Genre: Indie Drama
Premise: An illegal immigrant in Los Angeles tries to start his own gardening business, only to see it ripped away from him, threatening he and his son’s future.
About: So you just directed one of the Top 20 franchise pictures of all time. You’re offered the opportunity to direct the next two movies in the franchise and probably double your already large salary in the process. Do you do it? Not if you’re Chris Weitz, who many of you know as the director of Twilight: New Moon, About A Boy, or, if you go back a ways, American Pie. No, Weitz said, I would rather direct a tiny independent film about an illegal immigrant living in LA who speaks in subtitles and that, in all likelihood, will be seen by 1/1000 the amount of people who saw Twilight. Had you heard that story, you’d probably call the guy nuts, right? I mean who walks away from all that money and power? Except it makes a little more sense when you consider Weitz’s path. The producers of the Golden Compass didn’t consult their moral compass when they dumped all over Weitz’s vision and basically pried the movie from his furious hands. And while his experience on Twilight was supposedly better, indications from an under-enthused press tour imply that he didn’t exactly have a blast on that film either. So there’s something very comforting about going back to a world where nobody looks over your shoulder (particularly in this case, where even if they did, they wouldn’t understand what the hell the actors were saying). And I, for one, admire Weitz for turning down the dough. The question is, did he turn it down for the right project? And that’s where we segue to Eric Eason, the writer of “The Gardener.” Eric is a writer-director himself, and this is the first script he’s written that someone else will direct (his most well known work is 2006’s “Journey To The End Of The Night,” starring Brendan Fraser and Mos Def. The plotline sounds surprisingly similar: “The tale of a son and his father separately plotting to escape the desolation of their lives in the lurid underworld of Brazil’s sex industry.” – I, like you, am hoping Brendan Fraser does not play Mos Def’s father) Anyway, it’s always exciting to see a passion project come to the big screen. So let’s see what it’s about.
Writer: Eric Eason
Details: 121 pages – Sep 20, 2009 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).

Those who have read this script have described it as “heartbreaking,” “honest,” and “beautiful.” Sounds like an Oscar advertising campaign to me. But it’s rare I hear those kinds of adjectives thrown around with scripts these days. So I wanted to be prepared. Now I don’t personally own any Kleenex because, you know, I’m a man and I don’t cry. But let’s just say if I did – and I don’t – but if I did, I would’ve placed them directly to the right of me just in case, all things considered, anything happened. Of course nothing would and I don’t own any Kleenex so this is all hypothetical but I’m just saying.

“The Gardener” is about a 40 year old immigrant worker from Mexico named Carlos Riquelme, who illegally lives in Los Angeles, California. Carlos used to dream of a bigger life. But after having a child and watching his wife leave him for another man, Carlos’s grand plans descended, like so many do, into just trying to make it through the day. The problem is, Carlos is at a crossroads. The man he works for, another immigrant, is retiring, and when that happens, Carlos won’t have an employer anymore. This means he’ll have to go all the way back to the bottom, working the corners of the lumber yards and the Home Depots, hoping to get picked for work every day. Not exactly stable income.

Carlos has an option though. His boss is offering to sell him his pick-up truck along with all his gardening tools for 14 thousand dollars. With it, Carlos can start his own business, and maybe, just maybe, finally get a shot at those dreams he had when he was younger. The problem is, Carlos isn’t legal. He can’t officially own the truck. He can’t officially get a license. So if he were to get pulled over for any reason, it’d be a trip on the Tijuana Express. Now even if Carlos *were* to explore that option, he doesn’t have the money. He can’t afford the truck. And, in all honesty, he can’t afford to risk getting deported and leaving his son here in America by himself. But his boss brings up a good point. On his current path, in his current East L.A. neighborhood, it’s only a matter of time before his 14 year old son starts gangbanging. They both see it. They both know it. So if Carlos doesn’t find a way to pull himself out of this poverty, out of this neighborhood, and into a new life, his son is fucked anyway. As far as he’s concerned, his boss says, Carlos can’t afford *not* to buy the truck.

So with the help of his sister, Carlos scrapes together the money and buys the truck. And in that moment, Carlos has never felt more hope. He’s actually doing it. He’s actually living the American dream. He immediately heads down to “Workers’ Corner” and grabs an honest-looking Salvadorian man, heading off for his first job in Beverly Hills as his own boss. And as he climbs up that first tree, preparing to clip it, he can only watch in horror as the Salvadorian man snatches his keys and phone, runs off, and STEALS HIS TRUCK. Carlos slides down the tree and barrels after him, but it doesn’t matter. He’s long gone. Carlos has just lost everything. Faced with this terror, Carlos grabs his son and the two go on a hunt through Los Angeles to find the Salvadorian and get the truck back.

