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. :)
Genre: Comedy (fish-out-of-water)
Premise: A misfit Eskimo who dreams of bigger things stows away on a documentary crew airplane to New York City, where he tries to find his way.
About: Based on the 1963 novel The Incomparable Atuk by Mordecai Richler, “Atuk” has been bouncing around Hollywood a long time. But this script is different from all the other scripts drowning in development hell. This script may actually be…..SENDING PEOPLE TO HELL. About as close as you’re going to get to a Hollywood urban legend, it seems that Atuk has been killing off whichever portly actor attaches himself to it. First was John Belushi, who read the script and really wanted to play the title part. He died soonafter of a drug overdose. Next up was Sam Kinison, who actually filmed a few scenes for the movie in 1987 before deciding he didn’t like where it was going. He died a few years later in a car accident. John Candy was reportedly the third victim, as he hitched himself to the project and then died of a heart attack. So lethal is this script that it even took out one of the numerous writers on the project, Michael O’Donoghue, the man who recommended the part to Belushi and Kinison. Finally, another Saturday Night Live legend, Chris Farley, was just about to accept the role before dying of a drug overdose. Although details start to get sketchy, it is said that Farley was pushing fellow SNL alum Phil Hartman to take a part in the movie. Hartman was murdered by his wife six months later.
Writers: Unknown (based on the novel by Mordecai Richler)
Details: 144 pages, shooting draft, 1988 (shoulda been the “shoot yourself” draft)
We’ve read a lot of scripts on this site. Some ambitious, some weird, some disappointing. But I don’t think we’ve ever read a script that’s been……haunted.
Duh-duh-duh-duhhhhhhh!
Naturally, when you hear that a script kills people, you’re a little reluctant to pluck it out of the pile. But it wasn’t the “haunted” tag that scared me here. It was the fact that a comedy – a straightforward comedy at that – had been in development for 30 years. Something tells me that if a comedy’s been in development for 30 years, it’s probably not that funny. It didn’t take long to confirm that assumption. Atuk is scary all right. Scary bad!
Atuk, our illustrious pot-bellied eskimo, is a misfit in his eskimo clan. While all the other eskimos are spearing seals and setting dog-sledding records, a successful day for Atuk amounts to not upsetting his warrior father, who is clearly disappointed at what a failure Atuk’s become.
What keeps Atuk going, however, are his dreams of going to New York and becoming a real-estate mogul like his idol, the Donald Trump-esque “Alexander McKuen.” While all the other clan-members are out hunting, Atuk devours any material he can find on the Big Apple. Maybe, one day, if the stars align, he’ll find a way there.
Wouldn’t you know it, a few days later a documentary crew shows up led by the beautiful Michelle Ross, who Atuk immediately falls for. Michelle asks the eskimos if she can follow them in their natural element, preferably hunting and killing things, for a sort of “day in the life” documentary. However, Atuk’s meanie dad and the rest of the tribe shun the request, labeling them as evil outsiders. Apparently discrimination can happen anywhere. Even in rural Alaska.
Sensing an opportunity to fall into the good graces of native New Yorkians, Atuk volunteers to hunt for the documentary crew, using the time to inquire about the mysterious New York City, and hinting that maybe, you know, he might be able to come back with them, maybe help carry some things. Or something.
When Michelle gives him the glacial Heisman, Atuk takes matters into his own hands and stows away on the airplane all the way back to New York! Whaaat!? Seal blubber!
Michelle’s pretty pissed about Atuk’s sneakiness but she’s still worried about unleashing him into the middle of New York City. Not that worried though because that’s exactly what she does! Good luck Atuk! (Ooh, that’s a much better title: “Good Luck Atuk.” You see what’s happening here on Scriptshadow? Cinematic Gold!)
Abandoned in the Manhattan wild, a world he has studied endlessly but realizes he knows nothing about, Atuk must fend for himself, finding food, shelter, and companionship. So of course he builds an igloo in the middle of Central Park, starts fishing off the dock, and lands some friends of the hobo variety. But with each passing minute, Atuk becomes less and less sure he’ll be able to survive here.
