The Most Annoying Man In The World

Posted on June 8, 2010 | by admin

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A man is forced to travel cross-country with his annoying brother in order to get to his wedding.
About: Disney picked this spec up back in 2009 for 250k. Kopelow and Seifert have been writing for TV for over a decade, having worked on shows ranging from “Kenan & Kel” to Oxygen’s “Campus Ladies.”
Writers: Kevin Kopelow and Heath Seifert
Details: 98 pages – May 16, 2008 (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).

My vote for the most annoying person in the world. Who’s yours?

The best “two guys stuck together traveling cross-country” movie is Dumb and Dumber by a mile. The script was actually a bit of a gamble when you think about it. Whenever you write about two people stuck together in any situation, the traditional approach is to make one guy the “crazy/dumb/weird” guy and the other guy the “straight man.” The extreme contrast between the two characters usually provides the most potential for comedy. The Farrelly brothers said screw that and just put two idiots together. Somehow, we got a classic.

The Most Annoying Man In The World goes back to the more traditional pairing of super extreme guy and super straight guy, and proves that it’s still a safe bet when done well. Stuart Pivnick IS the most annoying man in the world, and I have to give it to Kopelow and Seifert for giving us one of the best descriptions I’ve ever read in a comedy. Stuart is described as… “an enthusiastic, hyper, immature, naive, nosy, arbitrarily opinionated, completely un-self-aware, chronic complainer with no sense of personal space.” I love how they not only have fun with the description, but how it perfectly portrays Stuart in the process.

Across the country, finishing his bachelor party in Las Vegas, is Stuart’s brother, Alan. Alan is basically the opposite of everything Stuart is. He always wants to get everything right and boy has that become a problem with his wedding fast approaching. Everything seems to be going wrong and Alan is having to do damage control minute by minute from 2000 miles away.

Alan also hasn’t spoken to his brother in over a decade. Why? Well because he’s the most annoying man in the world! In fact, so relentlessly annoying is Stuart, that Alan’s created a ruse whereby he works at a remote research facility in the middle of the South Pole, one where he’s supposedly unable to communicate with anyone outside of his research operators.

But when Alan gets stuck at O’Hare and all of the day’s flights are canceled, he’s forced to call the only person he knows in town. Stuart.

Stuart, of course, is thrilled! He loves Alan more than anything. And when’s the next time the government is going to let his poor brother out of that research facility? So he welcomes Alan in with open arms, situating a second mattress inside his bedroom so they can both sleep together, then proceeds to read out loud and sing in his sleep all night so that Alan doesn’t get a wink of rest.

Despite being late the next morning, Stuart drives the exact speed limit to the airport, and this leads to a series of problems which result in Alan missing his flight. But Stuart comes up with the wonderful idea that they just drive to Philly together! With options dwindling, Alan agrees. Because Alan can’t tell Stuart *why* he needs to get to Philly so urgently (there’s no way he’s allowing Stuart to come to his wedding), it results in a logistical nightmare, as more and more wedding plans continue to fall apart, and Alan must manage them without letting Stuart on to what he’s up to.

The two take many detours, with Stuart repeatedly screwing everything up as much as humanly possible. He has a medical condition that forces him to eat at EXACT times, flipping out if he’s even a second late. He listens to movie scores in the car and makes up his own words to them (He’ll listen to E.T. and sing “E.T. likes reeses pieeeeces. He’s going home soooon.”) He likes to play games like “Guess a number between one and a million” where Alan picks a number and Stuart keeps guessing which number it is til he’s right. He truly is the most annoying man in the world. And for the most part, it’s really funny.

But like I always tell people who write comedies, you have to have the story and the emotional element up to the level of the comedy, and Kopelow and Seifert do a great job with that here. This is just as much about getting to Philadelphia without letting Stuart in on his wedding as it is about funny scenes. It’s just as much about two brothers reconnecting as it is about making an audience laugh.

I saw “Get Him To The Greek” this weekend and what baffled me was just how unimportant the story was. Nobody really gave a shit about GETTING TO THE DAMN GREEK! Outside of Jonah Hill half-heartedly reminding Aldous every few scenes, nobody, from the record label to the fans, gave a shit whether Aldous made it to his concert or not. I remember that at least in the original script, Aldous hadn’t played a concert in 10 years. So it felt like the concert actually meant something and was a special event. Here, he plays a fucking concert in the middle of the damn movie!!!, completely sucking dry any of the importance of the concert that’s supposed to be the whole damn point of the movie! – My point is, if we don’t feel the push of the story – If that isn’t completely dominating the narrative – then none of the comedy freaking matters. The Most Annoying Man In The World, much like The Hangover, feels like the characters’ plight actually matters and isn’t just a convenient destination for the movie to end.