Now I’m no expert, cause the only gardening I do is in Farmville. But from what I read, The Gardener plants a lot of the right seeds. Where this script truly shines though is in the way it raises the stakes. As I’ve mentioned before, amateur writers tend not to care about the stakes of their story. As a result, there are no real consequences to their characters’ actions. But if you know how to build stakes, you can make a tiny indie story just as riveting as the latest Steven Spielberg blockbuster. And that’s what we have here. First we find out Carlos is about to lose his job. Then we find out his kid will join a gang if he doesn’t get him out of the neighborhood. Then we find out he has to borrow the money to buy the truck, money he’ll then owe. Then we find out that even if he gets the truck, one traffic stop could send him back to Mexico. And on top of all of that, Eason stresses just how important it is for Carlos to provide for his son. For all these reasons, when that truck is stolen, you physically lift your hand to your mouth and say, “No.” It’s that powerful. It’s that horrifying.

In addition, Eason knows what to do once the truck *does* get stolen. That may seem obvious (FIND THE TRUCK!), but if all you show us is a bunch of attempts at getting the truck back, your story is going to get old fast. Eason has gently hinted at a rift between father and son in the earlier parts of the screenplay, so that when they’re finally forced together on this journey, the focus slyly shifts over to their broken relationship. And what I loved was how Eason approached that dynamic. It is so easy to turn a father/son relationship into a melodramatic mess of cornmeal mush. What Eason does to prevent this is he flips the old “son trying to earn his father’s respect” angle around to a father trying to earn his son’s respect. There’s something very, yes, heartbreaking about this approach. Carlos knows that his son sees him as some faceless illegal immigrant who whores himself out on a corner for work. That he is incapable of providing a real life for them. That he’s, for all intents and purposes, a screw-up. Watching Carlos try and reverse this perception is both sad and endearing. It really works well.

My only reservation about the script is ironically the thing I gave it the most credit for. Whereas the stakes were high in almost every respect, they weren’t high in the most important respect of all. The overarching threat throughout the story – if Carlos is caught by the police, he’ll be sent back to Mexico – isn’t really a threat at all. Several times throughout the script we’re reminded that if Carlos were to be deported, getting back to the United States would be a piece of cake. That unfortunately undermines every obstacle Carlos tries to overcome. Cause in the back of our minds we’re saying, “So he gets thrown out of the country for a week? Big deal.” This bothered me enough that it’s the key reason I didn’t give the script an impressive rating, which, throughout the first half, I was sure it would get.

However, this is an early draft, and there’s always the chance that this problem was addressed. Either way, this was a really entertaining script and there are enough powerful moments to make it a strong recommendation. If you like Sundance films or movies a little off the beaten path, check this script out for sure.

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

What I learned: This isn’t the prettiest script in the world. It has its share of bumps and bruises and screenwriting class, “You can’t do thats!”. For example, emotions are explained right there in the action lines (i.e., “When he was younger, upon arriving here in this country, he brought with him many dreams…”), paragraphs bloat up to ten lines long, and there are formatting issues scattered throughout. But here’s why I overlooked them: The emotional core of this script is awesome. No matter how clumsy your screenplay is, if you get the emotion down, the reader will forgive you. Focus on your characters. Focus on their journey. Focus on them overcoming their weaknesses and becoming stronger people by the end of the story. If you do that, the reader will forgive a lot.

Hmm, this week is going to be a little crazy. I’ll be contrasting today’s huge fanboy review with something tomorrow that’s so independent, I’m not even sure I know about it. And I read it! The good news is, the script was great. As for the rest of the week’s reviews, it’s still up in the air, so anything goes. But to ease the pressure of Uncle Sam’s ridiculous monetary demands this Thursday, I’ll be making a big announcement that should get all of you amateur screenwriters in a frenzy. So stay tuned because that opportunity will be coming before the end of the week. Right now, buckle yourselves up for another Roger review…

