Genre: Drama/ComedyPremise: An eccentric billionaire Sheikh tries to buck conventional wisdom and transfer 10,000 salmon to a river in the Middle East.
About: This was one of the top “Brit List” (the British version of the Black List) scripts from last year. It’s Simon Beaufoy’s follow-up adaptation to his smash hit, Slumdog Millionaire, which he won an Oscar for. Beaufoy is no stranger to surprise hits. He also wrote “The Full Monty” back in 1997. Recently, Beaufoy finished up an adaptation of one of the more interesting books I’ve read in awhile, the Charlie Kaufman’esque “The Raw Shark Texts.”
Writer: Simon Beaufoy based on the book by Paul Torday
Details: 117 pages – 5/11/08 draft – first draft revised (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).

Those be salmon.

Before I get into the actual script, I want to discuss Simon Beaufoy’s previous effort, Slumdog Millionaire, because there’s an aspect about the movie that brings up an interesting question. During that film’s historic Oscar campaign, there was an article written (maybe somebody else can find it; I couldn’t with a Google search), about how the film almost went directly to DVD. The company didn’t know how to market it as a theatrical release so they were essentially ready to give up. Eventually, Fox Searchlight stepped in and figured out how to release and market the film, and of course it ended up making over 300 million dollars and winning 8 Oscars.

Now here’s my question. Is marketing so important that it can actually be the difference between a direct to DVD title and a huge worldwide mega-success that wins 8 Oscars and grosses 350 million dollars? I know marketing is important, but the disparity between what Slumdog was and what it supposedly could have been seems ridiculous. I guess another way to look at it is, are there dozens of hidden direct-to-DVD gems on video store shelves that could’ve won Oscars and made hundreds of millions of dollars if only they had the right marketing campaign?

I’ll let you chew on that in the comments. In the meantime, let’s discuss Simon Beaufoy’s follow-up to Slumdog, “Salmon Fishing In The Yemen,” a script I’ve been avoiding forever because, let’s face it, the title makes you want to take a nap.

Fred Jones is a serious man. He’s particularly serious when it comes to fishing, and has a high ranking job at the British Center of Fishing Excellence, which is apparently some sort of government fishing body, where he studies flies and conceives of schematics for future potentially award-winning fishing lures. One day, Fred receives a letter from a woman named Harriet, a “gentle and curvaceous English beauty” who works for a very rich but mysterious Sheikh out of Yemen. The Sheikh is a fishing fanatic, and his dream is to bring salmon to his own personal lake so he can fish there. As is such, he’s asking The Center of Fishing Excellence if he might pay them to bring this outrageous plan to fruition.

Tally-hoooo!

Fred is so put off by even the thought of such a hideous and irresponsible act that he tells Harriet, in the nicest way possible, to fuck off. Problem is, some doofus fighter pilot with bad aim blows up a mosque in Iraq and the press is persecuting Britain for it. Bridget Maxwell, the frigid press officer to the British Prime Minister, thinks that some good press between the West and Middle East might make the public forget about the Mosque. So she pays Fred a visit and tells him, whether he likes it or not, he’s going to get those damn fish to the Yemen.

Now here’s where it gets funny. The logistics of the operation (somehow round up 10,000 salmon, find a way to get them from Britain to the Yemen, put them in an adjacent body of water, and hope they swim up to the Sheikh’s lake) are basically impossible. But Fred’s the only one who knows that. So he figures the only way to get these people off his back is to make up the most ridiculous laborious complicated expensive plan in the history of the world, so they’ll realize the craziness of their idea and give up on it. Except, guess what happens? The Sheikh goes for it and signs a 30 million dollar check to fund the plan. Now Fred finds himself responsible for tens of millions of dollars and the political dependency of his country, all for a plan he basically made up on the spot and is reasonably certain can’t be done.

Fred is forced to work with Harriet (the woman who works for the Sheikh), who’s recently fallen in love with a man who’s run off to the army. Fred himself is in a loveless marriage. He just hasn’t realized it yet. All sorts of problems invade upon these adjacent relationships and the two find themselves bonding over this impossible task and possibly even falling for each other.

Ah, nothing like a movie with a bunch of big sweaty naked men.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is like finding a hidden stash of chocolate chip cookies on a Sunday afternoon. I mean who ever thought a script with that title would be so good? Despite taking a little while to get going, the script comes together once the impossible task of achieving this goal is put into motion. If you read the site regularly, you know I love stories about impossible goals. The more improbable the task is, the more exciting it is to see if they can do it.

