Okay, so Amateur Month is officially OV-AH. That was fun. And at times scary because some of you are terrifying. It’s appropriate that today’s script is about nightmares because I think I’ll be having plenty due to Estrogen Deprived and Effscottfitz. If this is your first day back to Scriptshadow in awhile, you can go to Amateur Week here, Repped Week here, Favorites Week here, and of course, don’t forget to sign up for a tracking board if you haven’t already. I fixed the damn pricing thing I screwed up on, so it really is $44.25 now. I promise. — Hope you guys enjoyed this month as much as I sometimes did. We’ll have to do it again sometime. :)

Genre: Adventure/Children’s
Premise: A young boy teams up with a nightmare hunter to help him catch a monster that escaped from his dreams.
About: In 2002, Spielberg/Dreamworks picked up this very hot spec. The project unfortunately fell into a nightmare of its own (known as Development Hell) and unlike in the script, there was no one to save it. But Spielberg was a huge champion of the writers and tabbed them to write a couple of adaptations, including author Scott Lynch’s fantasy epic “The Lies of Locke Lamora,” about a likable con artist and his band of followers, and an original idea of Spielberg’s, “Charlie Dills.” (Don’t know what this is about – maybe It’s On The Grid knows???). But their adaptation with the best title by far, is the script they wrote for 1492 Pictures, titled: “Carpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom.”
Writers: The Brothers Hageman
Details: 99 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).

Wow, I don’t review many children’s scripts on the site. But I love a good high concept idea and this is about as high concept as they come. So hey, why not change it up?

I mean we were all kids once. I remember as a young tyke, watching “Tales From The Crypt” and one of the tales was about a dead guy who came back to get his birthday cake. He kept repeating the phrase, “I waaaant my caaaaake,” as his deteriorated skeleton of a face oozed worms and slime. That night, I sat scrunched up in the corner of my room with a hockey mask, a baseball bat, and any sharp object I could find, staring at my door til the sun came up, convinced Mr. I-Want-My-Cake Man was going to burst through that door and take me to Deathville.

Which is the perfect segue into today’s script, which is all about nightmares. Hugo Bearing is an 11 year old orphan (that’s old in orphan years btw) who’s plagued with horrifying dreams every night he goes to sleep. In his nightmares is the sickly evil spider-ish monstrosity known as Mister It. Mister It doesn’t just scare Hugo, he psychologically burrows into him, reminding him that no parents will ever come to adopt him, and that he will always be alone…forever.

Hugo’s best friend is the pudgy tag-a-long known as Asmus Fudge (note – All of the names in this screenplay are absolutely brilliant). There’s also the twins, Eye-Patch Pete, and the eternally cranky Benny. As Hugo is the oldest, he’s the one they all look up to. And for that reason, he’s reluctant to tell them about his secret – that his nightmares still haunt him.

So what’s the only thing worse than a nightmare? A nightmare that comes to life of course! And unfortunately for Hugo, Mister It escapes from his dreams into the real world. After he slithers away, Hugo meets 70 year old Atticus Marvel, a green trench-coated Nightmare Hunter. A cross between “Sherlock Holmes and Don Quixote,” Atticus is quite the badass for someone who gets a senior discount. He informs Hugo that they have a problem. Nightmares aren’t allowed to exist in the real world, and it’s their job to capture his nightmare and put it back where it belongs.

As their journey unfolds, Atticus explains the rules of Nightmare Hunting. Nightmare Hunters are kind of like Jedi. They’re called in when a nightmare gets unruly. Old stories you hear about dragons and goblins? Those were simply nightmares who escaped from people’s dreams. Nightmares are identified by their class. The higher the class, the more dangerous they are. For example there’s a Class 2 Trundle Trotter, there’s a Class 3 Obesian Snackpacker, and so on and so forth. (did I tell you these names were great or what?)

The reason it’s so important to find Hugo’s nightmare is that he’s a class 10, and class 10’s are capable of spawning other nightmares, which is exactly what starts happening. If they don’t get Mister It back into the dreamworld soon, the entire planet will be invaded by a nightmare army.

The first thing that popped out at me here was the sheer breadth of imagination. It really feels like these guys thought this world through. The mythology, while occasionally silly, is easy to buy into. I mean the whole “monsters throughout history being escaped nightmares” thing was really clever. I also loved the whole class system and how it operated. For example, nightmare class is dependent on how extraordinary the subject’s fear is. Mister It is a Class 10 because Hugo is so terrified of him.