Genre: Crime, Prophetic Horror, Action
Premise: A former Pinkerton detective is resurrected as a Sifter, a bounty hunter tasked with going after people who have skipped out on destined meetings in Hades. When he’s ordered to hunt down a young artist, his past literally comes back to haunt him. He’s forced to team up with his deceased wife, now one of heaven’s operatives, to stop an impending apocalyptic event known as The Awakening.
About: “I Died a Thousand Times” is Aaron Drane’s sophomore screenplay. Drane went to film school at UCLA, where this script won the UCLA Samuel Goldwyn Award. In 1997, the script yielded a million dollar payday when it sold to Arnold Kopelson. He sold a couple more scripts to 20^th Century Fox and most recently wrote and produced the FEARnet web series, “Fear Clinic”, which stars iconic horror movie actors, Robert Englund and Kane Hodder.
Writer: Aaron Drane

Ironically, I never heard of this script until my friend let me wander around in his mystical script vault, which turned out to be kind of like the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark, except the relics on these shelves were unproduced and forgotten screenplays. I got lost among the shelves of scripts, overwhelmed and paralyzed by the paradox of choice. Four hours later, I finally escaped the labyrinth with brass brads in my hair and paper cuts on my fingers, armed with a copy of Aaron Drane’s “I Died a Thousand Times” (not to be confused with the 1955 remake of High Sierra), a spec that purportedly sold for a million bucks back in 1997.

Genre: Action/Heist
Premise: A group of modern-day pirates descend upon a coastal town, using a hurricane as cover for a bank heist.
About: David Chappe, the writer of Gale Force, was once known as THE go-to reader in Hollywood. He read and wrote coverage for over 5000 SCREENPLAYS!!! Now just think about that for a second. Even if you’re reading and doing coverage on 3 scripts a day (which would melt the average person’s brain), assuming you work every day of the year, it would take you 4 and a half years to cover 5000 scripts. But Chappe’s story gets even better. After all those years on the development side, he wrote a screenplay of his own. The script, Gale Force, went out and sparked a bidding frenzy, eventually selling for 500,000k. Up until that point, huge bidding wars for specs hadn’t happened. Gale Force, believe it or not, was the script that officially started the notorious spec bidding wars of the 90s. Unfortunately, like so many script casualties, it got thrown into rewrite hell and never recovered. Sylvester Stallone and Renny Harlin were two weeks away from production on it, when they made the call to ditch the project and switch over to Cliffhanger. Poor Gale Force was forgotten. Chappe, who had a long successful career doctoring scripts after his Gale sale, passed away in 2002.
Writer: David Chappe
Details: 1989 spec sale draft

Over the years I kept hearing about Gale Force, but as a pirate script. For that reason I opened it up expecting, I don’t know, pirates! Naturally, I was confused when it was not Captain Jack Sparrow’s long lost cousin I did see, but…a green Subaru station wagon? Darshee blows? Hmm, I thought, maybe this was a time traveling pirate flick. But why would pirates want to time travel here? And what did they want with a green Subaru? I would soon come to realize that the pirates we would be watching in Gale Force didn’t don hand knit puffy shirts and ridiculously oversized jewelery. They were just boring old modern day pirates. Snore. I was bummed!

I considered taking a dive off the plank and swimming back to shore, but something kept me reading. Will Smith is said to have a method by which he reads scripts. He gives them five pages. And if he’s still interested after five pages, he gives them five more pages. If, at any point, he’s not interested any more, he stops reading the script. For a man as busy as he is, I guess that method makes sense. But it did lead to him signing on to Seven Pounds. Well, I’ve kinda adapted this method for scripts I don’t have to read. Except I have a 1 page rule. I inch through it page by page, and as long as there’s something pulling me forward in each of those pages, whether it be a mystery or an intriguing character or whatever, I’ll keep going. And that’s exactly what happened with Gale Force. I kept going and I never stopped.

The story is about Willie Peacock, a former Navy Seal who works the docks on a small South Carolina town. But after suspicious behavior gets him canned, he decides to head down to Florida to find a new job. It so happens that on the way is the town he grew up in, Fort Foster, and he decides to stop there to visit some old friends.The picturesque seaside town is one of those cute paradises that tourists swarm to in the summer. But we soon find out this is no paradise for Peacock. Turns out Mr. Navy Seal used to have a drinking problem and killed a child in a drunk driving accident. Nobody there has forgotten. In short, Peacock’s about as welcome here as Tiger Woods is in Sweden.

