Genre: Comedy
Premise: A womanizing man wakes up without his penis, only to learn that it’s taken human form and is determined to make his life miserable.
About: Deadline Hollywood’s already done the dirty work so I’ll let Miss Finke summarize it for you. “Morgan Creek bought Step Dawg, a comic script by Jeff Tetreault about a 30-ish man who returns home to discover that his single mom plans to marry his former high school stoner best friend. WME sold the script with Energy Entertainment. It’s the second script, but first sale for Tetreault. His first effort was widely admired, but didn’t sell because of obvious complications. Called Me and My Penis, the comedy focused on a womanizing man who awakens to discover his penis has gone AWOL and refuses to return until he reforms his callous ways. Tetreault found a more deal-friendly premise in Step Dawg.” An added bonus is that you can read Tetreault’s old blog before he hit it big.
Writer: Jeff Tetreault
Details: 108 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. 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).

There are those of you who are likely staring at your computer right now saying, “Is this what it’s come to? A script about a man who loses his penis?” To those people I say “you bet your ass.” On the outside, this looks like a juvenile attempt at shoveling shit to the lowest common denominator. And that’s because it is! However, Me and My Penis shovels shit in a thought provoking way. As hard as it is to believe, this is a pretty good script.

The introduction of your hero is so important. You should use that first scene to tell us exactly who he (or she) is. If you put your protag in a boring talky scene or a general “set up the story” scene, we don’t get the information we need about them. This leaves us confused about their identity and the longer we’re confused about who your main character is, the less involving your story is going to be.

Out of all the genres out there, the easiest one to add this scene into is the comedy, so there’s really no excuse not to do it. Rich Johnson is a selfish asshole who fucks as many women as he can. So how do we meet him? We meet him having nasty sex with a woman when the door bursts open revealing his girlfriend and Joey Greco. Yes, Joey Greco from Cheaters. The scene is funny, it’s exciting, but most importantly, it tells us *through action* who our main character is.

Determined to learn from his mistakes, Rich hops into another relationship with Jamie Woo, an Asian hottie, vowing to change his ways and never cheat again. But when he accidentally crashes into a MILF (literally – his car crashes into hers) one thing leads to another and the express train to Blowjobville follows. Jamie, the first girl he’s ever connected with on a deeper level, is horrified and cuts the relationship cord.

In a moment of weakness, Rich laments that he wishes he never had a penis.

Bad. Move.

The next day Rich wakes up without his penis, which is followed by a phone call…FROM HIS PENIS. His penis is in a dark alley and is scared. So Rich heads into town to pick up his penis, only to find out that his penis has taken human form. What. The. Hell?? Not only that, but his penis is even more suave, even better looking, and even cooler than he is!

Forced to allow his penis to move in with him, Rich begins to see firsthand just how much trouble his penis is. His penis starts bringing hookers to the apartment, he starts fucking anything that walks, he’s rude, he’s disrespectful. He’s kinda like Rich times a thousand. I’m not going to tell you that this is deep meaningful multi-layered literature or anything crazy like that, but seeing the physical manifestation of just how much trouble your penis gets you into is nicely played.

Eventually Rich meets Lindsay, a sweet girl who he actually starts to like. Complications arise when intercourse approaches and, of course, Rich can’t do anything about it. In the meantime, for reasons that are a little unclear to me, Rich’s Penis gets really pissed off at Rich and actually wants to kill him. But when he finds out Rich likes Lindsay, he does the next best thing, which is to poach her away. His plan is to have the ultimate sex-a-thon smorgasborg with Lindsay, thereby destroying Rich’s world and, I don’t know, hope he commits suicide afterward or something.

Will Rich get his penis back? Does he want his penis back? Those are the big questions.

So look, here’s the thing. There’s nothing great about this script. I giggled here and there, had a few laughs, and thought the execution was adequate. However that’s not what made this script so memorable. What I noticed right away about Me and My Penis was that it took chances. And that alone puts it ahead of 90% of the comedies out there.

The screenplays that fall by the wayside – the ones that the readers forget as soon as they put them down – are the ones that make obvious choices. Obvious is boring. Now you may think a guy’s penis disappearing then coming back in the form of a human is stupid, but as a reader, I’ve never seen that before. I have no idea where that script is going. So I perk up and start paying attention (assuming it’s capably written of course). It’s like walking into a new city. It’s new, it’s different. You want to explore it.

But what it really tells me is that Tetreault is *trying*. He’s not taking the easy route. He’s challenging himself with an idea that is by no means easy to pull off (you’re basically building a 100 minute story around a 5 minute joke).

And I liked that Tetreault continued to try different things throughout the script. In the scene where he bumps into the MILF, for example, a superimposed flaccid penis appears at the bottom of the screen. As the MILF’s responses to Rich’s questions range from disgusting to hot, the penis erection goes either up or down. Sophomoric? Maybe. Different? Definitely.