Just when it seems like all hope is lost, Atuk spots a man drowning in the dock and swims out to save him. It so happens that this young man is Alexander McKuen’s – the real estate mogul – troubled alcoholic son! Within a couple of days, the media picks up on the event and Atuk becomes a celebrity!
By this point I was dozing off every ten minutes but from what I remember, Alexander was trying to build some mega-emerald city right there in Manhattan so he starts using Atuk’s celebrity to help push it through the red tape. Atuk and the son become good friends and a ridiculously contrived plotline emerges to get Michelle back into the movie whereby Alexander hires her to document Atuk’s indoctrination into America.
If you think this sounds like a little movie called “Elf,” that’s because it basically is Elf. Except where Elf succeeds in exploiting its premise every step of the way, this script fails to exploit its premise every step of the way. In fact, Atuk may be the first comedy I’ve ever read where I not only didn’t laugh, but didn’t even smile. Not once. The comedy is so neutered here that I often wondered if it was supposed to be a serious coming-of-age drama, like Up In The Air.
What’s odd, however, is that there are a set of ingredients for a screenplay here. A cute fish out of water eskimo story. A villain hellbent on world (Manhattan) domination. You have the seeds of a complicated relationship between father and son. You even have a potential love story. But all these elements only seem to be there to satisfy some studio note. There’s no attempt to link them up into a cohesive unit. It’s kind of like thinking you can make apple pie by throwing apples, sugar, and crust into a pan.
Probably the biggest faux-pas, however, is how long it takes to get to everything. It takes too long to get to New York. It takes too long to connect us with Alexander. It takes too long to get Michelle back into the story. Comedies have to move. If ever there was a perfect example for why a comedy script should never be 144 pages, go ahead and read this script and you’ll see why. There are these huge valleys lasting up to 10 pages where nothing is advancing the story forward. We’re just sitting around waiting for something to happen. The draft was written in 1988 but still. Coming To America moved fast? Didn’t it?
As if the elements weren’t rough enough, the script was written before the reader-friendly spec boom (early nineties) so all of the paragraphs are chunky and laborious to get through. If you weren’t falling asleep due to the lack of laughs, you’ll surely find some shut-eye lumbering through these mountains of ink.
Atuk makes me wonder if the actors attached to this thing weren’t dying because of a curse, but were simply trying to avoid being in it. This one is bad folks. You’ve been warned.
[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I always advocate making your character’s journey more personal if possible. Compare Atuk with its doppelganger, Elf, in how it draws its main character to New York. In Elf, Buddy goes to New York to find his father. In Atuk, Atuk goes because he wants to be rich and successful. Notice how that decision affects each storyline. When Buddy gets to New York, you can weave his storyline around his father, which is going to be a very personal and emotional journey. With Atuk, he gets there and…then what? Well, there’s not much for him to do. So you need to create this whole other storyline whereby he saves someone to give the story momentum again. The “instant celebrity” plays well for a few scenes, but then you’re right back to where you started – a character with no personal connection to his journey. The script tries to compensate for this by giving us a separate father-son storyline, but since neither the father or the son are main characters (and aren’t interesting characters anyway), we don’t really care. I’m not, of course, saying that a fish-out-of-water story requires a personal element. I don’t think Crocodile Dundee, for instance, had any personal connection to New York (someone correct me here?). But I’ve just found that if you can work in a personal angle to these types of scripts, the story usually ends up better for it.
Genre: Action
Premise: A team of mercenaries head to South America on a mission to overthrow a dictator.
About: Sylvester Stallone’s long-gestating project which he’s been trying to get all the biggest action stars of the 80s and 90s in forever. He supposedly asked Van Damme and Seagal to be in the film and they refused. Willis and Ah-nold were supposed to be two of the main characters, but instead agreed to have cameo roles.
Writers: Sylvester Stallone and David Callaham.
Terrible.
[x] What the fuck did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: That someone who can write one of the best movies ever can also write one of the worst.
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) A man is wrongly convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S. He’s offered his freedom if he can rescue the president’s daughter from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates.