I also loved the idea of this man who never wanted anything to do with this thing in the first place, being held to a plan that he made up just to get everybody off his back. It provides plenty of conflict, but more importantly, it provides tons of laughs. And I think that’s what I liked most about Salmon Fishing. It’s really fucking funny. I mean it has all this dramatic tension, but every few pages or so you find yourself laughing.

Another aspect I loved about Salmon Fishing was how deftly it balanced its subplots. Weaving subplots in and out of a story is one of the harder aspects of screenwriting. You have to know how many to add, when to step on the gas, when to let up, as well as never allowing them to overshadow your main plot. In Salmon fishing we have quite a few subplots, from Fred’s deteriorating marriage to Harriet’s soldier boyfriend to Fred’s battles with his boss to Bridget’s (press officer) battles with the media to Fred and Harriet’s friendship/romance. All of these subplots pop into the story for just the right amount of time, before leaving to put the focus back on the fishing plot. I know how hard it is to choose which parts of a novel to keep and which to throw away. I haven’t read the novel but it looks like Beaufoy struck just the right balance.

I’m kinda begging these guys to get rid of the title here, because I’ve had this script for a year and had zero interest in reading it because of the title. It makes you imagine a Middle Eastern man fishing in a river for 2 hours. That’s going to prevent a lot of people from seeing what I’m guessing will be a pretty damn good movie.

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

What I learned: Define your characters by their actions, preferably as soon as possible. Even the quickest and smallest actions can tell us everything we need to know about a character. For example, there’s a moment when Fred walks into a room and is introduced to Bridget (the press officer for the Prime Minister). Bridget is busy reading something, and raises her hand to shake Fred’s without looking up. Right there, you know exactly who Bridget is: A hard-nosed worker who doesn’t respect other people. Go back to your favorite movie characters and you’ll usually find that moment early on in the film when they perform an action that tells us exactly who they are.

The Karate Kid makes 56 million on its opening weekend. I don’t think anyone saw that coming. Not even “I’ve never failed at anything in my entire life” Will Smith! This is great news for Jackie Chan as well, who was just about to commit to a The Spy Next Door sequel, which we all know would’ve been titled, “The Spy Next Door Too.” I did not see Karate Kid, but I have to admit, the trailers did not look awful. The actors seemed to be taking the movie seriously, and against all odds, it kinda worked. Have no idea if the full movie is the same. Here at Scriptshadow, I’m reviewing an Oscar winning screenwriter tomorrow, putting together what should be a fun little article for Wednesday, and am yet to commit to my Thursday and Friday reviews. Today, Roger comes at you with a script I’m 97% certain was written specifically for him. Here’s “The Book Of Magic.”

Genre: Fantasy Adventure, Horror
Premise: Harry Houdini teams up with the legendary author, H.P. Lovecraft, to track down a supernatural serial killer in 1920s New York City.
About: This script won first prize in the 2003 ManiaFest Screenplay Competition and landed Sheldon Woodbury a writing assignment for Jeff Sagansky, a producer who used to be the president of Sony Pictures.
Writer: Sheldon Woodbury

Surely, as deep calls to deep, mystery attracts mystery. Which is an idea explored in “The Book of Magic” (not to be confused with Neil Gaiman’s The Books of Magic), a tale where the infamous escape artist Harry Houdini teams up with the grandfather of horror fiction to catch a supernatural serial killer in 1920s New York City. That logline appeared in my inbox a few weeks ago and all I could do was stare at it and exclaim, “Seriously?” As a reader of this blog, it doesn’t take a lot of homework to know that I love two things:

Watch Scriptshadow on Sundays for book reviews by contributors Michael Stark and Matt Bird. We try to find books that haven’t been purchased or developed yet that producers might be interested in. We won’t be able to get one up every Sunday, but hopefully most Sundays. Here’s Matt Bird with his review of “All The Shah’s Men.”

Genre: Spy / Historical
Premise: A determined American spy develops an outrageous plan to overthrow the fragile democracy of Iran in 1953, at the request of the company that would become known as BP.
About: I haven’t heard anything about this getting adapted so far, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t on a development board somewhere.
Writer: Kinzer is a veteran New York Times correspondent who has written plenty of books about U.S. dirty dealings overseas. This book became an unexpected hit in 2003, as U.S. efforts in the Middle East fell about apart and people started getting more serious about the question “Why do they hate us?” Unfortunately, it’s gotten even more timely since, due to the BP connection.