My only real complaint here is that the script needs to axe some of the generic situations its characters find themselves in. At first, going to a carnival/theme park sounds funny, but in the end it has very little to do with their specific journey, and therefore feels more like a desperate laugh grab than a logical story sequence. In fact, I think all of the set piece scenes here could use a jolt, except for the car getting stuck on an ice sheet scene – which had me laughing for a good five minutes. I thought The Hangover did this well. In the initial draft of that script, one of the guys wakes up to find out he was at a gay bar the previous night. I couldn’t figure out why they ditched that in the film, but then I realized we’ve seen that before. We’ve never seen characters steal Mike Tyson’s tiger though. It just reminded me how you have to push yourself to come up with original sequences in comedies.

Overall, a solid comedy. And more importantly, one I think could make a great movie.

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

What I learned: Comedies, more than any other genre, allow you to tell your story in the title. 40 Year old Virgin. Knocked Up. This is obviously a huge advantage in an ADD Twitter-obsessed 5-second-version no-fat-allowed world. But don’t just sum up your movie in the title, make sure it’s still funny and/or jumpstarts the imagination for what kind of movie it could be. 40 Year Old Virgin did the best job of this (I immediately thought of all the hilarious scenes you could have of a 40 year old man trying to get laid for the first time) and the 2008 spec sale “I Wanna F— Your Sister” also did a wonderful job. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. There’s still an art to it. “Two Guys, One Who’s Dumb, Roadtrip To Marriage,” may tell us your story, but doesn’t roll off the tongue. So if the opportunity’s there and you come up with something clever, do it. If not, specs like “Due Date” and “Cedar Rapids” are still selling. So don’t sweat it.

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KASHMIR

Posted on June 7, 2010 | by admin

Yes! I am so glad Roger’s finally reviewing Kashmir. I’ve been hearing great things about it forever and have repeatedly meant to read it. Plus, as a bonus, he applies my 13 Keys to a great script and sees how Kashmir stacks up. I mean, I have to love this review, right? — This is what happens when you write an awesome spec. You get work. And Weiss has gotten worrrrrrrrrk and then some. Anyway, as promised, I’ll have at least one horror review for you this week – on Wednesday – and let’s just say I was pleasantly surprised. I have a sharp funny comedy review for tomorrow. Thursday and Friday are up for grabs. Enjoy Roger’s review!

Genre: Drama, War, Thriller
Premise: Three ex-mercenaries stumble upon information concerning the whereabouts of the world’s most wanted terrorist. They journey into Kashmir, the dangerous and disputed territory between two nuclear powers in order to claim the $50 million bounty on the terrorist’s head.
About: D.B. Weiss’ “Kashmir” was on the 2005 Black List with 2 votes. In 2008 it was acquired by Relativity Media with Jean-Jacques Annaud (Seven Years in Tibet) attached to direct. Weiss is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and is the author of the videogame-themed novel, Lucky Wander Boy. Back in February, I reviewed a draft of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game adapted by Weiss. Weiss has also penned drafts of the I am Legend prequel for Warner Bros., Halo and an adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones for HBO with David Benioff.
Writer: D.B. Weiss

This is a tale of three men.