One of the big mistakes the script makes though – and one I’m frankly tired of seeing in comedies – is just how little effort is put into the supporting characters. Rich has a friend, Josh, who could have easily been named “Default Best Friend Character,” he was so bland. And you could kind of tell Tetreault didn’t know what to do with him. He wasn’t even funny.

This reminded me, you can’t make someone funny until you understand who they are. If they’re just some cardboard cut-out with no background that you try to force jokes out of, the reader senses that. But if he has some kind of identity, (i.e. “In a Controlling Relationship Guy,” where his girlfriend always tells him what to do) now you have somewhere to go with the character and now the jokes have a base to emerge from. I had no sense of who Josh was, and therefore a lot of the scenes between him and Rich fell flat. So give your secondary characters goals, give them flaws, give them backstory, give them an *identity*. That’s how you build a character up and make them come alive.

Me and My Penis was risky and different and a script that isn’t easy to forget. The execution could use some work and the plot could use some meat but overall, I definitely see why this got so much attention.

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

What I learned: The “superimposed” penis scene got me thinking. It would’ve been so easy to take the obvious route with that scene. The two get into a fender bender, they step out of their cars to deal with it, she seduces him, they go have sex. But the superimposed penis says that Tetreault asked himself, “How can I make this different?” And it’s a question you should be asking yourself whenever you’re writing. Go through all your scenes and ask yourself that question. “How can I make this different?” Not every scene is going to be unique. But if you can add something extra or fresh to a dozen scenes, your script will be way better for it. Never ever settle for obvious. It’s the death knell for screenplays.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A down-on-his-luck architect hired to build a skyscraper in Dubai learns that he’s actually a pawn in a much larger game.
About: The Architect was making waves in Hollywood way back at the beginning of the year. Recently, it found its buyer in RKO. The script has been presented as a mash-up between the Hitchcock classic, North By Northwest, and the Liam Neeson thrill ride, Taken.
Writer: Craig Stiles
Details: 109 pages – February 2010 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time of the film’s release. 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).

Out with the old, back in with the new. The Architect sold to RKO Pictures a month ago but before I get into my review, can I just ask a question? Didn’t RKO stop making movies in 1959? Did the ghost of Orson Welles pop out of the ground a la Thriller and start singing: “It’s close to miiiiid-nite. Time for me to restart a studio-oooo.” I mean what’s the product placement going to be like in this film? Nehi grape soda and S and H Green Stamps?

Oh man, a long weekend it’s been indeed!

So Mitch Avery is an architect. Unfortunately, his company doesn’t appreciate his awesome architectural abilities. On the day he picks out the gigantic ring that he’ll sling around the future ball and chain, Nick gets word that his big job, the one that’s essentially paying for this ring, has been ixnayed. All of a sudden this carefully orchestrated career, the one he’s been piecing together since he decided to become an architect, is crumbling right before his eyes. Brooklyn Bridge here we come.

Well lucky for Mitch, someone else does appreciate his vision. A distinguished British gentleman in his 50s named Walsh remembers a building Mitch entered in a high-profile competition 5 years ago. The building lost, but Walsh never forgot Mitch’s style, a style he believes was ahead of its time. Walsh runs the UK branch of one of the largest architectural firms in the world and he wants Mitch to jump ship to his company.

The reward? A brand new hulking skyscraper job in the new gem of the Middle East, Dubai. There’s one caveat. Mitch must convince a wealthy Sheikh to pony up 500 million dollars to start the thing. It’s a risky proposition but there’s something Mitch likes about this Walsh guy – something trustworthy about him. So after getting his fiancé, Carlie, to quit her job, the two fly over and prepare for the biggest meeting of their lives – one that makes these LeBron sit-downs look like drill team tryouts.

But things start going wrong immediately. Upon walking into his hotel, a boy SNATCHES his laptop – the laptop he’s giving his presentation on, and darts off — It turns out to be a minor inconvenience because he has the presentation backed up, but it’s an omen for more bad things to come.

The next day, Mitch is inside the conference room staring down a small group of wealthy men, including the Sheikh himself. Mitch begins his presentation, which seems to be going well. But then a series of slides mysteriously come up empty. He’s able to improvise through it but notices the concerned looks on everybody’s faces. It’s not a look of embarrassment, but rather a look of grave concern. As if this was a carefully acted out play and one of the actors had forgotten his lines.

The next day Mitch calls Walsh to check on the status of his pitch…but no one answers. Mitch goes back to the presentation building…but no one’s there. In fact, the entire floor’s been cleared out! Mitch calls the architecture company that hired him. They’ve never heard of Walsh. He runs back to his hotel room. It’s been ransacked. There’s no worse feeling than knowing you’ve been had. And boy has Mitch been had.

The shitiness continues. Mitch’s fiancé, Carlie, gets kidnapped by the men, who aren’t giving her back until they get what they want. The question is, what do they want?? Mitch isn’t sure but figures that it has something to do with that computer, a computer that’s probably in a random dark room somewhere in the city of Dubai. So Mitch goes on a mission to find the computer while these men go on a mission to find him.