Click cover to go to Amazon.

The two biggest stories in the news this week are about the environmental horrorshow in the Gulf of Mexico and America’s latest attempt to impose sanctions on the theocratic government of Iran. But most people won’t realize the connection between the two stories: the misadventures of the company then known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and now known as BP. “All the Shah’s Men” is a crackerjack little real-world spy thriller that also happens to reveal how the U.S. became embroiled in the Middle East, how Iran lost its democratic government in the first place, and how BP lost the original source of its oil.

I know that, by the numbers, this sounds like too much of a long shot, given the current taboo against topical movies, but everyone who reads it says “Man, this would make a great movie!” Kinzer is one of our most cinematic non-fiction writers. He has a real talent for discovering larger-than-life personalities and finding the little moments that illuminate their characters. This book is full of deadpan-hilarious moments and “oh hell no” plot turns.

The structure is classically cinematic:

The Inciting Incident: Lifelong reformer Mohammed Mossadeq gets elected and demands that BP start paying Iran a more reasonable price for its oil, like maybe 50% of the profits instead of 5%. Instead, BP asks Britain to re-occupy the country. The British refuse, so BP asks America to do it instead. The CIA is all-too-happy to get on board.

Enter the compelling anti-hero: Brilliant CIA man Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy, seems like a cool-blooded preppie at first, but he reveals hidden depths, strengths and motivations along the way. Finally, he has to go against orders to win when everyone else had given up. There’s a great moment early on where he gets out of trouble in a way that reveals his conflicted relationship to his background (and shows Kinzer’s talent for ironic little character moments):

Iranian agents who came in and out of Roosevelt’s villa [while he was plotting the coup in Tehran] knew him only by his pseudonym, James Lockridge. As time passed, they naturally developed a sense of comradeship, and some of the Iranians, much to Roosevelt’s amusement, began calling him “Jim”. The only times he came close to blowing his cover were during tennis games that he played regularly at the Turkish embassy. When he missed a shot, he would curse himself, shouting, “Oh, Roosevelt!” Several times he was asked why someone named Lockridge would have developed such a habit. He replied that he was a passionate Republican and considered Franklin D. Roosevelt to have been so evil that used Roosevelt’s name as a curse.

The boo-hiss villain: Unfortunately for Kermit, he’s working to install a buffoon. Reza Shah Pahlevi is presented as a jet-set international playboy who only wants to make out with American movie stars. He’s an endless source of comedy and conflict.

Trying to do it the easy way until disaster strikes at the midpoint: Roosevelt starts off planning a classic overthrow by bribing a number of generals. Everything seems to go swimmingly, but the night of the coup, the generals pounce only to be arrested themselves by their own unexpectedly loyal men. Instead of taking power, the Shah panics and flees the country, back to fun and sun in the Riviera.

The second half of act two, a.k.a. finding the special weapon in the cave: It’s at this point that Roosevelt ignores ambiguous orders to terminate the mission and instead strikes out on his own. He discovers the Rashidian brothers, a trio of colorful criminals who are happy to help him work his mischief in more imaginative ways. They pay circus performers to stage phony riots, some of which seem to be pro-Mossadeq and some that seem anti-Mossadeq, giving the general impression of chaos, which quickly leads to real riots. Kermit tries to control the beast he’s created while using it to convince his bosses and the Shah to re-commit.

The climax: Just when Kermit seems to have told too many lies to too many people, it all snaps together at the last minute and the players converge back in Tehran for a massive battle in the streets. His strategy is validated spectacularly.

The ironic twist: For BP the irony came right away. After America took over, we informed BP that we wouldn’t be giving them their old contracts back, after all. By the time the new regime was done divvying up the spoils, BP got 50% of the profits, the same percentage Mossadeq was offering them. For America, the irony came later, when anti-Shah forces resurged, but this time in a decidedly anti-democratic, anti-American way. Mullahs take over in 1979, kicking foreign interests and money out once and for all.

Are Americans ever going to want to see movies about the Middle East? Eventually, but it’ll take a while. During the actual Vietnam War, that subject was taboo in movie theaters. Three years after that war was over, there was a brief eruption of Vietnam movies in 1978, then the backlash took over again. Finally, in 1987, as veterans began getting some clout themselves, there were a bunch of great movies made on the topic. When tempers have cooled, America will be ready for movies about our misadventures in the over there, and someone will hopefully do a great adaptation of this book.