One is motivated by desperation.
One is motivated by greed.
One is motivated by guilt.
This is the story of what happens to these men when they venture into volatile territory occupied by Jihadis, separatists and murderous native tribes in order to capture the world’s most dangerous man and claim the fifty million dollar bounty on his head.
Who is the man motivated by desperation?
Frank Pierce is former Marine Recon now working a boring high-tech menial labor job where he spends his hours soldering connections on circuit boards at International Navigational Technologies. He’s lorded over by MBAs fifteen years his junior and his soul seems to be slowly dying because he’s living a life that doesn’t call for his unique set of talents and expertise.
See, Pierce is really good at tracking things, specifically, other human beings. He’s a hunter. It’s a pretty specialized talent (huh, kinda like screenwriting?), and when he was in Marine Recon, or even the independent merc contractor, Executive Armor, he was able to use this talent. His official title? Full Service Independent Operator.
As an operator that could do the one thing he was good at every day, he thrived. Pierce was truly alive then.
But then, he met a girl, and realized, “I’d rather spend my life with her than with a bunch of sweaty guys in a South American jungle.” And together, with his wife, Linda, they had a daughter named Emma.
When the story opens, little Emma is watching a news broadcast that shows the aftermath of a terrorist bombing at the American Airlines Center, home of the Dallas Mavericks, in Texas.
Over two thousand people have been killed and Emma asks, “Dad, where’s Dallas?”
And this simple question from his five year-old daughter plants a seed of unease in Pierce, something that he’ll hold onto and try to convince himself is his true motivation.
Who is the man motivated by greed?
Carl Serra is a mad dog living the ex-private military man’s existence in the Philippines. He seems to spend a lot of his time gambling, which is what he’s doing when we meet him. A typical wise-ass, he beats some Filipino men at a hand of poker and says, “I thank you, Texas thanks you. And Uri thanks you, for giving me money I will no doubt piss away right here at this bar.”
We’ll get to Uri in a minute, but Serra drunkenly ambles home to his low-rent guesthouse, but is immediately accosted by Smiley, the Filipino man he pissed off, and his thugs. “You take my money, Funny Man. We need my money. We need it for important things.”
“So why’d you gamble with it?”
A reasonable question, but one Smiley doesn’t bother to answer. As he takes his pesos back from Serra, his thugs debate in Tagalog whether they should use a gun or a knife. They opt to use a knife, to which Serra replies in their own language, “Wrong choice.”
Serra Jason Bourne’s the knife out of their hands and quickly kills everyone in the room with it, even gutting a man like a trout. He strangles Smiley to death and goes through his possessions.
He finds a handwritten list of phone numbers that piques his curiosity.
Who is the man motivated by guilt?
Uri Tzur is the Israeli proprietor of the bar Serra operates out of, a former Israel Defense Forces soldier who can speak fluent Arabic. Actually, he went AWOL from the IDF, and it’s not something we think about much until a breathless sequence at the mid-point of this tale reveals his tragic back-story.
Compared to the other two soldiers, Uri thinks he’s dead weight, but the fact that he can speak Arabic makes him the fail safe for their plan. And as such, he’s at the center of one of the most intense scenes in this script. I mean, can you imagine the terror of being Israeli and having to infiltrate a network of caves by pretending to be an Arab jihadi? It’s a tense trial and the pure drama drawing off the historical context of the bigger conflict is staggering.
So who is the most wanted man on the planet?
His name is Sayim al-Bakr and he’s the man who has assumed leadership of al-Qaeda. He’s also the man responsible for bombing the American Airlines Center in Dallas.
Yep, he’s pretty much a narrative analog for Osama bin Laden.
OK. So that list of numbers Serra finds. They have to do something with Sayim’s location, right?
Smiley was a terrorist bomber in league with Sayim. The numbers are a list of one day satellite telephone numbers that Sayim’s men are using to communicate with the rest of al-Qaeda.
Serra phones Pierce, and Pierce uses his resources at International Navigational Technologies to trace the numbers. Serra and Pierce worked together, a long time ago, on a security detail for an Iranian dissident when they worked for the Halliburton suits.
Pierce calls the CIA and tries to inform them that Sayim is in Kashmir, a territory US troops haven’t set foot in for quite some time. But America is looking in Afghanistan or Iran, a thousand miles in the opposite direction, and they have a hard time believing Pierce because they don’t know who he is. And the CIA is reluctant to check the coordinates, because they would have to go to their supervisors, who would have to put in a request to Naval Intelligence and it’s all too much red tape for them to deal with.