Along the way he meets another team of people who claim to be playing for his team. But after you get duped, you’re suspicious of everyone. Unfortunately Mitch has to trust someone because the police and even his own government won’t give him the time of day. Survive. Save Carlie. Survive. Get the hell out this godforsaken country. In that order. Can Mitch do it?

I like “stuck in a strange land” thrillers because they already carry a wealth of built-in conflict. When you go to a strange country, you don’t know the geography, you don’t speak the language, you don’t know the people, you don’t know the police system. If something truly bad were to happen, you’d be at a severe disadvantage. I had this friend who went to South Africa and was held at gun point and robbed. The police refused to do anything about it. All he talked about was how helpless and trapped he felt and how quickly he wanted to get out of that country. That “trapped” feeling is conveyed well here in The Architect. So right away I was enjoying myself.

I also dug the middle portion of the script, when Mitch is shipped back to America against his will by a group of Americans who inform him that everything he believes happened was imagined. He never got this job. He never even met Carlie. All of that was a figment of his rapidly declining state of mind. As we’re grasping for straws and trying to make sense of this madness, the script is hitting on all cylinders and we’re totally engrossed in the story. I was marbles in.

But I had a few problems with The Architect as well. First, the base mechanics of the plot were confusing at times. For example, the laptop-stealing was suspicious enough that I believed the bad guys were responsible. But if that’s the case, then the bad guys had already gotten what they wanted. Why go through the façade of the presentation the next day if they already had the info?

A big deal was also made out of the missing files in the presentation. Yet I couldn’t grasp what that meant. Were those files the files that the bad guys needed? Is that why they went after Mitch later? And how was it that only those particular files were not backed up but the rest of the presentation was? And why would they need the files if they’d already stolen the laptop that had the files in the first place? Unless, of course, the person who stole the laptop was indeed a completely random third party, in which case, isn’t that a bit of a coincidence? Eventually, that’s the explanation I went with because it’s the explanation that made the most sense. But the confusion there definitely affected my enjoyment.

I also wanted the love story to be better. I never felt like I knew Carlie (I only knew who she was in relation to Mitch – I didn’t feel like she was her own person). In the end, their love becomes a pretty significant part of the story, so you really needed to feel that bond and that electricity between them. Because Carlie was such a mystery to me, I didn’t feel that.

And while I think The Architect did a solid job working within the boundaries of the genre, I think we’ve reached a point where a new approach is needed for these paranoid thriller scripts. They all seem to follow the: everything’s great, then something bad happens, they question what’s real and what isn’t, then the last 60 pages are complete on-the-run chaos. That’s one of the reasons I liked the spec “Umbra,” so much, despite its catastrophically lousy ending. It had a very unique take on the genre, telling the story from a single point of view, and that was enough to give the genre a fresh feel.

The ingredients are here. And the similarities to Hitchcock’s “North By Northwest” are fun to admire. I just get the feeling that this isn’t where it needs to be yet. So we’ll hope that future drafts clear up the storyline and explore the relationship more. I also wouldn’t mind more of that crazy “what the hell is going on” middle, which I thought Stiles did an excellent job with. Some of you will enjoy this, but it wasn’t there yet for me.

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

What I learned: There was one missed opportunity here. I’m a big believer that your protagonist’s unique identity should help him at some point in the film. So here you have an architect, someone adept at angles and math and building construction and physics – that’s gotta come into play at some point. He needs to be trapped in a situation (a unique building or room) where it looks like he’s screwed, and the very thing that got him into this mess (being an architect) is what gets him out. So in a movie like The Fugitive, Richard Kimble being a doctor allows him to go into a hospital, stitch himself up, and get the medical records of the one-armed man (there are actually several other places where it helps him as well). These scenes always work because of how clever they come off. And the audience always feels like they’re outsmarting the elements along with the hero.

July 4th weekend is over. Well, sorta. Only America can figure out a way to make July 5th the official July 4th holiday, so I guess the holiday weekend will be over tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s Roger, who I hear had a wonderful weekend experience. I tried to get details but details were in short supply. I thought I heard something about multiple women but you’ll have to ask him at the end of his review for The Wettest County.

Genre: Period Crime Drama
Premise: The story of a moonshine gang operating in the bootlegging capital of America –- Franklin County, West Virginia –- during Prohibition.
About: The latest collaboration between The Proposition creators, Nick Cave and director, John Hillcoat (The Road). “The Wettest County” has recently been re-titled to “The Promised Land”, and Ryan Gosling, Shia LaBeouf and Amy Adams are attached to star. For those of you that don’t listen to good music, Nick Cave is the frontman for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (also The Birthday Party) and a pretty darn good novelist to boot (And the Ass Saw the Angel and The Death of Bunny Munro).
Writers: Nick Cave, based on the book by Matt Bondurant

I don’t know if I’m the best person to review a screenplay written by Nick Cave. I have a signed copy of The Death of Bunny Munro (a gift from Professor Stark), I love The Proposition and my idea of romance is the murder ballad Henry Lee performed by Cave and his duet partner, Polly Jean Harvey. I even gleefully enjoy his Michael Moorcock Eternal Champion rendition of Maximus in his quizzical (and rejected) Gladiator sequel script. So I suppose this makes me a Nick Cave apologist in the film world, but I’ll fight the urge to be blindly generous in this review of his adaptation of Matt Bondurant’s novel, The Wettest County in the World.