Matt Bird talks about screenwriting, underrated movies and other random topics over at Cockeyed Caravan [CockeyedCaravan.blogspot.com]

Genre: Dark dramaPremise: A haunting erotic tale about a student who drifts into a unique form of prostitution.
About: Starring Emily Browning and currently in post production, this script landed somewhere in the middle of the 2008 Black List. The writer, Julia Leigh, is making her writing and her directing debut. Have to give her props for that. Not many people can swing that their first time out. This is the original draft that ended up on the Black List two years ago. But I’m betting it’s been reworked and fleshed out since then.
Writer: Julia Leigh
Details: 66 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).

Browning

Staying with yesterday’s theme, I have yet another script which laughs at widely accepted screenwriting practices. As you can see, it’s only 66 pages long! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. The writer, Julia Leigh, may have been writing this as sort of an extended scriptment, a la James Cameron, for herself. Since she directed the movie as well, a lot of the heavy literal description may have just been her preparing for the visual task of each scene. Either way, it appears this unique draft got out and gained a cult following.

The story follows a young woman named Lucy. We meet her as she’s subjecting herself to a trivial medical experiment. We understand right away that Lucy needs money. After working an additional waitress job that evening, she goes out for the night, does some coke with a strange woman, and sleeps with a man she just met. Apparently Lucy’s moral compass is a little out of whack. This young woman is detached from just about every emotion available.

Then one day she answers a mysterious ad in the paper, travels to a mansion in the countryside, and is offered a job by a “Madame” named Clara. Lucy will be a “waitress” at high end events. The pay will be $250 an hour. However, it’s understood that men may “choose” her. This is where things get interesting. If she’s chosen, she’ll be taken to a room and drugged so that she will have no memory of the events. The men may do anything they want to her as long as they don’t leave any marks, and as long as there’s no penetration. When she wakes up, she leaves and goes on with her everyday life.

Obviously, the story begins focusing on these events. We watch hesitantly as a nervous Lucy goes through the meeting process with the men, takes the “forget” pill, then wakes up the next day with no memory of anything. Like her, we don’t get to see what happens. We don’t get to see what these men do. This throws our curiosity into overdrive and is the big hook of the movie. In our minds, we’re thinking: “No penetration. No marks. What in God’s name are these men doing?” The possibilities are endless and the longer the story goes on, the more curious we get.

Of course, the story *doesn’t* go on for very long (it’s only 66 pages!), and the lack of an extensive middle act prevents an opportunity to get into why Lucy chose this bizarre lifestyle, how she’s become so absent and detached from life. We only get glimpses into these past windows, such as her friendship with a dying alcoholic, and it never quite feels like enough. We want more.

However, in the end, it doesn’t matter. Once she starts the “sleeping beauty” job, we’re entranced. We want to know what’s happening when those men come in and how it’s all going to fall apart. Because it has to fall apart, doesn’t it? I mean, if you’re subjecting yourself to sleeping beauty fetishes, it can’t end well, right?

Despite the bizarre structure, the curious first act, and some strange characters whose point I’m still trying to figure out, Sleeping Beauty excels in two categories. The first is tone. The tone here is dark, dreary and unsettling. The way Lucy subjects herself to life’s worst situations is just a sad empty experience. But it’s consistent and it’s real and it works. It hits us hard enough that we want her to find happiness. We want her to find a way out of it. The second is the big one. This script’s central mystery – what happens during those sleeping beauty sessions – is so powerful as to make you forget every other misstep in the script. It’s just such a compelling question. What are these crazy men doing to her??

I know there are some people who are going to hate this script. One of my friends I recommended it to wrote back, “What the fuck was that?” But that’s its strength. It’s a weird polarizing story that doesn’t follow any sort of structure, and I’m betting that’s why it caught the imagination of enough people to vote it onto the Black List. Step into this one cautiously. It’s an odd but strangely entertaining journey.

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

What I learned: This does NOT negate the 13 Things that make a great script post. In my opinion, following that list still gives you the best chance at writing something great. I’m merely showing you that there are other ways to do it, even if these other ways are a huge gamble. If you can blow someone away with one aspect of your script (in this case – the mystery), you can make people forget about a lot of its weaknesses.