With each passing day, they lose a number, and when Pierce sees that there are only seven numbers left, he finally decides to team up with Serra and take matters into his own hands, “We’ve got seven days.”
“We’re talking about hunting the worst man on Earth –-“
“– three guys, setting out to do a job the whole free world is crapping out on.”
So they go to Kashmir. But are they going to bring in Sayim al-Bakr dead or alive?
So, armed with the numbers and days as their ticking clock, a GPS device, cover as journalists for Outdoor magazine, and weapons, they trek through fifty miles of hostile terrain into the mountains of Kashmir. Their plan is to nab Sayim, bypass the Indian Army Base on the border and take him to the CNN field office at Srinagar where they collect their fifty million bounty and their names go down in the history books as heroes.
But this is where it gets interesting. Because Serra and Pierce have different motivations, they disagree. Pierce convinces himself that he’s doing this to protect his daughter, his wife, the citizens of his country. Sayim has war plans in his head that can surely be extracted. Serra just wants the bounty, and to him, he’d rather bring in Sayim dead than alive. It’s less problematic that way. And Uri is caught in the middle of this struggle, a conflict that gets heated with every obstacle that gets thrown in the way of their mission.
What about the action?
The second act involves double crosses by native drivers, a grueling march through wilderness, infiltrating a cave system that’s heavily guarded by terrorists and a snatch and grab that tests the physical endurance and psychological well-being of our heroes. It’s a tense adventure, a pressure cooker that frays loyalties and plants paranoia.
The third act explodes into all sorts of fucked-up fun when the arrival of someone who may or may not be a rival bounty hunter, Saint Nick Howard, causes our heroes to finally team-up as a unit or all-out compete against each other. Will they put their warring ideologies aside to work together or will their mission end in tragic circumstances by their own hands?
There’s a firefight on a treacherous mountain pass, a pretty awesome bridge battle with rocket launchers and derring-do, and a race through a mine field that’s probably as suspenseful as anything in The Hurt Locker.
Just for fun, let’s see how “Kashmir” measures up to Carson’s 13 Qualities of a Great Script:
1)AN ORIGINAL AND EXCITING CONCEPT – I’m sure many of us have thought, man, why haven’t they caught Osama bin Laden? Well, here’s a concept that fantasizes about that question and runs with it, with pretty riveting results.
2)A MAIN CHARACTER WHO WANTS SOMETHING (AKA “A GOAL”) – They want to capture Sayim and collect the fifty million dollar bounty. And everyone has a different reason for doing it.
3)A MAIN CHARACTER WE WANT TO ROOT FOR – Pierce is a family man who not only wants to protect his family, he wants to live a life where he can use his talent and feel valuable. We can all relate to that in some way, I think. Serra is an asshole, but he’s a funny and likeable asshole who can dispatch the bad guys in impressive ways. Uri has a sad back story that makes us sympathize with this mysterious character.
4)GET TO YOUR STORY QUICKLY – Page 15. Our main story goal is capture Sayim. Every scene before that even hints at it in some way, letting us know what this is about. And on page 15 the characters start talking about it, even if they were thinking about it for 14 pages before that.
5)STAY UNDER 110 PAGES – Nope. This is 123. But this is epic storytelling, and I was never bored once by it. It was so suspenseful I didn’t mind spending extra time absorbed with it. It’s a page turner.
6)CONFLICT – Characters on a mission who disagree with each other. All the other characters in the script are either trying to kill them or steal their bounty. Yep. Loads.
7)OBSTACLES – I think this script explores everything that can go wrong when entering hostile territory to capture the world’s most wanted man.
8)SURPRISE – Uri and Saint Nick Howard are characters that hide surprising secrets. Every fifteen pages has something that spins the plot in an interesting direction. The resolution is a big What If?
9)TICKING TIME BOMB – 7 Satellite Phone Numbers. 7 Days to find Sayim.
10)STAKES – Everyone’s life is on the line. What starts out as about money becomes something else. Philosophies, ideologies and morality collide against each other. The personal stakes symbolize a bigger historical conflict.
11)HEART – Pierce wants something that’s more than money, and he goes through hell to reach for it.
12)A GREAT ENDING – Sad, satisfying, thought-provoking. Doesn’t feel false. It feels right, like this is the only way it could have ended. That’s a good sign.
13)THE X-FACTOR – Look man, D.B. Weiss comes from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, a workshop that has produced 17 Pulitzer Prize winning writers and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Guy can writer. And it’s not in that anorexic, breezy style that everyone else is so fond of. His language and voice is something that cannot be replicated. And the feel of this thing reminds me of something by John Milius or Walon Green. A script written with weight, machismo and command of the language.