I think this leads to my only beef, which is that maybe the characters aren’t as deep as they could be. I mean, Hugo’s situation is a perfect setup for a major character flaw. Hugo somehow needs to overcome his fear of Mister It in order to take him down. But I was never really sure what Hugo’s flaw was (what caused his fear), other than the very basic: he was scared of Mister It. Therefore, the character arc (Hugo overcoming his flaw) doesn’t resonate. Then again, this is a kid’s story. So maybe it doesn’t matter.

Another potential problem is the world the story takes place in. Even before the nightmares arrive, the town is described in a very fairy-tale like manner. I would imagine that throwing nightmares into that world wouldn’t provide enough of a contrast to take advantage of the concept. In other words, we may feel the impact more if the town were realistic. Throwing a dream into a world that’s already dreamy prevents them from sticking out, right? But again, this is a choice they went with and it’s not like it’s a dealbreaker.

I’m not easily won over by children’s movies. Whenever Harry Potter pops up on my boob tube, I can’t help but wish I’d run into him one day in a dark alley so I could punch that little zig-zag mark off his noggin. But this was cute. It won me over.

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

What I learned: So we’ve talked a few times about the mid-point and what a good mid-point achieves. Usually – not always, but usually – a midpoint is where you raise the stakes of the main goal. So if it’s a story about trying to get to the moon to save 3 astronauts who are trapped and running out of supplies, the midpoint might be the shuttle that’s going there blowing up a day before launch. Time’s running out. Their predicament is a thousand times worse than it was a day earlier. The stakes have been raised. The Nightmare Of Hugo Bearing has a nice midpoint. Initially the goal is to capture Mister It and put him back into the dreamworld. Difficult but still doable. Exactly halfway through the story (the midpoint) we learn that Mister It is a Class 10, which means he can spurn other nightmare creatures into existence. Talk about raising the stakes. Now, they not only have to capture THIS nightmare, they have to capture ALL of the nightmares he’s created. Go to the middle of your script right now. Do you dramatically raise the stakes of your story?

I’ve been receiving this question a lot lately so I thought I’d write an article about it. The question is, “Really? This script sold?? This is what passes for worth half a million dollars these days?? Are you f’ing kidding me??” Loose translation: “Why do bad scripts sell?” I think it’s a fair question to ask. But I don’t think it’s the right way to ask it.

Almost every single spec sale script I’ve read shows a basic understanding of how to tell a story. What I mean by that is they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And they understand that the beginning is their setup, the middle is their conflict, and the end is their resolution. 90% of amateur screenplays I read do not possess this understanding. The story usually stumbles, rambles or wanders because the basic notion of what’s supposed to happen in each of these sections hasn’t been learned yet. This accounts for a percentage of the confusion of why people don’t understand why “bad” scripts sell.

But the remaining portion may be perfectly valid. The script is simply, technical skill or no technical skill, not very good. So how does this happen? Don’t I (and everyone else) always preach that in order to sell a script you have to write something GREAT? How can that be true when all these mediocre scripts are getting snatched up for hundreds of thousands of dollars each year?

To answer this question, let’s look at a few examples for why a bad script might sell.

Example 1: A company is looking for a specific kind of script for their slate. Maybe it’s a teen sex comedy. Maybe it’s a Halloween’ish horror flick. Maybe it’s an erotic thriller. So they put out some feelers to agents they have relationships with, who in turn speak with the writers they represent, who in turn find old scripts that sound close enough to what the company is looking for, which they then clean up and send to the company. The company reads all the submissions and ends up buying the one that best fits their needs. Is the script always great? No. But it’s close enough so that, with a little development, they’re confident they can get it into good shape.

Example 2: Company D is looking around and realizing that the whole graphic novel craze, the one they thought would be over in two minutes? Well, it’s obviously here to stay. And while they were asleep at the wheel, their competition snatched up all the best properties. Feeling the pressure from inside and outside their company, they need a cool graphic novel to compete. So there’s a savvy intern who has a writer friend who just adapted a cool but obscure graphic novel. Does the boss want to read it? Of course! He needs a graphic novel property yesterday. Because the pressure’s on, he bypasses his reader and reads the script himself. Through the filter of desperation, even though he knows the script needs a lot of work, it takes care of a very important need, so he buys it.