About: This sci-fi actioner is being pitched as “Taken in outer space” but it appears that’s due more to whose involved (Luc Besson and Maggie Grace – both Taken alums) than the actual script itself. I’d probably call this more “Die Hard in space,” due to the contained nature of the story and the somewhat cartoonish aspect of the plot. It’s nice to see Guy Pearce getting some work again (he plays the lead – Miller). He’s one of the most underrated actors out there. This draft of the script was written back when the project was titled, “Section Eight.”
Writers: Luc Besson, James Mather, Stephen St. Leger
Details: 107 pages – 2nd draft, revisions March 2009 (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).
BessonHuge fan of Luc Besson. Still remember seeing The Fifth Element which was YEARS ahead of its time effects wise, and being blown away by the extensive mythology of the world. How different it was. How ambitious it was. And how surprisingly funny it was. It was too weird to ever find the mainstream success Star Wars did, but it’s arguably the second best sci-fi fantasy film ever made outside the Star Wars universe.
Unless I’m mistaken, this is Besson’s first foray back into science-fiction since Element, and that makes it worthy of discussion. However, I was upset to find out that the draft I read was really rough. And I mean rough enough to be mistaken for sandpaper. Take this early dialogue exchange for example, where a character asks what happens with their space suits once they’ve escaped the station: “And what if we get sucked into earth’s gravity?” “It won’t happen – you’re fifty miles outside the Earth’s gravitational pull.” “But what if it does?” “Not that it’s a problem but the suits are precisely designed to withstand a re-entry. They come equipped with chutes.” Hmmm…I wonder if these chutes are going to come into play later?
There’s “on-the-nose” and then there’s “ON-THE-NOSE” and it looks like they were still at the stage where you’re using dialogue to spell out your story for yourself, planning to smooth it out later once everything’s in place. This is how most writers work so it makes sense and it means this will be a more “broad strokes” examination of script. I’m figuring (hoping) it will change a lot in the time being.
Luc Besson likes his heroes tough and simple and Miller is no different. He’s a government agent in the year 2088 who possesses a unique talent for getting into and out of tight places without getting caught. Unfortunately, Miller is convicted of killing his partner on his latest mission and is sentenced to 30 years on Section 8, the space jail that houses the worst criminals in the world.
In the meantime Emile, a journalist and the daughter of the president of the United States, is going up to Section 8 for a little expose on the jail. Seems that they freeze all the prisoners to keep costs and problems down and that there are rumors that this freezing process causes permanent brain damage. Emile is interviewing a few of the inmates to see if she can break a 60 Minutes like story.
Naturally, one of these rapists-murderers she interviews, a degenerate aptly named Hydell, is able to slip out of his handcuffs, pickpocket a gun, and start shooting up the place, which of course ends in the release of all 500 prisoners from their medical-induced slumber. Alex, the smart villain (and Hydell’s brother), emerges as the brains of the operation, and realizes he can use the jail’s workers as bargaining chips to get back to earth.
Lucky for the good guys, Alex doesn’t realize he has the biggest bargaining chip of all right in the room with him…the president’s daughter. For this reason, a few of the president’s advisors come up with a risky plan. Sneak one of their men up into the base, have him find Emilie, and get her out of there. But who are they going to find to pull that off?
I think I have an ide-aaaaaaaa.
Miller accepts the job for a chance at freedom and, in one of the lazier subplots of the story, to save a friend who’s also up there. The rest of the story is pretty straight-forward, with the two running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to escape the prisoners and the jail. Miller and Emilie, predictably, despise each other in that “I hate you but I still want to have sex with you” way, which makes their goal all the tougher, but they suck it up because it’s not like there are a lot of options up here. Unless you like getting raped and murdered by 500 prisoners.
In case you haven’t figured it out, this is basically an extended trippy R-rated version of the “Escape the Death Star” sequence in Star Wars.
Unfortunately, in its current form, the script reads like it was written by an amateur, or at the very least three professionals in a hurry. I mean the characters here are painfully underdeveloped. Miller is a tough guy who’s, well, tough. Hydell is an evil bad guy who’s, well, evil. Alex is a mastermind who’s, well, smart. And every character here communicates in a bravado so macho they make the original cast of Predator sound like a bunch of metrosexuals on a field trip to Bergdorf. For example, there’s a lot of this: “And who are you?” “I’m your fairy fucking godfather.”