It turns out it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks of Peacock though because the town is smack dab in the path of one of those “the sky is falling” hurricanes the Weather Channel gets such a hard on over. Things look so bad, that the sheriff orders an evacuation. While most everyone gets out, the love of Peacock’s life, the adorable but rough-around-the-edges Rye, ends up having to stay after her son suffers a surprise injury. Peacock tries to leave himself but gets kidnapped by Gage, the father of the son he crashed into and killed so long ago. Gage realizes this is his only chance to settle the score, and he’s not going to let it slip away.

Except that’s exactly what happens when a raft pulls up and a bunch of bad guys hop out who make the Die Hard terrorists look like male cheerleaders. The group is part of a slickly planned pirate operation. A huge tanker trolls the ocean waters, heading to coastal towns forced to evacuate when hurricanes roll in, then simply plucks the money out of the unattended banks and moves on. Normally these operations go smoothly because robbing a bank isn’t difficult when there’s no one to stop you. But that’s before they run into Willie Peacock. That’s before they run into the man trying to redeem himself by defending the town he ruined.

The rest of the story plays out kind of like Die Hard, where Peacock slips through the town’s crevices and picks off the baddies one by one, all while trying to find and protect Rye. And I have to say, it’s really well done. I mean, of all the Die Hard rip-offs I’ve read and seen throughout the years, this is clearly the best. It never reaches the heights of that movie, but man does it come close at times.

It’s unfortunate really. Because first and foremost, it’s a really good movie idea. And they had everything they needed in this spec draft. But of course they probably diddled with the characters and the plotlines, not realizing that they were shredding the very fabric that made it such a wonderful script. It confounds me when studios/directors/actors don’t realize what they have. There are times when a script gets through the system because of its concept, and yes, those scripts need rewrites. But the good ones don’t, and Gale Force is one of the good ones.

Does it feel inspired by the 80s? Yes, at times it does, and if Gale Force has weaknesses, it is the callbacks it makes to the movies of that admittedly cheesy era. But what I liked about this script was that there’s also an authentic independent sensibility to it. If you took out the tanker and the heist, these characters would still have an interesting story to tell, and you just don’t see that in a lot of high concept screenplays.

I think what’s hurt this script over the years, when people try to go back and look at it, is that you can’t escape the vision of Stallone in the role, since he was attached, and therefore they visualize it in the wrong way. This wasn’t originally a Stallone vehicle, and I actually read it without knowing Stallone was involved. With that mindset, the IQ of this script goes up a good 50 to 60 points.

Like Executive Decision, like The Cheese Stands Alone, Gale Force is something that, with a little nipping and tucking, could easily be a great movie today. But Hollywood doesn’t like to revive failed projects. It takes a young visionary with balls and a “never-say-die” attitude to get the forgotten back into the development mix. Is that person out there? Will Gale Force rise again? I don’t know. But I hope so.

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

What I learned: We’re going with something basic today. Exposition! Specifically exposition about your main character. As most writers know, NEVER HAVE YOUR MAIN CHARACTER TELL OTHER CHARACTERS ABOUT HIS PAST. It’s boring as hell and always feels forced. But there are always key elements of your hero’s past that you want to convey. One of the most common ways to achieve this is “the resume” device. You basically have someone else read off who your character is from their “resume.” So in a job interview with our protagonist, the interviewer might pick up his resume and offer, “Dropped out of Harvard your junior year. Started your own shipping business. Sold the company after three years. Moved to Africa to do some Mission Work. Wow, Mr. Reeves, you’ve led quite a life.” There are tons of variations of “the resume.” Here in Gale Force, Peacock’s boss fires him, using his rap sheet as a resume moment: “You know we got the sheet on you Peacock. Five years in the State Pen for Involuntary manslaughter.” Boom. Notice it doesn’t have to be long. It just gets to the point, slyly giving us an important piece of information about our protagonist’s past. Be inventive. You can use “the resume” device a thousand different ways!