Example 3: A writer coming off a recent sale delves back into his library of scripts, does a quick rewrite on one of them, hands it to his agent who packages it with a hot actor and producer, and sells it a week later. Is the script good? Maybe. Maybe not. So why did it sell? Because the writer had heat. Because being able to flaunt a script from the “hot new writer in town” brings attention to a company. Because in the business world, people aren’t very good at measuring the value of art. So they go by track records. If the script is from the guys who wrote The Hangover, starring Jim Carrey with Wes Anderson attached to direct…that’s a package they can trust. From a business perspective, if you include the script as one of the four elements being sold (script, writers, actor, director), which of those elements do you think carries the least weight? Obviously the script. This kind of thing happens quite often.

Example 4: A production company is developing a movie about an overweight Casanova. They hear that a new script is hitting the market about an overweight seductress. Uh-oh, if that movie’s made, their movie’s dead. So what do they do? They buy the script to bury it! Yes, this really happens. They will buy the script, whether it’s great, okay, or terrible, just to eliminate the competition.

So now you know Hollywood’s dirty little secret. Bad scripts do sell! But here’s the thing about all of the above examples: THEY DON’T APPLY TO YOU. Go back and read that capped sentence a dozen times. None of those examples apply to your situation. You don’t have agents or managers or the luxury of pitching movies over lunch to people who can actually make them. The ONLY thing you have…is your screenplay. And that’s why YOUR screenplay DOES have to be great.

And this goes back to what I was saying earlier. It takes time to even understand what “great” is. It takes writing half a dozen screenplays, studying all the major screenwriting books, reading at least 500 spec scripts, getting 100 people to give you feedback. It’s a humbling reality but learning how to write something awesome TAKES TIME.

I think the problem is that we hear these once every decade stories about Quentin Tarantino and Diablo Cody and we think that’s the only way to break in. “Nobody” to “Household Name” in less than 24 hours. Sure, if you’re singing on American Idol. But that’s not the way most screenwriters succeed in this business. Diablo Cody and Quentin Tarantino are the lotto winners. The rest of us have to earn our millions the old-fashioned way – through hard work and perseverance.

That means writing your first spec, making a million mistakes, writing another one, making half a million more, writing your third one, then entering it in contests, then sending query letters to managers who never get back to you, and even though you really don’t want to because you know it’s going to be awkward, calling that friend of a friend of a gaffer because he’s the only person you know in LA and begging him to read your script, and doing all that shit for two years until a manager finally calls you back and wants to hip-pocket you. It includes taking any meeting (in person or on the phone) and selling the shit out of yourself and finally getting a lousy $1500 re-rewrite on an awful independent horror film even after your manager disappears with the money and you’re forced to do it for free. Then taking more meetings and landing a few more small gigs and through the connections you’ve made, finding an agent. Then getting some even bigger jobs, and maybe becoming a jr. writer on a TV show that ends up becoming a cult hit, and using that buzz to rewrite some direct-to-DVD sequel for a movie you actually watched in the theater, and then, through this vast network of connections you’ve created during all this time, going to your top 5 contacts when you’re finally convinced that your action-adventure masterpiece in the vein of Indiana Jones is ready, and pitching it to them. And having them all say no to you, and then seriously considering giving up this crazy business because all it is is a bunch of heartache and then getting a call from someone you don’t remember and having them explain that you sent them a script seven years ago when they were a gaffer, and now they’re a producer at Warner Brothers and they just read your script and thought it was amazing, but it’s not quite what they’re looking for, but oh by the way, do you happen to have anything in the action adventure genre? Maybe something like Indiana Jones?…………And somehow, one week later, you did it. You sold a fucking screenplay.

And if that sounds like the most miserable experience ever to you, then I’m going to be honest here. You probably aren’t cut out for screenwriting. Because this is how people usually find success in this business. And for those who stick around, it’s wonderful, because you realize at some point that it was never about the spec sale in the first place. It was about your love of writing.