Oh boy.
Ironically these were some of the same arguments lobbed at Taken, but a couple of key differences were in play with that film. The connection between the pursuer (Neeson) and the pursued (the daughter) was personal. He was her father, which added a whole emotional component that this doesn’t have. Nobody seems to care about anyone or anything in Lockout but themselves. Taken also did a good job carefully constructing the relationship between father-daughter in the first act. The setup here seems more concerned with a murder-mystery that doesn’t have anything to do with the story (whether Miller really killed his partner or not).
In the end, this is a lazy treatment of a well-tread premise. It has some potential, especially with Besson overseeing it, but it’s going to need some major rewriting, particularly in the character department, to truly stand out. Hopefully all the rewriting since 2009 has taken care of this, since I’d love nothing more than to see another awesome Besson sci-fi flick.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A lot of people are intimidated by the second act. And they should be. It’s scary. I’m scared right now just thinking about it. But to ease the pain, I have a tip for you. It’s called “Escalation Nation.” Use the second act to place obstacles in front of your character’s goal with each obstacle being slightly bigger than the previous. At first all Miller has to do is find Emilie (obstacle) but then he learns that she’s in a room that’s running out of oxygen (bigger obstacle). Alex learns about their plans and sends his baddies after them (bigger obstacle). Alex makes an announcement over the speaker to all the prisoners that Miller and Emilie are trying to escape and to stop them at all costs (bigger obstacle). The escalation of these obstacles will keep the story moving at a brisk pace and since each problem is bigger than the last, we rarely get bored. Of course, this is assuming you’ve already developed characters that we want to root for.
Remember, you can’t spell “characters” without “care.”
No, that last part was not meant to be serious. Shame on you if you thought it was.
Genre: Crime/Thriller/Western
Premise: An ex-boxer on the run for an accidental murder picks up a young woman with a dangerous secret.
About: You may remember Zach Dean from his spec sale I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, Layover. He’s the high school teacher who was on that infamous Jetblue flight with bad landing gear. It seems like a lot of crazy things are happening on Jetblue flights these days. Like, oh, I don’t know, flight attendants GRABBING A BEER AND RUNNING AWAY DOWN THE EMERGENCY SLIDE! I suspect we’ll be talking about the adaptation of that event soon enough, but right now we’re going to discuss Dean’s first spec, Kin, which got him enough attention in Hollywood that he was able to sell his follow-up.
Writer: Zach Dean
Details: 113 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).
When I gave Zach’s previous script, Layover, a positive review, it didn’t go ever very well with you guys. Outside of a few people e-mailing me and saying they liked it (which I never understand – if you have an opinion about the script, add to the discussion by posting in the comments!), the consensus seemed to be that the script was too “workmanlike.” It hit all the beats perfectly, but didn’t have any flair or substance. It was like the perfect technical screenplay and nothing more. I don’t know if I’d go that far. I thought the opening scene was original and the script never quite went where I thought it would, which is always good, but in retrospect I agree that it could’ve flashed some more style.
I’m reviewing Kin because it’s always interesting to read the script that got a screenwriter noticed, particularly if that script doesn’t sell. You get a unique glimpse into the difference between what Hollywood deems “worthy” and what Hollywood deems “worthy of buying.” I also received two e-mails about the script from other readers. One of them said it was the best script he’d read all year, and the other said it was the worst script he’d read all year. Smelling a good screenwriting discussion, I threw it into this week’s pile.
Addison, a handsome southern gentleman with a mean streak, has just robbed a casino with his younger black widow of a sis, Liza. They seem to have gotten away scott-free, with nary a car in pursuit, when all of a sudden their car hits a bad patch of road and spins out, tumbling down an embankment. Addison and Liza live, but when a clueless cop comes to help them and notices the piles of money strewn about, Addison has no choice but to shoot him dead. And just like that, everything’s changed.