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

What I learned: The turn into the 3rd Act is something I think about a lot. Sure, this is usually a point where there’s another twist in the story, but it’s also a place where everything gets so bad for our heroes you wonder how the story can possibly resolve itself. Here, Serra and Pierce’s arguments and motivations collide and lines are drawn and you think they’re going to kill each other. And as they’re fighting amongst themselves, the enemy capitalizes on the situation and tries to kill them. And the twist, or plot point here, is that another character crashes the party, someone revealing himself to be someone else. And although this character may save their lives, he’s also compromising their goal because he wants to claim the bounty for himself. There are layers to the conflict. And worst of all, the terrorist they’ve captured escapes and then everyone gets separated. It’s like the writer thought about everything that could possibly happen to the characters that they DON’T WANT TO HAPPEN. So, at this moment where the shit hits the fan, think of your character’s worst fear involving their goal. Then hit them with that fear to see how they’re going to hit back.
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Sunday Book Review – The Wheelman

Posted on June 6, 2010 | by admin

Watch Scriptshadow on Sundays for book reviews by contributors Michael Stark and Matt Bird. We won’t be able to get one up every Sunday, but hopefully most Sundays. Here’s Stark with his review of “The Wheelman.”

SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW (The Wheelman by Duane Swierczynski)


Welcome back to Scriptshadow’s Sunday Book Review where we get to play Delancy Street Matchmaker, setting up jet setting, multimillionaire producers with our favorite, dreamy, deep-thinking authors. Unlike eHarmony or JDate, we provide this service totally free of charge without even asking for anyone’s credit card digits first.

It’s a thankless job, thank you. Hell, it would be nice if someone would at least spring for a gift card or a Nectarine of the Month Basket for our troubles. A few of the books we’ve reviewed have been optioned and a couple that were dying on the development vine have been lovingly picked back up and revived. Coincidence? Perhaps. But, I do dig free nectarines.

In case you haven’t been keeping score, this is the third Duane Swierczynski novel we’ve thrown bouquets at. No, he’s not family. Nor is he dating my sister. Don’t even know the guy to ask for a kickback. We just really, really dig his stuff. The dude knows his noir. He’s Richard Stark, Elmore Leonard and Max Allan Collins all thrown together and mashed up in whatever damned mess hall apparatus you’d need to make U.S. Army strength corn beef hash.

Luckily, Hollywood has taken notice. Severance Package, the book Roger gushed all over a few months ago, has already been picked up by Lionsgate. No luscious nectarines or tangelos for ol’ Rog though. This deal happened over two years ago.

So, what’s the set-up, Stark?

Let me first ask if you’d like a triple espresso with you noir? A triple espresso served with a sidecar of crack, laced with meth, added to a shot of adrenaline and frightened-cortisol-saturated sheep gonads delivered straight through your puny breastbone into your tachycardial heart with a Jolt Cola and Pop Rocks enema thrown in for good measure.

The Wheelman is pretty high-octane fare. A fast and furious crime spree that would make a much better vehicle for Jason Statham than The Transporter, Crank or whatever piece of crap he just sold another piece of his ever diminishing soul to star in.

(Okay, I actually love the actor and him starring in the upcoming adaptation of Ken Bruen’s Blitz is the ultimate act of redemption in my eyes.)

Oh, yeah, this isn’t any ways related to the Wheelman video game or the Vinnie Diesel flick of the same name. It has to be a gazillion times better. Hollywood may know how to really amp action scenes up lately, but The Swierz (You try spelling his name a half dozen times) really out-ratchets anything I’ve ever seen before.

So, you were getting to the set-up, Asshole!!!

Patrick Selway Lennon is a wheelman. For those who don’t know the bank-robbing parlance, he’s the driver; the guy entrusted with the getaway. The guy you hire to get you the hell outta there before the whip comes down.

And, like most heists, things don’t go exactly as planned. Well, who wants to read about a perfectly executed bank job? How dull. This one gets pretty much cluster fucked from the very start.

Lennon already hears the damn alarms ringing by the second page. He sees his partners trapped in the vestibule of the bank they were robbing like “two gerbils in a Habitrail.” He could just leave them there, but instead smashes the getaway car through the glass window and rescues the poor schmucks. Bank windows may be bulletproof, but they ain’t quite carproof!

Lennon is a pretty great wheelman, but he doesn’t have a lot of nifty, cool dialogue. That’s cause the Irishman is mute. So, he has a lot of nifty, cool thoughts. Not cinematic, you say? How dare you?!! What is more film noir than a protag’s constant voice over?

Like a combination of The French Connection and Frogger, Lennon wrestles the wheel and gets them out of there before the cops come, managing to avoid smashing a baby carriage in the process. The young woman pushing the carriage, however, doesn’t get off so easy. And, from there, Lennon’s bad day just keeps getting worse.

They ditch the getaway car in a parking garage, hide the loot in a second car planted there and take a third to the airport. Seemingly, an ingenious plan. There, they’ll split up in different directions till the heat is off.

But, on the way to the airport, a reinforced van crashes into them, flipping their Acura over. Lennon wakes up, finding himself in a body bag. Two college twerps are trying to stuff him and the rest of the evidence down a construction site’s huge pipe. Seems the mob has been using the place for a dumping ground since the project first broke ground.

Even stuck in a bag, Lennon manages to put up a pretty good fight. But, he still ends up stuffed down the damned pipe.