So I’ll say it again. The one thing that you have 100% control over in this crazy industry, is writing the best script you’re capable of writing. That’s it. Don’t get caught up in whether some shitty script sells and what that means for your writing. That doesn’t have any bearing on you whatsoever. You just need to write the BEST SCRIPT you’re capable of writing. That’s it. And if you keep doing that, over and over again, at a certain point, you just may write something amazing…that sells…to a gaffer.

A lot of you guys write in asking me where I get my scripts, where I find out about new scripts, and where I get my information in general. Well first of all, I can read minds. So a typical afternoon finds me hanging outside CAA and just psychic-ly stealing information. When I’m too lazy to do that though, I get my info from the miracle of tracking boards.

Tracking boards are private online sites that provide insider industry information. They tell you which spec scripts are being sent around town, which specs are selling, which are failing to sell, which writers are picking up assignments, which scripts are getting heat, what studios they’re getting heat at, etc. etc. As a writer, this is really valuable information. Being able to track which genres and concepts are flooding the market, and where they ultimately end up (or don’t end up), is an essential component to choosing how you want to approach the market with your screenplay.

Tracking boards also update you on job openings (i.e. a personal assistant job for a producer, assistant at an agency), new project attachments, TV pilot happenings, festival info, private screenings, and a whole bunch of other info. What can you do with this information? It’s up to you. For example, it you’re a sci-fi writer and you’re getting ready to query some agents, it would be nice to know which agents are sending out a lot of sci-fi specs.

If you’re serious about the craft of screenwriting (or becoming an agent, manager, producer, etc), if you want to excel in not just the writing side of this business, but the selling side, it’s a good idea to join a tracking board. The one I live and die by is “The Tracking Board (www.tracking-board.com).” Now one of the great added benefits of this specific board is that besides all that other stuff, they also have over 12,000 scripts in their library. That’s about 30 times as many scripts as I’ve reviewed on the site. So if you can’t get enough reading like me, that alone is reason to join. The normal price to sign up is $59.00/yr. but I’ve reached out to these guys to get Scriptshadow readers a 25% discount for the months of May and June (via the button below). This is a super deal so I wouldn’t wait.

We’re wrapping up “Amateur Month” this week. The first week, we allowed any writers to send in their script. The second week we had repped writers only. Last week we had Favorites Week. This week is going to be wonky but all you need to know is I’m throwing in one more Favorite. Welcome…to The Incident!

Genre: Sci-Fi/Paranormal Thriller
Premise: A small documentary team goes back to a Russian mountain, the site of one of the world’s most famous unsolved mysteries, to try and figure out what really happened there.
About: This is an interesting situation. Russ was somewhat reluctant to let me review “The Incident” on the site. Not for any SS related reasons though. Even though the script secured him his first manager a few years ago, he sees it as more of a “stepping stone” than anything else. He doesn’t think it’s good enough. I think he’s way off course. We tend to get bored with our ideas after we’ve worked on them forever. But we forget that each time someone reads our script, it’ll be their very first time. He may have been discouraged by The Nichol Contest, of where The Incident didn’t even make it out of the first round! Normally, my experience has been that if a script doesn’t advance in a contest, it doesn’t deserve to. But this flat out shocks me. I mean, even if you didn’t like the story, you can’t argue that the writing’s solid as hell. This may have more to do with Nichol’s notorious obsession with weighty fare, but it’s a great reminder: Don’t let the Nichol contest (or any contest) be the end all be all to gauging your screenplay or your writing. Keep fighting.
Writer: Russ Bryant
Details: 103 pages

Russ is an old-fashioned guy who believes in hard work and perseverance. Like a lot of the people who’ve been featured on Favorites Week, he’s been writing for a long time, becoming a student of the craft and steadily getting better. It’s something I remind every screenwriter. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You’re probably going to write five scripts before you write anything good. Embrace that process instead of trying to circumvent it. If you try to hit a home run on the first pitch, it will only lead to a lot of misses and a lot of frustration. I want to talk more about that tomorrow. But for right now, let’s discuss his script.

Serious-as-cancer Hugh Moore investigates incidents, specifically the unsolved kind. This planet has been known to spit out some pretty strange happenings. Hugh is the scientist who goes in and spits them back in. No, this isn’t a goofy episode of Fringe with Pacey mugging for the camera. This is a story about a committed man who seeks out the truth at all costs.