Jay Mills, a beaten down ex-boxer, has just been released from jail. Jay took the fall for his corrupt boxing manager, Reuben’s, numerous shady underground dealings. Naturally, the first place he goes after getting out is Reuben’s gym to ask for his share of the money he so dutifully took the fall for. But Reuben doesn’t like people asking him for money and proceeds to beat the shit out of Jay with a bat. Jay’s boxing skills take over, and he’s able to lay a Tyson style skull-cracker on Reuben that inadvertently kills him. Uh-oh. Time to go on the run.
In the meantime, Addison and Liza are trudging through the forest trying to get away when, at a certain point, Addison believes for whatever reason that they have a better chance of living if they split up. He tells Liza to grab some sucker off the road and hitchhike up to Canada, where they’ll meet back up again. Liza reluctantly obliges and the first car that comes by is, guess whose? You guessed it, Jay.
Up until this point, Kin is working pretty well. But as soon as Liza gets in that car, the story loses itself, becoming part Coen-style-carnage-everywhere flick and part gritty love story. The love story actually works on some levels, since both parties are hiding such big secrets from each other. But eventually Jay tells Liza about his broken relationship with his parents, who live a few hours up the road, and Liza gets this idea that they should go spend Thanksgiving with them (which is tomorrow). From that point on, the central story question becomes “Will Jay or won’t Jay go spend Thanksgiving with his parents?”
In the meantime, Addison is stumbling around in the forest and, because he has nothing to do for awhile, engages in this murder spree with a random family he runs into. Eventually, he makes his way up north where he comes across a house in the forest that belongs to….You guessed it, Jay’s family.
I think you’re getting a sense of my central issue with Kin. There are way too many plot contrivances. Addison and Liza crashing the car and having to escape, I can buy, because it’s the first contrivance, the one that sets the story in motion. But then you have Jay accidentally killing someone one hour after he gets out of jail. That’s a bit convenient for the story. Then you have Addison suggesting that they split up and meet in Canada, which makes absolutely no sense, but helps the story go where it needs to go.
Then the first person Liza runs into on the road is Jay. Another convenient plot point. Then when we need to keep the cops from catching up with them, a blizzard roles in. That certainly helps the story. Then, of course, Jay’s parents just happen to be stationed up north, directly on the path they’re already driving. Then of course it just happens to be Thanksgiving, creating a big enough “event” whereby Jay would consider going home. Then of course of all the houses Addison were to run into wandering through the forest, he runs into Jay’s parents.
Now I get that the story is called “Kin” and that there’s this theme of “family” pulling these characters together in some strange cosmic way, but the sheer number of convenient events ruin any sense of reality. At a certain point we just go, “All of these things would never happen like this in a million years.”
That’s not to say everything here is bad. Dean creates gritty memorable characters that are fun to follow. And I like the way he weaves his different storylines together, both here and in Layover. It’s clear that his Coen Brothers influence has given him a strong sense of story.
But until this plot is restructured in a way whereby the audience doesn’t have to buy into so many coincidences, I don’t see it working. Some solid writing here, and I definitely see where everybody else saw potential, but the script needs some work.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This may be a personal pet peeve of mine, but I don’t like it when one character says to another, “So tell me about yourself,” or “So tell me something about yourself.” The reason is, the question is obviously used so the writer can reveal backstory or character information about the character being asked the question. It feels pre-planned, stilted, stale, and always results in a boring overarching answer. It always works better when a character’s backstory is hidden inside the natural flow of the dialogue. Take these two examples…
JANE: So tell me about your life.
FRED: Well I was born in Indiana and when I was ten my sister died of pneumonia. My parents never recovered so we moved west to San Diego…
Versus
JANE (suspicious): You told me you were from San Diego.
FRED: I am.
JANE: Then how come your car has Indiana plates?
FRED (doesn’t answer)
JANE: We gonna be friends or are you going to keep lying to me?
(beat)
FRED: That’s where I grew up.
(conversation continues while Fred reluctantly explains why he left Indiana)
Hey, it ain’t going to win dialogue of the year but you see how much more interesting the second one is than the first? Always try to reveal character through the natural flow of dialogue. You don’t want to sound like your characters are interviewing each other (I see a lot of this in love stories/romantic comedies).