Don’t count him out just yet. He, and quite a few of the other characters we’ll soon meet, are guys that stubbornly and comically refuse to die. There’s a gal, Katie, waiting for Lennon in Puerto Rico and it would be uncouth to have her worry if he doesn’t show up on time. He crawls out of the pipe, kills the college kids, steals some clothes and tries to figure out who the hell just double-crossed him.

Now, there’s really not much more I can divulge without spoiling all the fun. The double crosses quickly escalate into more twisted triple crosses that you’ll never see coming.

No one is exactly what they seem (Did Lennon just speak? What is Katie doing in Puerto Rico snogging another dude?) Soon, everyone is after them, including the Russian mob, The Italian Mafia, crooked cops, bent politicians and a few accomplices they should never have trusted in the first place.

Though most of our readers are student scribes, I’m assigning this book right away for teaching narrative drive. Drive, He Said! The Wheelman doesn’t just chug along at a nice clip. It freaking burns rocket fuel. Imagine Mr. Toad licking himself before going out on that wild, fucking, murderous joy ride.

What I learned: As more and more screenplays are turning into glorified video games, how do you give your characters some realistic heart even if their outlandish antics are a bit cartoonish? Elmore Leonard grounds both his heroes and villains with believable dialogue. Start reading his entire back bloody catalogue and watch the brilliant Justified. When you get your characters crackling as much as your action, then you know you’re on to something!

Points for discussions: Which heists flicks do you feel worked? Would you approach it Michael Mann or Michael Bay style? Are you planning to write one? If so, may I plug another Swierczynski book? His nonfiction, This Here’s a Stick-Up, might just start you out on your own life of crime writing.

More of Stark’s rantings and ramblings can be found here: http://www.michaelbstark.blogspot.com/

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Sunday Book Review – The Wheelman

Posted on June 6, 2010 | by admin

Watch Scriptshadow on Sundays for book reviews by contributors Michael Stark and Matt Bird. We won’t be able to get one up every Sunday, but hopefully most Sundays. Here’s Stark with his review of “The Wheelman.”

SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW (The Wheelman by Duane Swierczynski)


Welcome back to Scriptshadow’s Sunday Book Review where we get to play Delancy Street Matchmaker, setting up jet setting, multimillionaire producers with our favorite, dreamy, deep-thinking authors. Unlike eHarmony or JDate, we provide this service totally free of charge without even asking for anyone’s credit card digits first.

It’s a thankless job, thank you. Hell, it would be nice if someone would at least spring for a gift card or a Nectarine of the Month Basket for our troubles. A few of the books we’ve reviewed have been optioned and a couple that were dying on the development vine have been lovingly picked back up and revived. Coincidence? Perhaps. But, I do dig free nectarines.

In case you haven’t been keeping score, this is the third Duane Swierczynski novel we’ve thrown bouquets at. No, he’s not family. Nor is he dating my sister. Don’t even know the guy to ask for a kickback. We just really, really dig his stuff. The dude knows his noir. He’s Richard Stark, Elmore Leonard and Max Allan Collins all thrown together and mashed up in whatever damned mess hall apparatus you’d need to make U.S. Army strength corn beef hash.

Luckily, Hollywood has taken notice. Severance Package, the book Roger gushed all over a few months ago, has already been picked up by Lionsgate. No luscious nectarines or tangelos for ol’ Rog though. This deal happened over two years ago.

So, what’s the set-up, Stark?

Let me first ask if you’d like a triple espresso with you noir? A triple espresso served with a sidecar of crack, laced with meth, added to a shot of adrenaline and frightened-cortisol-saturated sheep gonads delivered straight through your puny breastbone into your tachycardial heart with a Jolt Cola and Pop Rocks enema thrown in for good measure.

The Wheelman is pretty high-octane fare. A fast and furious crime spree that would make a much better vehicle for Jason Statham than The Transporter, Crank or whatever piece of crap he just sold another piece of his ever diminishing soul to star in.

(Okay, I actually love the actor and him starring in the upcoming adaptation of Ken Bruen’s Blitz is the ultimate act of redemption in my eyes.)

Oh, yeah, this isn’t any ways related to the Wheelman video game or the Vinnie Diesel flick of the same name. It has to be a gazillion times better. Hollywood may know how to really amp action scenes up lately, but The Swierz (You try spelling his name a half dozen times) really out-ratchets anything I’ve ever seen before.

So, you were getting to the set-up, Asshole!!!

Patrick Selway Lennon is a wheelman. For those who don’t know the bank-robbing parlance, he’s the driver; the guy entrusted with the getaway. The guy you hire to get you the hell outta there before the whip comes down.