The holy grail of unsolved incidents has always been the Dyatlove Party. In 1959, a group of Russian friends took a ski trek up the notoriously spooky Yural Mountain. Weeks later, they were all found dead. Two were in the trees, three were trying to return to camp, and four others were buried, with massive internal injuries but no external ones. The Russian army quickly closed off the area and investigated, but the case was never solved.

Now an all expenses paid trip with scientific equipment and foreign guides to Yural Mountain isn’t cheap. So when Hugh is offered everything paid in full IF he agrees to allow a documentary crew to follow him, he agrees only because he knows this may be his only shot.

Joining him will be Eli, his sketchy producer, Tara, his old girlfriend and former partner, a 3-man production crew, a hotshot mountain climber named Chad Baker, a beautiful Russian cultural anthropologist named Ania, and 70 year old Yerik, a member of the original search team.

Up to the mountain they go and the tension equals the altitude. The producer wants some meaty conflict for the camera – preferably Hugh and Tara rehashing old problems – but all Hugh wants to do is figure out what doomed those poor souls back in 1959.

Tara, a bit of an eccentric, is leaning towards aliens being involved. There have been numerous sightings of strange crafts around the mountain throughout the years. It’s conceivable they may have attacked the group. Ania believes that a native tribe known as the “Mansi” murdered them. Others believe it was an avalanche. But no single theory can explain all of the deaths, which is why Hugh is here. He thinks a straight-forward scientific approach is the key to finding the answers.

Except he won’t get the chance. Almost immediately, things start going wrong. On the first night, there’s a minor avalanche, which separates the group. Some members spot a light off in the distance. They choose to follow it. Others find footprints, which they also follow, only to find that they abruptly stop. How do footsteps stop?

And then it gets really bad. The group is split up in a way that’s eerily reminiscent of the team from 1959. They’re starting to see things that don’t make sense, do things that defy rational explanation. This isn’t a story about finding out what happened that fateful night. It’s a story about getting off this mountain alive.

The first thing I want to point out here is something that’s so crucial to writing a good screenplay. We get into this story right away. We don’t start off watching our protagonist sit in the park. We don’t see him having a couple of deep conversations with friends and family, updating them on what’s going on in his life. We don’t watch him drive up Highway 1, searching for meaning, wondering if he should continue his career or move on to something else. We don’t wait 30 pages for our hero to start talking to people that actually have something to do with the story.

No. We jump into the story RIGHT AWAY. The very first scene is Hugh explaining to the documentary financers what the Dyatlov Incident is. And it’s such a fascinating story, we’re immediately intrigued. And it doesn’t stop there. We actually GET ONTO the mountain by page 13. Page 13!! An inexperienced writer wouldn’t have us there til page 50. This is such a basic rule, but it’s one I see ignored in almost every amateur screenplay I read. Get to your story RIGHT AWAY. You don’t have time to diddle-daddle.

Now while the entire first half of the script is almost perfect, it starts running into some trouble in the second half. Character motivations get sloppy. Geographically we don’t really understand where everyone is or what’s going on. But most importantly, the explanations behind the mysteries are too vague. The thing I’ve found with this kind of movie is that the more clear your explanations are, the better. If you can explain the movie’s central mysteries in a single sentence, you’re on the right track. But when your explanations start reaching paragraph length, and it sounds more like you’re trying to convince the reader than simply tell them, that’s a really bad sign.

Another issue is that there isn’t enough inter-character or internal character exploration going on. A second act is really less about the plot and more about the issues the characters are experiencing. Them trying to grow and overcome those issues, whether they be within themselves or with someone else, is what keeps us entertained. So in Aliens, for example, the middle act was more about trust than it was about the aliens. Ripley doesn’t trust these marines when they get to the planet. Her skepticism is verified when Burke tries to hide an alien inside of her. When Newt disappears, it’s about living up to the trust Ripley promised her. And in the end it’s about Ripley trusting Bishop to wait for her, even though he signifies the core of her distrust (dating back, of course, to the android deceiving her from the first Alien). That’s a lot of character stuff going on in what’s supposedly a big dumb movie about killing aliens.

There are shreds of character issues here in The Incident, such as past relationship issues with Hugh and Tara, but it’s too ill-defined to warrant any true emotional investment. So I think if Russ would’ve focused more on the characters here in this act, and less on the bells and whistles (mysteries and twists), he would’ve been in better shape.

