sell in the current market.
When you feel you’re ready, WORK THE PHONES to get into the bigger offices. It’s not enough to send emails and enter contests, unless you’re lucky enough to win a contest and immediately get signed by a rep, but for most of us, you’re going to want to launch a flurry of cold calls and try to get an ASSISTANT on the phone who will listen to your logline and short pitch and agree to read your script. This will take time and a lot of tenacity but you may end up with a Manager or Producer that is interested in your script.
Rinse and repeat until you make some $$. Keep in mind that may happen at any one of these stages because you never know who might gel to your concept and your execution. It’s all about finding the one person who really likes your material and is willing to sell it to others in town. This may be a scrappy young director with an award-winning short who has $10k from his dentist uncle and wants to make a feature, or it may be a junior agent at UTA or an assistant at Fox Searchlight.
It can be done. It’s done every day. But if you’re not in it to win it then don’t bother. Good luck!
Genre: Horror/Supernatural
Premise: A strange event results in nearly everyone in the world vanishing into thin air. A small group of survivors find each other and try to figure out what happened.
About: Brad Anderson, the director of “Vanishing,” has always been an interesting filmmaker to me, but truth be told his films have left me wanting more. Session 9 was cool, but I still couldn’t tell you exactly what it was. Was it a horror movie? A serial killer movie? It seemed like an excuse to shoot at a creepy location more than anything. The Machinist was okay, but confused me more than it entertained me. It too lacked conviction. I wanted that movie to slug me in the face and it seemed more intent on tickling me to death. So I think the jury’s still out on him. Anderson’s found a solid cast in his latest though, with Hayden Christensen, John Leguizamo, and Thandie Newton onboard. Anthony Jaswinski, the writer, has written a couple of movies for TV, has another couple in development, but is best known around these parts as the writer of the spec script “Kristy,” which has poked up on the Scriptshadow Reader Top 25 before. The script is about a girl who’s terrorized on a deserted college campus.
Writer: Anthony Jaswinski
Details: Blue Rev. 9/22/09 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).
The Vanishing on 7th Street is a script that starts off strong but, like a lot of these scripts, gets swallowed up in its own ambition. The ultra high-concept premise lures us in like fresh garbage to a family of raccoons. The question is, is the premise *too* high concept? Wha? Huh? Buh? ‘How can that even be possible’ you ask?? A premise is too high concept when no matter what you do with the story, it will never be as interesting as the concept itself. In other words, you bite off more than you can chew. And unfortunately, I think that’s the case with Vanishing.
Paul is a quiet keeps-to-himself projectionist in his 40s who lives a very similar existence to his job – isolated, alone, doesn’t want to be bothered. He spends his free time like all of us do, gobbling up quantum physics in textbook form (Come on, you know you dig the quantum). When the projector stops, Paul gets up to check out what’s going on in the theater, only to see that everyone is gone. Did Paul accidentally screen The Switch? No, the audience simply…vanished.
Paul wanders into the adjacent mall, hearing the occasional scream, but notices that he’s the only one there. Instead of raiding Cinnabon though, Paul stumbles out into the streets where he realizes that all the cars have stopped, all the phones are out, and poor dogs are walking around without owners. The Vanishing has apparently spared canines.
72 hours later we catch up with Luke, our brooding hero played by Hayden Christensen. Luke split up with his wife to work here and he’s never quite found peace with the decision. As is always the case, you don’t start missing someone until the damn world’s about to blow up.
Eventually Luke runs into a group of people. The first is Paul, our projectionist friend. The second is James, a teenager who’s waiting for his mom to come back (it ain’t happening kid), and then there’s Maya, a nurse who’s a few bad meals from going off the deeeeeep end.
The group holes up in a tavern and tries to figure out why the hell people are, you know, disappearing. Some believe it’s a pissed off God. Some think the universe is systematically closing down. Others think that there’s no reason at all. It just simply…happened.
But while theories are flying fast and free, a far more pressing problem arises. The group starts to hear voices in the shadows, and become aware that the light is the only thing keeping them alive. Slip out of it and into the darkness, and the beasts/monsters behind those eerie voices pull you away. The group must formulate a plan to escape before the light runs out.
The Vanishing on 7th Street has a lot of scenes and visuals and sounds that would get any director excited. There’s a baby stroller lit under a lone streetlight. A character opens a door to another room only to find a concrete wall. Characters in hoods slide through a city bathed in pockets of light. Voices spookily taunt characters from behind the shadows. Visually and aurally, there is definitely a movie here. I just don’t know if there’s a story.
The big hook – the actual vanishing – wears off quickly and we’re stuck with these characters who technically all have solid goals (to survive) but aren’t all that interesting. They seem only a quarter or a half realized. For example, Paul, who’s a science geek, comes up with this cool theory that whoever created the universe is shutting it down piece by piece, and the people of this planet are the first to be turned off. Yet that’s all I can remember about Paul, was his theory. I couldn’t tell you about any character flaws or what happened in his life that pushed him into such an isolated existence. He’s like the hand and the leg of a person instead of the entire body.
Luke is more thought out and has the backstory with his wife, but this information doesn’t inform the story or the character at all. Besides a quick throwaway conversation, Luke doesn’t seem that interested in finding or getting back to his wife. He spoke of it being an issue, but we didn’t FEEL it was an issue. Which leads me to a bigger problem. Nobody here really had a plan. There’s this vague notion that they should find a working car (all the cars are dead) and drive somewhere. But where? I always say that once your character’s motivations are unclear, your movie is dead, because the audience isn’t interested in watching characters without a point, without a plan. And that’s how I felt once the second half of Vanishing rolled around.
Instead, the script focuses on middle-of-the-road conversations the characters have which contain little to no conflict beneath them. “Who are you?” “What do you think it is?” “I want to find my mom.” One of the reasons Aliens is so awesome is because those characters had so much going on underneath the surface. Ripley is trying to save this little girl. Burke is planning to sacrifice Ripley for money and glory. Bishop is an android, who our hero hates but must trust to survive. There was a real dynamic between the characters ripe for conflict. Here, it’s like each character is on their own island, inflicting no cause or effect on any of the other characters. It was frustrating.
Admittedly, Anderson and Jawinski seem to be tackling some really deep issues and thoughts in this movie, and I’m not sure if I’m smart enough to understand them. I definitely felt like something bigger was happening here, that symbolism and metaphors and a multi-layered narrative were all present. But because I wasn’t engaged in the storyline, I didn’t care to figure out any of that stuff.
Vanishing is a strange cross between Flashforward, The Darkest Hour, The Langoliers, and The Happening. It’s very Steven Kingish, and I anticipate King fans will dig the vibe. But the script is never better than in its opening act, and that can’t happen in a script.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Think long and hard about whether you can deliver on your huge premise before you write it. If the concept that sends your story into motion is the best thing about your script, then you only have one-fourth of a script. What if aliens invaded our planet tomorrow? Okay, great concept. But then what? How do you keep that interesting for the 100 minutes after they invade? If you want to see how bad someone can screw this up, go rent Independence Day. Just make sure to also rent a gun, as you’ll want to shoot yourself by the midpoint. I think the key to these high concept ideas is making sure you have a story ready on the personal level after you hit your audience with the hook. So in District 9, the hook was, “What if aliens got stuck here and we enslaved them in a ghetto?” But the personal story was, “What if a human started turning into one of these aliens and had to find a way to turn back before it was too late?” That’s a story that can sustain itself the whole way through. The story within the story baby…the story within the story. :)
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. :)