So this is the tale of the bootlegging Bondurant brothers?

Yep. Franklin County, West Virginia is pretty much the capital of illegal liquor distribution in the crime wave-laden Prohibition era, and the brothers Bondurant are the criminals painted as heroes in this deliciously violent crime drama.

In an opening sequence I love, we meet Jack, Howard and Forrest in a pig enclosure when they are children. Jack is the youngest of the trio, and he is about to kill for the first time. Forrest, the eldest, and Howard, the brute middle-child, already seem well-versed in the realm of delivering death, and they expectantly watch their brother walk up to a sow and shoot it in the eye. But, pigs can be hard to kill, and after shooting it again point-blank, Jack cries in frustration when it doesn’t die. But his brothers are there to slit its throat and we learn the difference between Jack and them, “Blood and violence? My brothers had a talent for it. A gift. They were susceptible to its needs. Me, well, I guess my talents lay elsewhere.”

We span several years, the Spanish Lady Flu and a World War, and after the boys survive all this, people in Franklin County whisper that these boys are immune to death. Immortal. The flu almost took Forrest, and in what of the most original character details I’ve ever seen in a screenplay, we learn that it’s left him “haunted and bent crooked and in certain lights his skin looked strange and blue.” Howard returned from war a changed man, and he now deals with the horrors he saw with drink and a bit of the old ultraviolence.

Jack is still the baby of the bunch, making rotskull with his friend Cricket (a boy deformed by rickets), a whiskey brew possibly concocted out of swampwater and tadpoles while his brothers Forrest and Howard supply a radical corn whiskey dubbed White Lightning to all the thirsty folk in Franklin County.

Forrest runs The Blackwater Station diner on the county-line, and he uses the locale to sell White Lightning (drinking it distorts sound, and the imbibers just about go deaf to the resulting sensation of sheet metal being ripped in two) to travelers passing in and out of the way-station. Howard acts as both delivery man and enforcer, even welcomed at the Sheriff’s Office.

Jack is enchanted with the lifestyle of city gangsters like Floyd Banner, stylishly dressed men brimming with ambition and a get-shit-done attitude. While Forrest is content to run his business quietly, not so much concerned with expansion but with self-preservation, Jack is stricken with a vision that will turn Forrest and Howard’s bootlegging operation into an empire. The only problem is that Jack is not a man of violence, and his brothers want to protect him. Their way of protecting him is not letting him into the family business.

The Bondurants then become something of legend when Forrest survives an attack by two city gangsters, apparently walking twelve miles in the snow with a horribly gashed throat to the local hospital. These guys entered his place of business and threatened his lady friend, Maggie, with violence. It’s a bit of a mystery to how he survives the ordeal (which plays out wonderfully in the third act), but it’s the catalyst for a tender love story that is a nice parallel to all the bloodshed in the main story.

Of course, all this attention makes them the target for Carter Lee, the Commonwealth’s new corrupt attorney who wants to manage all the bootleggers and provide them safe passage in return for a fee.

Lemme guess. Forrest isn’t interested in this business partnership?

Not at all.

Things get interesting when Carter Lee’s right hand man, Charley Rakes, a jackal-like evil Deputy, arrives in Franklin County to challenge the Bondurant brothers and their legendary hard-boiled status. Not only does Rakes threaten Maggie, he decides to go after the weak link in the chain.

He goes after Jack first.

What’s interesting is that our protagonists are anti-heroes, and not necessarily likeable ones at that. But when an evil fucker like Rakes arrives on the scene, we instantly choose a side, and it ain’t with Rakes. How bad is this guy? Well, it’s easy to hate a man who tortures a boy with rickets. And it’s easy to hate a man who does what he does to Jack.

Jack’s newly mangled face sends a clear message to Forrest and Howard.

They’re next.

So, it then becomes a battle of wills between the Carter Lee, the evil Deputy Rakes, and the Bondurant brothers. While all the other bootleggers are integrating themselves into this new system, the Bondurants make a stand to challenge this system.

And this is when they allow Jack to become a blockader, which is pretty much a runner between county-lines of their liquor supply. This makes him vulnerable to bandits, corrupt cops and city gangsters like Floyd Banner and his syndicate, The Midnight Coal Company.

How does it end?

Well, accordingly, it’s pretty much a slow build-up to bloodshed between the lawmen of Franklin County and the Bondurant brothers. I’m not sure what the point is, other than that it’s taking a stubborn stand for your own volition.