Genre: Comedy
Premise: (from IMDB) A series of bad investments forces a rich dysfunctional Midwest family to move to the sticks, seek out new friends and learn how to rely on each other.
About: “The Grigsby’s Go Broke” is one of a handful of unproduced scripts that John Hughes left behind, and the frontrunner to become John Hughes first posthumous film. For those who don’t know, Hughes dropped out of the University of Arizona in the late 1960s and began selling jokes to Joan Rivers and Rodney Dangerfield. He later became an advertising copywriter at Harper & Steers and then at Leo Burnett. He moved over to the National Lampoon magazine and penned a story called “Vacation ’58,” inspired by his family trips as a child. That story, of course, became the basis for “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” Hughes’ first big hit as a writer. After much success, in 1994, Hughes retired from the public eye and moved back to the Chicago area. He rarely gave interviews, save for promoting an independent film he wrote in 1999 called “Reach The Rock.” Although Hughes obviously made a lot of money in the business, it was a ridiculously sweet deal he got for Disney’s live-action “101 Dalmations,” which ensured that he’d “never have to work again.” He spent his later years farming, but did occasionally write under the pen name “Edmond Dantes.” While some say the pen name was because he wasn’t proud of the middle-of-the-road mainstream fair he was writing (Maid In Manhattan, Beethoven’s 5th, Drillbit Taylor), it’s unclear why he felt the need to write the movies in the first place, since, as pointed out, he didn’t need the money. It may be as simple as producer friends calling him and begging that he take a pass on their projects. Or maybe there’s another answer. I don’t know.
Writer: John Hughes
Details: March 2003, 2nd Draft – (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change greatly 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 meant to further the education of screenwriters).

I feel like it’s my duty whenever I read a John Hughes script to point out just how amazing I think he is. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is one of the top 5 comedies of all time. Hughes also wrote the great “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Sixteen Candles,” “Planes, Trains And Automobiles,” and “Home Alone.” Like I mentioned in my review of one of his other unproduced scripts, “Tickets,” Hughes hit a chord with young audiences that had never been hit before, portraying teenagers with a darkness that separated his comedies from everything else that had come before them. It’s what made John Hughes John Hughes.

So I don’t know how that all changed. Somewhere along the way, Hughes clearly lost interest in the genre, eventually concentrating exclusively on light family fair. It’s been talked about a lot that John Candy was a good friend of his, and that his death took a huge toll on Hughes, which would make sense. 1994, the year Candy died, is the same year Hughes went back to Illinois and disappeared out of the spotlight. Maybe that death scared Hughes away from exploring the dark side of his material. Maybe a bunch of his original specs were rejected and he lost confidence in himself – forcing him into a series of studio assignments. I think that’s the most frustrating thing about all this, is I’m still not clear if Hughes left that world willingly or unwillingly. Does anybody know? Anybody out there?

Anyway, it’s this very mystery that gets me excited whenever an old John Hughes’ script pops up. And so while the idea behind “The Grigsby’s Go Broke,” isn’t necessarily my thing, Hughes made it an immediate must read.

When we meet Gary and Judith Grigsby, at one of their rich friends’ mansions, they are not described to us, but rather lumped in to one general description that paints each of these upper class suburbanites as “rich” and “well-groomed.” In addition to this strange choice, the Grigsbys do very little in their opening scene besides stand around and listen to other people talk. I’m a big believer in introducing your characters in an interesting way, or at the very least a way that tells us who they are. Lester Burnham in American beauty jacks off in the shower cause his wife won’t have sex with him, then pathetically spills the contents of his briefcase all over the sidewalk on his way to the car. I know who that character is. Watching two characters listen for four minutes doesn’t exactly give me a read on the couple I’ll be following for the next two hours, which was a frustrating way to start a script.

Later on, we meet the rest of the Grigsbys, who live in a mansion of their own. Judith and Gary have a 12 year old stuck up daughter named Wendy (who gets upset when the tempura on her private school’s lunch menu is too greasy), an 11 year old snobby son named Damon (who finds joy in making fun of public school kids), and a four year old anti-christ named Gracie (who orders around the maid and the nanny as if she were Mussolini). This is clearly a family who, because of their extreme wealth, has lost all connection with the real world.

Which is too bad, because things are about to get a lot more sucky for them. Mr. Economy sneaks up from behind and karate chops Gary and Judith’s jobs away. Which would be bad enough. But the Grigsby’s break one of the cardinal rules of being rich, which is to not live above your means! (actually, this is good advice for anybody, regardless of your income. In particular, me) In order to take care of all their outstanding payments, they end up selling everything they own, which leaves them with even less money than Screech. The Grigsbys must then move to an old real estate property Gary bought and forgot about in the neighboring working class town of “Mulletville.”

You’d think that having to write “Mulletville” in your return address would be punishment enough. But this is only the beginning. Wendy regrets dogging her soggy tempura since now her lunch menu consists of a meat the lunch lady can’t even identify. Gary, who used to own his own construction business, must now WORK construction. Poor Judith has to work in a department store, where her bitchy former rich friends come to routinely be bitchy to her. And let’s not forget about Gracie, whose days of having a maid fetch her grapefruit juice are long gone. Now she has to compete with the voice boxes of 20 other kids her age in a, gasp, PUBLIC PRE-SCHOOL!