But the ending here is the real issue. Like I mentioned above, it’s too muddled to satisfy our appetite. And I think the same rules about the second act apply. The concept gets the audience in the door. But the character’s journeys are what keep them around. And I know I’m going to get roasted for this but I don’t care. I thought Lost did a brilliant job in their finale on focusing on the character issues as opposed to the more tempting plot revelations. The entire episode was about characters finding redemption, coming to terms with their faults, and resolving the conflicts between each other. Although it would’ve been tempting to build the ending around one giant twist or revelation, it never would’ve worked. Emotionally, we got way more out of seeing these characters come full circle.

Now I’m not saying you should totally abandon plot in your endings. You still have to conclude your story. Haley Joel Osmet still needed to see dead people. But your focus should always be on the characters first. The plot ending is icing on the cake. I think had Russ taken this approach (or if he does take this approach in the future), he could create something amazing.

It sounds like I’m tearing down the script here but I’m not. I think this script, particularly with Russ’ talent, has the kind of potential to not only get purchased, but to become an actual movie. So I’m curious, after you read it, what your suggestions will be to conclude this in a satisfactory manner. Cause I have a lot of hope for this screenplay. Take a look and tell me what you think.

Script link: The Incident

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

What I learned: How to introduce a character the right way! The Incident isn’t perfect in this respect, but I noticed that more times than not, Russ got it right. Amateur writers make the mistake of thinking they can introduce a character like this: “JOE, tall and skinny,” and we’ll know exactly what they look like, exactly who they are, and exactly what’s going on in their heads, FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THE STORY. We don’t know your character from Adam. Just because you know where he went to school in 3rd grade doesn’t mean we know. We only know WHAT YOU TELL US. So there are two things you can do when you introduce your character to make sure we never forget him/her. First, give us an awesome description. Something that lets us know exactly who the character is. Here’s a description of Colter from Source Code: “Colter looks to be thirty years old. A military buzz cut. A disciplined physique, lean and spare, almost gaunt. Skin burnished by hears of desert sandstorms and equatorial sun. His expression, prematurely aged by combat, is perpetually wary, sometimes predatory, accustomed to trouble.” Now that’s a little longer than I’d prefer, but you tell me you don’t know exactly who that guy is after the description is over. And tell me you don’t know a million times more about Colter than this guy: “JOE, tall and skinny.”

Second, put your character in a surrounding that tells us exactly who they are. This isn’t always possible because the intricacies of your story (and where your characters need to be) may prevent it. But if you can do, do it. For example, if they’re a famous mountain climber, we should meet them on the most dangerous mountain in the world (which is how we meet Chad here). If they’re a ladies man, introduce them at a bar, chatting up a woman, then getting a text from ANOTHER woman. You get the idea. If we SEE the characters in the element that best represents them, that goes way beyond just knowing what they look like.

Always do at least one of these when you’re setting up your characters, but I’d strongly suggest you do both. If you do it right, I promise you the reader will know that character better than he knows his own best friend.

We’re wrapping up “Amateur Month” this week. The first week, we allowed any writers to send in their script. The second week we had repped writers only. Last week we had Favorites Week. This week is going to be wonky. Roger will review another “random” Amateur script. Tomorrow I’ll review another of my favorites. Wednesday I’m busting out an article that I hope will be inspirational for all you writers. Thursday is still undetermined. And Friday I’ll be reviewing the script for an upcoming sci-fi/horror movie which I really liked.

I’ve also decided to continue the tradition of reviewing amateur screenplays. On the last Friday of every month, I’ll review one amateur script. The angle will be more one of helping to improve the screenplay than flat out reviewing though, so we all learn something from it. If you’re interested (and you can handle criticism!), send me your script along with a convincing argument for why I should read it to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Don’t be upset if I don’t choose your script. I’ll only be able to review .1% of the entries!

Also, don’t forget to check out the “Tracking Board Post.” Now here’s Roger with “The Beat Down.”

Genre: Crime, Black Comedy
Premise: Two cool, small-time cons steal a lotto ticket worth $100,000 and hit the road in search of someone straight to cash it for them.
About: One more Amateur Script, in which the writer made a convincing case on why I should give the script a read: He wants honest feedback and recommendations for how to fix his script.
Writer: Matt Racicot

During the middle of Amateur Week, I received an email that made me laugh. The first few sentences implied that the writer thought this month’s theme transformed ScriptShadow into some sort of bloody, experimental gladiatorial arena, or at the very least a classroom where the walls were stained with the dregs of 3-hole-punch dreams and cots full of rookie writers and bruised egos.