However, the script seems to be more of a character study than a caper, so it has a relaxed pace. There are lots of scenes that are not immediate to the plot, but more to the atmosphere and tone of the story. I particularly enjoyed Jack’s courting of the local Mennonite preacher’s daughter, Bertha Minnix, and the scenes involving Cricket and his harebrained bootlegging schemes.

Out of curiosity, I want to see how “The Wettest County” measures up to Carson’s 13 Qualities of a Great Script:

1)AN ORIGINAL AND EXCITING CONCEPT – To be honest, I wasn’t so much as interested in the logline as I was in the fact that Nick Cave was attached as a writer. Bootleggers? I don’t know if it’s across-the-board exciting, but in the historical context of Prohibition (resulting in the greatest crime wave in American history) it’s definitely interesting. Especially when you learn that the setting, Franklin County, manufactured more illegal liquor than anywhere else in the United States. Factor in that the Bondurant brothers were the characters at the center of this conflict, and then, yeah, it seems pretty exciting.

2)A MAIN CHARACTER WHO WANTS SOMETHING (AKA “A GOAL”) – The Bondurants are all interested in money. But how much and what they’ll do to achieve it is the center of the conflict. Jack wants a lot of money, and more importantly, he wants a rich lifestyle; Forrest just wants to run a business. Howard is the man stuck in the middle.

3)A MAIN CHARACTER WE WANT TO ROOT FOR – Frankly, Jack’s greed overpowered his need to be accepted by his brothers, and I found him thin. However, I respected and rooted for his older brother, Forrest, because he was a man of principle and honor. An eerie blue man who verily survived a beheading and can fight with iron knuckles but is shy around women? I’m rooting for him, and I only root for Jack because he’s related to this man.

4)GET TO YOUR STORY QUICKLY – On page 12 we learn that Jack wants in on Forrest and Howard’s business. Okay, that’s the main story. If you want more conflict, between pages 32 and 40 we learn that Carter Lee wants to control the flow of the Bondurant’s business, and we are introduced to the villain, Charley Rakes.

5)STAY UNDER 110 PAGES – Nope. This is 133 pages. For a screenplay, it’s very prosaic. Kiss of death if the screenwriter isn’t gifted of language, but Cave is, so it’s a rich, even a sensual read.

6)CONFLICT – A young brother trying to break into the family business when the elder brother is trying to keep him out. Greed versus contentment. Bootleggers versus corrupt law men who want a cut of their business. And of course, the conflict always seems about money when for the men involved, it’s always about something else: Principle versus precedent. Lots of conflict.

7)OBSTACLES – Forrest is an obstacle to Jack. Jack is an obstacle to Forrest. Rakes and Carter Lee are obstacles to the Bondurant brothers. The Mennonite preacher is an obstacle to Jack and his desire to court his daughter. And, the nature of the Bondurant business is illegal so they have to go out of their way to protect themselves.

8)SURPRISE – There’s lots of foreshadowing in this thing, so I would say I wasn’t surprised a ton. However, I couldn’t predict the resolution and the most tension-laden and surprising sequence for me was Jack and Cricket’s first blockading run.

9)TICKING TIME BOMB – We don’t really get a concrete ticking clock until page 79, when the brothers decide they have to move their supply across the county line or Rakes is going to destroy it all. As a result, this thing has a pretty leisurely place. The focus isn’t so much on the demands of the plot, but the character moments. This is either the script’s strength or weakness.

10)STAKES – Everyone’s life is on the line. What starts out as about money becomes something else for Forrest and Rakes. But I get the sense that this isn’t the case with Jack, almost like he peaks with ambition and greed, and it doesn’t go any deeper with him. I was a bit puzzled by why these guys were so obsessed and dogged about bootlegging.

11)HEART – Forrest is the only guy that seems interested in something other than money. Sure, Jack courts Bertha Minnix, but he seems primarily interested in showing off his money to her.

12)A GREAT ENDING – There’s a sentimental and poignant ending, but it doesn’t feel like it’s completely earned. Forrest and Maggie’s story is the most moving, and it seems like something out of a murder ballad.

13)THE X-FACTOR – The Nick Cave factor. The original material of Matt Bondurant’s novel seems perfectly coupled with Cave’s unique voice for the bizarre, the Biblical, the violent, the lovesick and the mad. His gift of mythic and lyrical storytelling shines in this screenplay.

“The Wettest County” is an odd script. It’s a fascinating read, especially if you’re a fan of Cave and Southern Gothic literature. An initial impression tells me it eschews many of the rules and beats you’ll find in most specs. The protagonists aren’t particularly “likeable” or “sympathetic”. Instead they are intriguing and enigmatic. Even if I don’t always like them, I still want to know their story. A page turner that moves at a leisurely meditative pace, promising a cinematic translation of the prosaic imagery and violence found in a Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy novel.

If I had to compare the idea of this script and its vision as a finished film by John Hillcoat to another movie, I would point to Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I can imagine a film that will seem inscrutable to some, but a sublime experience to others.