Genre: Western
Premise: A group of bandits use the cover of a torrential thunderstorm to rob the occupants of a small town.
About: The Brigands Of Rattleborge was the number 1 Black List script back in 2006. Warner Brothers later optioned it. It has since gone through some revisions but is still waiting to be made.
Writer: S. Craig Zahler
Details: Original 2006 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).

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to review Brigands. It’s one of my favorite scripts. Better late than never, right? Before I get to the actual review, let me give you a little backstory on my mindset when I read it. I knew this was a highly rated Black List script, but I was far from a Western fan. Something about that era and that time is just hard to relate to for me. And let’s be honest, Westerns aren’t exactly burning up the box office. The system will take a shot with one every few years (Jonah Hex – albeit a stylized Western – is an example), but they’re usually considered a risky bet. However, this is the very reason I wanted to read Brigands. I figured if this many people liked a Western, one of the hardest genres to sell, then there must be something special about it.

Part of the reason I wanted to review it today was because we’ve been talking about what a “great script” is these last couple of weeks and I’ve been giving you examples of scripts that perfectly fit my “13 Keys To A Great Script,” but I wanted to show you the other side of the coin. I’d consider Brigands a great script and yet it DOESN’T follow a lot of the “great script” protocol. It’s 137 pages. It definitely doesn’t start off fast. So I thought it would be interesting to look at why it still works.

Brigands begins with two cowboys asking an Indian Chief to perform a fierce rain dance to bring a lethal storm down on a nearby town. What we’ll later find out is that the rain storm is a cover for our baddies to go in and steal from the town’s richest residents. This is where Brigands deviates heavily from convention. It uses the next few days and 60 pages (SIXTY!) to introduce us, in exquisite detail, to each and all of the main characters who live in the town. These, of course, are the people who will later get robbed.

Now 60 pages of character work and no plot are akin to strapping a REAL ticking time bomb to yourself and jumping off the Sears Tower. In short, it’s a quick recipe to el scripto destructiono. But what we find out is that Zahler is a master at creating characters, from their picturesque descriptions to their inner and exterior conflicts. Every single person in this script has something interesting going on.

More importantly, there’s a reason he decides to take so long in this part of the script. Zahler knows you won’t care about any of these characters dying if you don’t know them intimately. This is why we spend so much time with them. When these people do end up getting murdered, you feel it. It hits you because you know them so well. You’ve just spent 60 straight pages with them!

The story is anchored by three of these characters. You have Billy Lee, the heartless gunslinger who would shoot his own child if it got him an advance on his paycheck. He’s the man who will be doing all the killing. You have Pickett, the 50-something by-the-books Sheriff whose only concern is keeping the peace. And finally you have Abraham, the dark mysterious doctor/drifter who somehow knew the town was in trouble before they did. He’s here to settle a score, a score that goes back a long ways.

When the storm finally hits, Billy Lee and his gang slip in and out of the houses, leaving a trail of ruin wherever they can. The gang tortures, rapes, and murders anyone in their path. Most of this is described in horrific detail. We truly feel the horror of what’s happening. When it’s all over, when they’ve got the money and have hightailed it out of there, Pickett receives devastating news. Someone very close to him has been killed by the bandits. As a result, he’ll have to put all that moral highground aside, and team up with a most unlikely adversary – Abraham.

The reason the script works is simple. Its character goal, the driving force behind the story, is the strongest character goal I think I’ve ever read. Revenge on its own is an incredibly powerful driving force. But here, we got to know the person who was murdered. We know how much it hurts our hero. We felt that love between them. For that reason, we desperately want retaliation. This isn’t just his revenge story, it’s ours.

What I loved about Brigands though, is it adds this second mysterious element in Abraham. This man who dresses in all black, who makes his own bullets, who’s a doctor (what’s a doctor doing here??). The evolving mystery behind his character is the perfect counterpart to Pickett’s revenge story. We need something to balance the relentless horror of that thread, and he does it perfectly. Not to mention, the actual revenge scene, the way Abraham takes care of one of the bad guys, is probably the most memorable revenge moment of any movie in the history of film. Yes, I just said that. It’s that good!

So the closeness we feel to these truly unique characters combined with the unstoppable driving force of a relentless revenge story are the reasons this script has always hit me on a deep level. It will stay in my Top 5 until it gets made. It’s just a great script.

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

What I learned: Very simple. I learned from The Brigands Of Rattleborge how important it is to have a great villain. Billy Lee is so evil, so despicable in this script, that all we can think about for 2 hours is him getting his just due. You’d be surprised at just how into your script a reader will be just to see the villain fall.