And, like most heists, things don’t go exactly as planned. Well, who wants to read about a perfectly executed bank job? How dull. This one gets pretty much cluster fucked from the very start.

Lennon already hears the damn alarms ringing by the second page. He sees his partners trapped in the vestibule of the bank they were robbing like “two gerbils in a Habitrail.” He could just leave them there, but instead smashes the getaway car through the glass window and rescues the poor schmucks. Bank windows may be bulletproof, but they ain’t quite carproof!

Lennon is a pretty great wheelman, but he doesn’t have a lot of nifty, cool dialogue. That’s cause the Irishman is mute. So, he has a lot of nifty, cool thoughts. Not cinematic, you say? How dare you?!! What is more film noir than a protag’s constant voice over?

Like a combination of The French Connection and Frogger, Lennon wrestles the wheel and gets them out of there before the cops come, managing to avoid smashing a baby carriage in the process. The young woman pushing the carriage, however, doesn’t get off so easy. And, from there, Lennon’s bad day just keeps getting worse.

They ditch the getaway car in a parking garage, hide the loot in a second car planted there and take a third to the airport. Seemingly, an ingenious plan. There, they’ll split up in different directions till the heat is off.

But, on the way to the airport, a reinforced van crashes into them, flipping their Acura over. Lennon wakes up, finding himself in a body bag. Two college twerps are trying to stuff him and the rest of the evidence down a construction site’s huge pipe. Seems the mob has been using the place for a dumping ground since the project first broke ground.

Even stuck in a bag, Lennon manages to put up a pretty good fight. But, he still ends up stuffed down the damned pipe.

Don’t count him out just yet. He, and quite a few of the other characters we’ll soon meet, are guys that stubbornly and comically refuse to die. There’s a gal, Katie, waiting for Lennon in Puerto Rico and it would be uncouth to have her worry if he doesn’t show up on time. He crawls out of the pipe, kills the college kids, steals some clothes and tries to figure out who the hell just double-crossed him.

Now, there’s really not much more I can divulge without spoiling all the fun. The double crosses quickly escalate into more twisted triple crosses that you’ll never see coming.

No one is exactly what they seem (Did Lennon just speak? What is Katie doing in Puerto Rico snogging another dude?) Soon, everyone is after them, including the Russian mob, The Italian Mafia, crooked cops, bent politicians and a few accomplices they should never have trusted in the first place.

Though most of our readers are student scribes, I’m assigning this book right away for teaching narrative drive. Drive, He Said! The Wheelman doesn’t just chug along at a nice clip. It freaking burns rocket fuel. Imagine Mr. Toad licking himself before going out on that wild, fucking, murderous joy ride.

What I learned: As more and more screenplays are turning into glorified video games, how do you give your characters some realistic heart even if their outlandish antics are a bit cartoonish? Elmore Leonard grounds both his heroes and villains with believable dialogue. Start reading his entire back bloody catalogue and watch the brilliant Justified. When you get your characters crackling as much as your action, then you know you’re on to something!

Points for discussions: Which heists flicks do you feel worked? Would you approach it Michael Mann or Michael Bay style? Are you planning to write one? If so, may I plug another Swierczynski book? His nonfiction, This Here’s a Stick-Up, might just start you out on your own life of crime writing.

More of Stark’s rantings and ramblings can be found here: http://www.michaelbstark.blogspot.com/

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The Numbers Station

Posted on June 4, 2010 | by admin

Genre: Dramatic Thriller
Premise: A black ops agent is assigned to protect a female operator who works out of a “numbers station” deep in the Arizona desert.
About: This sold a few weeks back once Ethan Hawke attached himself to the project. It is F. Scott Frazier’s first sale. He previously worked in the video game industry. Kasper Barfoed, a Danish filmmaker known for his film “The Candidate,” will direct. Production starts this September.
Writer: F. Scott Frazier
Details: 108 pages – not dated (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 remember in an interview Ethan Hawke gave a few years back, he said (paraphrasing) “You’ll never see me in a movie like some of these actors make, Beethoven 2 or Transformers, because I’ve never lived above my means. A lot of star actors take gigs because they have house payments. I’ve never made a decision to be in a film based on anything other than the material.” Now you may not like Ethan Hawke’s choices, but I love the fact that he stays true to his craft. You can count the number of actors on one hand who do that. And it’s for that reason that I always pay attention when Ethan Hawke signs onto a project. I know he’s basing his decision on the quality of the project, and in most cases, the quality of the screenplay.