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

What I learned: Omens. A sign in the natural world signifying the advent of change. Their mere existence in a story suggests that maybe something supernatural or beyond a character’s control is at work. As a narrative device, an omen’s purpose is to create foreshadowing, tension and dread. As a foreshadowing tool, they can also be used to subvert and control reader expectation, or bait and switch an audience. Screenwriters don’t seem to use them as much as a novelist or playwright, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work in a screenplay. “The Wettest County” (and Karl Gajdusek’s “Pandora”) doesn’t shy away from omens. Two are so startling and weird I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shake the imagery from my head. One is of Jack and Howard trying to remove a dead calf from a suffering cow. They have to saw the legs off the calf in order to remove the corpse, and eventually the cow dies and we discover that this dead calf has six fucking legs. It’s grotesque, and it all takes place during a conversation about the villain, Charley Rakes. The other omen is a dog that has frozen to death, standing up, outside of its pen because the other dogs didn’t let it inside the kennel. When Jack describes its death, he might as well be describing himself and his brothers, “Those dogs didn’t know better. It’s just plain bad luck.”

It’s Unconventional Week here at Scriptshadow, and here’s a reminder of what that’s about.

Every script, like a figure skating routine, has a degree of difficulty to it. The closer you stay to basic dramatic structure, the lower the degree of difficulty is. So the most basic dramatic story, the easiest degree of difficulty, is the standard: Character wants something badly and he tries to get it. “Taken” is the ideal example. Liam Neeson wants to save his daughter. Or if you want to go classic, Indiana Jones wants to find the Ark of The Covenant. Rocky wants to fight Apollo Creed. Simple, but still powerful.

Each element you add or variable you change increases the degree of difficulty and requires the requisite amount of skill to pull off. If a character does not have a clear cut goal, such as Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate, that increases the degree of difficulty. If there are three protagonists instead of one, such as in L.A. Confidential, that increases the degree of difficulty. If you’re telling a story in reverse such as Memento or jumping backwards and forwards in time such as in Slumdog Millionaire, these things increase the degree of difficulty.

The movies/scripts I’m reviewing this week all have high degrees of difficulty. I’m going to break down how these stories deviate from the basic formula yet still manage to work. Monday, Roger reviewed Kick-Ass. Tuesday, I reviewed Star Wars. Wednesday was The Shawshank Redemption. Yesterday was Forrest Gump. And today is American Beauty.

Genre: Drama – Coming-of-Age
Premise: Lester Burnham experiences a mid-life crisis after he’s fired from his job, which ends up triggering chaos in his suburban neighborhood.
About: Was widely considered one of the best spec screenplays of the last 20 years. But the movie was always going to be a hard sell due to its non-high concept nature. American Beauty went on to become a surprise hit, winning a Best Picture Oscar, as well as 4 other Oscars, including one for Kevin Spacey.
Writer: Alan Ball

Degree of difficulty – 4.5 out of 5

Some of you have suggested that I ditch this mainstream trash and take on movies that are REALLY unconventional. For example, explain why a film like Mulholland Drive works. Well, it’s pretty simple. I *don’t* think Mulholland Drive works. So I’d do a pretty lousy job convincing others of it. I’ve always struggled with Lynch’s appeal. The randomness of his stories always confuses me. So I ask you Lynch-ians, what is the appeal of Lynch’s films? I ask that in all sincerity. I want to know.

Today I’ll be hitching a ride on Kevin Spacey’s train – whatever that means – and reviewing one of the great movies of the last decade – American Beauty. Recently, I watched this movie with a friend who’d never seen it before. I was like, “How could you not have seen American Beauty? It’s awesome.” And she was like, “I don’t know. I just haven’t.” So I forced her to sit down and watch it, and halfway through she turned to me with this frustrated expression and said, “This is just like Desperate Housewives.”

At first I was angry that she wasn’t appreciating the genius of this movie. But I was also trying to figure out if she knew American Beauty came out a decade before Desperate Housewives, and how this would affect our friendship if she didn’t. But after stepping back and thinking about her comment, I realized just how much American Beauty influenced movies and television. It really inspired a lot of copycats, and for that reason, it can never play as original as it did back in 1999. But it’s still awesome, and it still had no business being as good as it was. You want to talk about degree of difficulty, let’s talk about American Beauty.

American Beauty does something I tell new writers never to do: Follow a bunch of characters instead of following just one. It’s okay to follow other characters when they’re around your character, but to jump back and forth between numerous characters and their individual storylines is basically the same as having multiple protagonists. So instead of having to create only one character compelling enough to carry a movie, you have to create six. In addition to that, multiple characters screw up your act breaks and overall structure. You’re essentially having to create multiple three-act stories within a three-act story, and I’m not even going to get in to how hard that is. So yeah, you’re kinda screwed right off the bat.