The writer, against all odds and conventional wisdom, wrote to me, expressing that he wanted his script to be in on the action. He seemed to be a guy that had been keeping tabs on the type of material I like, as evidenced by his script’s logline. A crime story about some cool cons trying to find a legit citizen to cash their winning stolen lotto ticket. Visions of Charlie Huston and Elmore Leonard protagonists strapped into a rollercoaster ride of Grindhouse Violence were swirling on the movie screen inside my head.

I wasn’t totally convinced though. This was an unknown writer, and would he really want me to criticize his labor of love in front of the online Screenwriting Community?

But then I read this line: “I wanna know what’s wrong with my script so I can fix the fucker…”

And that clinched it for me.

So in the spirit of the critique workshop, I’ve decided to review Matt Racicot’s “The Beat Down”.
Who are the cool cons this caper is about?

James is a Jimmy Dean-cool, small-time con (I really enjoyed some of the character descriptions here), and when we meet him he’s standing under a single lamppost, surrounded by Asian gangbangers. Him and his associate Sam, work for the Italians, but they’ve both been caught stealing heroin from the Asians, and are about to be appropriately punished.

The Italians, wanting to continue business with the Asians, give up James and Sam to smooth things over. In situations like this, I’d imagine that this crime syndicate would kill both men for their transgressions, but no, they hand James a gun and force him to shoot Sam dead. And that he does, although he doesn’t seem to feel much guilt about the deed, shrugging off this peculiar brand of punishment.

Diamond is James’ pinup sexy, Rockabilly girlfriend.

I really like how the writer describes Diamond, “As lovely as a rain drop dancing on a rose.” I think it captures a tone and style I wish was woven throughout the script.

Diamond works in a convenience store, and she does something interesting in her introduction: A customer arrives with a lottery ticket he wants her to check. She runs it through her machine and discovers it’s a winning ticket. But instead of handing it to him, she drops it and switches it with another ticket before handing it back.

So Diamond totally scams this guy out of a $100,000 lotto ticket?

Yep. And you think that’d be all she wrote. Our cool couple cashes in their ticket and they live happily-ever after like the minimum-wage kids Clarence and Alabama in True Romance.
Except there’s two complications. One is that James is an ex-con and the ticket “will come up stolen. They investigate this shit now.”

The second complication is Mickey.

Mickey is the guy James takes orders from with the mob, and he’s not so much pissed at the fact that James was stealing from the Asians, but that he got caught. As far as Mickey is concerned, James owes a debt, but he’s willing to wipe the slate clean if he leaves Seattle in the next twenty-four hours.

Fair enough.

But for reasons I didn’t quite understand, when Mickey catches wind that James and Diamond have skedaddled, he tracks their movements, learns that they’re making a pit-stop in Eugene, Oregon on their way to California.

When I look over it, I think it’s implied that Mickey is obsessed with Diamond, but I’m not sure. Otherwise why would he follow a guy across state-lines when he wanted him to flee town in the first place?

And that’s one of the issues with the script, character-wise. The motivations aren’t consistent, and there are setups without payoffs; and payoffs without setups. Which makes the plot a bit confusing and scattered.

So James and Diamond go on a quest to find someone straight to help them cash their lotto ticket?

That’s the concept. But, the execution doesn’t fulfill the promise of the concept. I was intrigued by the first act, and couldn’t deny that there was talent in the writing, although the dialogue wavered from entertaining to trying-to-hard.

But the script fell apart for me in the second act, which is usually the case with rookie scripts. They start to wander, unsure of plot. It seems like the characters lose sight of their goals, and scenes begin to feel tangential, distracted.

It’s basically filler.

In the second act, the script begins to focus a lot on another couple that was introduced in the first act, Bea and Will. They’re driving in a mustang, and we learn that Bea is an eccentric actress preparing for an audition. She’s reciting Irwin Shaw’s Bury the Dead.