The Numbers Station is a dark, somewhat twisted, story about an agent, Emerson Little, whose job it is to “retire” other agents when they’re no longer necessary. As far as what kind of agency Emerson belongs to, that’s anyone’s guess. I suppose it could be the CIA, but like a lot of things in The Numbers Station, “supposing” is about as close as you’re going to get. This story is shrouded in mystery, which is both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness.

Whomever it is that employs Emerson, they do so with an iron fist. Emerson and his fellow agents live in constant fear. One little slip-up and it might be them getting “retired.” So when Emerson does slip up on a routine job, he’s thinking it could be lights out. Instead, he’s given a reprieve. He’ll be sent to a “Numbers Station” way out the fuck in the middle of the Arizona desert. His job will be to protect the operator at the station. The job is meant as an insult – the easiest of all the jobs an agent can have.

So out into the desert Emerson goes and sure enough there’s a lone tiny building in the middle of nowhere. Inside the deceptively but heavily fortified building are a few rooms and a “broadcast station.” A woman named Katherine – pretty, simple –reads numbers into an encrypted frequency all day. She doesn’t know what the numbers mean. Nobody knows what the numbers mean. Except, we assume, the people who they’re being broadcast to.

As agents, everything is supposed to be kept professional. No smiles, no personal talk, no “real life.” She reads the numbers. He protects her. That’s all.

But when you’re out in the middle of nowhere with no one to talk to, with nothing to do, sooner or later something’s going to break. Katherine and Emerson develop a quiet friendship. It’s wrong – he knows that – and he knows one more slip-up is going to place him in the middle of the desert permanently. But what can he do? She’s so full of life. In fact, Katherine who erroneously believes that one day she’ll have a “normal” life, is eager to crack Emerson’s icy exterior. It’s a delicate line Emerson must walk, and it’s one he struggles with the more he gets to know here.

Then out of nowhere, one day between shifts, the station is compromised. And even though it seems to be empty now, they find out that whoever broke in is nearby, and they’re not leaving until they get one more thing. And that one more thing is still there, in the station, with them.

The Numbers Station is a bizarre script. It takes its time, and in the first 30 pages, could’ve gone several different ways. For that reason, it took me awhile to settle in and really feel comfortable.

Once we’re at the Numbers Station though, the story picks up, and that mainly has to do with our fascination over what these numbers are that are being broadcast. What do they mean? Where are they going? Who’s receiving them? What are they doing once they receive them? Does this kind of thing exist in real life? Whatever they are, it becomes clear that they’re important, and the obvious reason for why the station is compromised.

Now if you’re hoping for a clear-cut answer on these numbers, you’re not going to get one. The Numbers Station goes out of its way to give you pieces of the puzzle, but never what it looks like when it’s put together. Strangely, for someone who usually hates a lack of answers, I was captivated. Cause there is just enough information to make your imagination run wild. And like I stated above, I kept coming back to that question: Does something like this really exist? How horrifying would that be?

The crux of the story, however, is what goes down once the station is compromised, and I think the script, in its current draft, falls a little short here. As Emerson and Katherine (interesting character names btw) try and figure out what to do, the surprises aren’t surprising enough, the bad guys plan isn’t clear enough, and there’s something in the back of your head whispering, “We’ve seen it go down this way before.” There are a few nice revelations, and I’m a sucker for the “play back the audio/video and look closer” device (which plays a big part in the mystery), but if they could nail this aspect of the script, this could really be something special, because I was truly fascinated by this tiny but compelling world that F. Scott Frazier created.

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

What I learned: You want to make your main character’s defining characteristic clear. If we’re unsure what that characteristic is because you focus on too many sides of your hero, the character can quickly become confusing (and muddled). Han Solo’s defining characteristic is that he’s selfish. We’re never confused about that. Woody’s defining characteristic in Toy Story is that he’s jealous. We’re never confused about that. Once you know that characteristic, you can shape the storyline to repeatedly challenge it. So when the Millennium Falcon gets stuck on the Death Star, Han Solo isn’t concerned about saving a stupid princess. He’s concerned about how he’s going to get his money. Only when Luke presents the idea of a reward does Han become interested. Later, when Han can either fight for the Rebel Alliance (help others) or leave (save himself), he of course chooses to leave. So there’s a huge advantage gained by making your hero’s defining characteristic clear. Here, Emerson’s defining characteristic is his emotional distance. He refuses to allow anyone in. When you read the script, pay attention to how that plays out during the course of the story. Always make sure the hero’s defining characteristic is clear!

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