Also, like a lot of movies this week, American Beauty doesn’t have a very compelling story. In fact, if I described it to you beforehand, you’d probably get bored within 20 seconds. “Well see it’s about this guy. And he like, gets fired. And then he decides to live his life to the fullest. But see, we also watch his family too. And his daughter wants new breasts. And his wife totally hates him. Oh, and the next door neighbors are this military dad and his pot-smoking son…” It just sounds like a slightly exaggerated version of what goes on in everybody’s neighborhood. Why would anyone want to watch that for two hours?

Finally, Lester is an unsympathetic character. He basically says “fuck off” to anyone who doesn’t want to live by his new rules. On top of that, he tries to fuck his high school daughter’s best friend! Let me repeat that. Our 45 year old protagonist is trying to have sex with a 17 year old High School girl. Conrad Hall, the cinematographer on the film, was so concerned about this that he almost didn’t take the job.

Too many characters: check. Weak story: Check. Despicable protagonist: Check. Why the hell did this work?

Why it works:

Ball was smart. He knew that if he followed a bunch of different characters for an extended period of time without a point, we’d get bored. He needed a connective thread – something to bring all these storylines together. He created it in Lester’s death. Ball tells us in the beginning of the movie that in one year, Lester Burnham will be dead. You don’t think much of it at the time, but later you realize that that one sentence turns the movie into a Whodunnit. It’s by no means the dominant focus of the movie, but it gives the movie purpose. I read a lot of these screenplays where writers don’t use that device and they’re almost always bad. In fact, Mark Forster has one of these movies in development called “Disconnect,” (about how we’re all disconnected because of technology). He doesn’t use this device and as a result, the script wanders all over the place.

Next, Ball adds humor. American Beauty deals with some serious ass subject matter. Stalking, death, murder, physical abuse. But the movie is fucking FUNNY. And we’re only able to feel the pain because we’re allowed to laugh. The 7th line of the movie is “Look at me, jerking off in the shower.” Contrast this with another Mendes movie, Revolutionary Road, which had a lot of similarities to American Beauty, but didn’t have a single joke in it. Despite having two of the biggest stars in the world to sell the movie, it bombed. Coincidence? Not thinking so. American Beauty understands that if you ratchet up the melodrama 100% of the time, the audience will turn on you. Make’em laugh and they’ll go as deep as you dare to take them.

Scandalous. A little scandal goes a long way. Old guy with an underage girl? That’s controversial. Controversy intrigues people. It gets people talking. But what Ball managed to do with this storyline was make you understand why our hero did it. This wasn’t about nailing an underage girl. This was about Lester trying to reconnect with his youth. By getting the young girl, it was the physical manifestation of that goal. Also, Ball did a really smart thing by having Mena Suarvi engage in the pursuit. If she would have been some innocent doe-eyed teenager, Lester would’ve looked like a predator. Because she eggs him on, the relationship doesn’t seem nearly as dirty as it could’ve been.

Finally, what I loved most about American Beauty is that I never knew what was coming next. As a writer, it’s your job to surprise the unsurprisable. The audience has seen everything. The readers have read everything. So safe boring choices aren’t going to cut it. Yet, safe boring choices is what I see 99% of the time. American Beauty has its 40 year old protag befriending his 17 year old pot-selling neighbor who’s dating his daughter. It has his wife fucking her real estate rival. It has 5 minute scenes with bags blowing in the wind. It has military closet homosexuals who collect Nazi dinnerware. I can’t remember a movie that consistently surprised me as much as this one. I just never knew where it was going to go. It shows what can happen when you test yourself as a writer and never go with the obvious choice. That’s something we all need to do more of.

Let me finish with this. I’m of the belief that what you have in the script is what you get in the movie. I don’t believe you can do that much to make a script better than it is. Sure you can do a few flashy things here and there, but in the end, it’s about the emotion, and that comes way before a frame of film is ever shot . However, I will concede this belief in one area: the score. A great score can elevate a movie beyond the script. And American Beauty did that. I don’t think without that score that the movie is as good as it is.

Anyway, great movie. Why do you think it worked?

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

What I learned: The power of a framing device. If your screenplay has little to no plot, look to build a framing device around it. For example, Cameron easily could’ve made Titanic about two people falling in love on a boat, but he knew there wasn’t enough story to that. So he framed that love story inside a present-day search for a jewel. Now the entire movie had purpose, as there was a point to telling this love story. The same thing happens here. We aren’t just jumping in and out of people’s lives randomly. We’re trying to figure out who’s going to kill Lester.

It’s Unconventional Week here at Scriptshadow, and here’s a reminder of what that’s about. 

Degree of Difficulty – 5 (out of 5)

Yes! I love talking about Forrest Gump. It’s one of those divisive movies that always gets the opinions flowing. People either love it or hate it. I think it’s a great movie, but I understand where the non-likers are coming from. Let’s face it. It’s a smarmy feel good star vehicle that wants you to love it a little too much. But here’s the difference between Forrest Gump and all the other also-rans jockeying for that blatant heartstring tug-a-thon (like “The Blind Side” for instance). Forrest Gump is DIFFERENT. It’s unlike any movie you’ve ever seen and unlike any movie you’re ever going to see. This isn’t some by-the-numbers bullshit. It’s genuinely original. For that reason alone, it’s worthy of discussion.