She seems pretty crazy, which is confirmed when she randomly pulls out a gun to the surprise of Will, her intellectual boyfriend. She seems a bit like Mallory from Natural Born Killers, except Will is no Mickey. He’s pretty reserved.

He almost gets into a wreck when she starts giving him road head in their introductory scene.
They get a lot of screen time, and I began to feel unsure of which couple I was supposed to focus on. Because they don’t feel like a real foil to James and Diamond, their existence felt extraneous.
Of course the couples collide in Mt. Hood, Oregon, when they end up neighbors in the same motel. Bea seems attracted to James, and we learn that James isn’t that interested in his own girlfriend, Diamond.

I was confused about this point because he seemed pretty happy to be with her in the beginning, even if he wasn’t able to return her ‘I Love You’s’. This point seemed undeveloped, and I didn’t understand their relationship. Why were they together? Why were they engaged if he didn’t love her? I wasn’t shown a reason.

So when James takes Will out to a bar, and starts hitting on all the girls there, I was not only confused, but I began to dislike his character.

After a crazy night, James decides that Will is the guy that can help them cash the lotto, and things get dicey when Mickey arrives looking to snatch Diamond away from James.
It all comes to a head at a campsite on a mountain road when infidelities are revealed, a marriage proposal is rejected, and guns come out.

What were the issues?

The characters were underdeveloped. I wasn’t sure who James was or what he wanted. I know he wanted to cash the ticket, but why was he with Diamond? He felt one-dimensional, and I never got a solid read on his psychology or what lengths he would go to in order to cash the ticket. As such, there was no inner-conflict (his flaw) I could really hook into other than that he was an asshole, which just made him unlikeable.

Setups with no payoffs. In one of James’ first scenes, we learn that he’s obsessed with Bruce Lee and martial arts. He also owns a samurai sword, which he brings with him on the road trip. Now, I was expecting a few things here: James beating people up, or possibly doing something crazy to someone with a fucking samurai sword. But…no dice. It ultimately gets thrown into some bushes.
Payoffs with no setups. James cheats on Diamond various times, but I didn’t understand his motivation. He’s engaged to Diamond, and seems pretty okay with that. There’s one point where it even seems like he’s in love with Diamond by the way they talk to each other, and he didn’t feel like the type of character that would be a cheater at all.

The plot was unsure of itself. The pace was too mellow for such a cool logline. Lots of scenes of characters talking, but it doesn’t feel like anything is happening. I really felt like the ball was concerning the execution.

No ticking clock. No stakes. Which contributed to the leisurely pace.

But how could we fix it?

I think the writer should focus on telling this story from the focus of his main couple. Let them have the majority of the scenes, and really define who they are and think character motivations and plot details through.

For example, why did Mickey follow them out of town so doggedly? A fix could be that they stole the ticket from him, and basically you have him hunting them for a payday. Or, maybe he’s Diamond’s ex-boyfriend or ex-pimp, and this is a personal matter for him.

I like that we got to the lotto ticket business in the first ten minutes, and I think the script needs to pick up the pace and keep it. Make it a chase movie instead of a languid road-trip tale.

Perhaps throw in some other parties who are interested in the ticket as well, anyone from more people from Diamond’s past or James’ enemies.

To make things interesting, do a reversal concerning the so-called straight people they need to cash the ticket. For all we know, they seem alright, but then spin it so that they’re actually worse than our cool cons. They can double-cross our anti-heroes.

Hell, you could even write it as a movie about love, leaving and resolution. What if James loved Diamond, but Diamond left him when she got the ticket? And he had to pursue her and they had to resolve their relationship?

Either way, the plot needs to be tightened with more obstacles getting in the way of the protagonist’s clear goals, but it should serve the story of James and Diamond’s relationship. The story should be about them and the conflict in their relationship and how they ultimately resolve it.

Script Link: The Beat Down

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

What I learned: Give your protagonist as much screen time as possible. They should not only be in the majority of the scenes, but they should also have most of the biggest moments. It’s hard to pull off an ensemble piece because every character has to have solid motivations and compelling arcs and concrete goals that payoff accordingly. It’s hard to pull off dueling protagonists, or in this case, couples, as it always feels like one pair is stealing valuable time away from the other’s story, or is diminishing it somehow. Ask yourself, okay, whose story here is worth-telling? Whose is more compelling? That character is the engine of your story. Focus on them.