Let’s start off with the span of time the movie takes place in. Movies are really good at dealing with contained time periods. Why? Because contained time periods provide immediacy to the story. Characters are forced to face their issues and achieve their goals right away and that makes the story move. This is why a lot of films take place within a few days or a few weeks. Once you start spanning months and years and decades, you lose that inherent momentum, and you’re forced to figure out ways to replace it (which isn’t easy!). Forrest Gump takes place over something like 40 years. Not looking good.

But that isn’t the biggest problem for Gump by a long shot. What truly makes the success of this movie baffling is that its main character is the single most passive mainstream protagonist in the history of film. Forrest Gump doesn’t initiate ANY-thing in this movie. He literally stumbles around from amazing situation to amazing situation like a member of the Jersey Shore cast. All of Forrest Gump’s decisions are orchestrated by someone else. People tell Forrest to jump and he says “how high?”. A main character who doesn’t drive the story? You’ve written yourself into Trouble Town. Next train leads to Screwedville in five minutes.

Another issue is, just like The Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump has as much plot as an episode of Dora The Explorer (note: I’ve never actually seen Dora The Explorer but I’m guessing there’s not a lot of plot in it). There’s no overarching goal for the protagonist. There’s no drive. No first act, second act, or third act (although I’ve seen people try to break this into acts – it’s never been convincing). Instead, the film plays out like a series of vignettes – or better yet, a sitcom episode. Tom Hanks is thrown into a crazy situation. Something funny happens. Repeat. It’s a very compartmentalized approach to the story. Why these disconnected misadventures worked was a mystery to me for a long time. But I think I finally figured it out.

Why it works:

It came to me like a flash of light. I hadn’t seen Forrest Gump in forever but there the answer to my question was. Forrest Gump wasn’t a movie. It was a documentary. Documentaries don’t have first act breaks and mid-points and character arcs. They simply follow a person’s life and whatever happens to that person happens. All the documentary has to do is capture it. Now as all documentarians know, documentaries are made or broken by their subject. Without a compelling subject, you don’t have a documentary. And that’s why this film worked. Forrest Gump is one of the most fascinating characters we’ve ever seen. He’s “retarded,” yet doesn’t wallow in it. He does extraordinary things, yet is humble about it. His childlike enthusiasm appeals to the kid in all of us. His situation is ironic (he’s extremely successful yet has the intelligence of a 6th grader). This man has a ton going on underneath the hood.

But the characteristic that most ensures the character’s success is that Forrest Gump is the ultimate UNDERDOG. I cannot make this clear enough. EVERYBODY LOVES AN UNDERDOG. When someone is picked on, looked down upon, is a longshot, we love to root for them. And Forrest Gump is the biggest underdog of them all. He’s physically handicapped (as a child). He’s mentally handicapped (as a child and an adult). Yet he achieves things the rest of us could only dream of. It’s entertaining as hell to watch, and it’s impossible not to feel good for the guy when it happens.

Another key component here is the detail given to the supporting characters, particularly Lieutenant Dan. Remember, some protagonists don’t arc. The story just isn’t conducive to them transforming. That happens here in Gump. But if that’s the case, you should probably have one of your supporting characters fill that role, because the audience wants to see somebody learn something by the end of the film (or become a better person in some capacity). Roth recognized that, which is why he has the eternally cynical character of Lieutenant Dan learn the gift of life over the course of the story.

Speaking of supporting characters, Roth also needed some kind of thread to hold the story together. The plot was so wacky, so disconnected, that had he not added a connective thread, it would’ve come off as a series of comedy skits. He needed a constant. And that’s where Jenny came in.

What’s so cool about the Jenny relationship is that everything goes so well for Forrest…except his relationship with her. I said up above that there’s no goal for Forrest and that’s technically correct (Forrest doesn’t actively pursue anything). But he does keep bumping into Jenny. And he does want her. So because there’s an element of pursuit going on, we become engaged. We want to know, will he get her or not?

Remember, movies are essentially characters trying to overcome obstacles. That’s it. And the greater the obstacle, the more involved we get, the more rewarding it is when our character overcomes said obstacle. What’s a greater obstacle than being in love with someone who will never love you back? It’s the ultimate underdog scenario. And our desire to see if he Forrest can pull off the impossible is what gives this movie purpose. Quite simply, we want to see if Forrest gets the girl. And that’s enough to keep us satisfied for 150 minutes.

I’d be interested to hear why you guys believed this movie worked (or didn’t). When I’m in a bad mood, I hate how cute it can be. But otherwise, I get a kick out of how weird and different it is. It fascinates me every time I watch it.

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

What I learned: If a character has a weakness, don’t allow him to wallow in it. Nobody likes the “woe is me” guy/girl in real life, so why the hell would we like them onscreen? Forrest has a serious disability but he doesn’t let it affect him. He pushes on with a positive attitude. It’s hard not to like someone like that.