While the story is pretty straight-forward and the theme is fairly obvious (does money lead to happiness?) there are some astute observations about the ice-cold communities of the rich vs. the supportive and community oriented neighborhoods of the working class. This contrast is played out nicely in a scene where the new neighbors try to surprise the Grigsby’s, digging into their toolbox unannounced in an attempt to fix up their house. The Grigsby’s, unaccustomed to such camaraderie, assume they’re being robbed and call the police.

But watching the characters face the challenges of their new worlds is a bag of mixed nuts. When Gary embraces his job with the work-ethic that made him so successful in the first place, it’s charming, while Damon’s attempts to make friends with the kids he used to scorn feels clumsy. Eventually, a nice (believable) twist gives the family the choice of going back to their old lifestyle or staying here in their new one. They’ve no doubt become better people through this experience, but our society teaches us that money is the end-all be-all. Whether it makes us happy or not, we’re told to grab it if it’s there. So will the Grigsby’s give in? Or have they grown enough to recognize that having everything doesn’t lead to happiness?

While this draft of The Grigsby’s Go Broke still seems to be finding its way, there are some good things about it. It starts with the sugar-coated dictator known as Gracie. Although she’s the world’s biggest 4 year old bitch, her nastiness is endlessly entertaining, which is why her scenes, which could have easily had you rolling your eyes, actually have you lol’ing the most. Also good is the second half of the screenplay, which really begins to shine once the numerous setups in the early part of the script start paying off. And once we hit page 70, we’re on the John Hughes Autobahn, which is good, cause there were times where I wondered if we’d ever leave first gear.

The bad is the way “Grigsbys” handles its characters in the first act, who all come off as nasty, annoying, or a combination of the two. I’m actually surprised Hughes took on such a story because its burdened with a couple of well-known screenwriting “avoid-if-you-cans.” Ages ago a producer said to me, “Don’t make your lead character rich. Audiences don’t identify with rich people.” I used to think that was the dumbest advice I’d ever heard. But in the years since, most of the time I’ve read or watched a rich protagonist onscreen, I realized I didn’t like them. It’s hard to feel sorry for a guy who has his Kleenex boxes stuffed with 100 dollar bills. A family of Richie Riches who take their money for granted then lose all of it? And I’m supposed to feel bad for them?

This is complicated even further by an even bigger no-no, which is to never make your protagonist an asshole. Nobody likes assholes. Nobody wants to root for an asshole. Go ahead, count how many movies you love where the protagonist is an asshole. Do you make it past your right hand? Do you make it past your index finger? And here, every one of the Grigsbys is a giant asshole! So now you have five protagonists who are all rich and all assholes. How do we get on board with that??

Well here’s the thing. Being an asshole is a legitimate and interesting character trait to explore. Because wherever we go on our planet, there are always going to be assholes. You probably work for one right now. It’s just that, most of the time, this role is explored on the antagonist’s side, and we can deal with that, because we always have our nice cuddly protagonist to go back to. But if everybody in the entire movie is an asshole, who do you lean on then?

This leads to a question I’ve asked a million times , but still haven’t received a satisfactory answer for. How do you make your protagonist a big fat dick and still have us, the audience, root for him? To my knowledge, it’s only been accomplished a few times. There’s A Christmas Carol of course. Some would say “Cool Hand Luke.” Although I’d argue that Paul Neuman is way too charming to be considered an asshole in that film. Even in a best case scenario, there are only a few precedents for it working. And even when it does work, it only seems to do so by a hair.

For no good reason whatsoever: Justin Bieber

With Scrooge, we sympathize with him because early in the second act, we see that he used to be a good person. This “humanizing” of his bad behavior leads to our sympathy. However, had he had just one more scene screwing someone over, or had the Ghost Of Christmas Past showed up just five minutes later in the film, we may have solidified our opinion that Scrooge was a big bad douche and it didn’t matter what he did from now on, WE HATED HIM! You can see this mistake was made in remakes of the classic, where we don’t quite get on board with scrooge the way we did in the original film.

My point is, that while it’s possible to keep us invested in or even rooting for an unlikable protagonist, you stack the chips against you when you do it. And that’s what happened here in Grigsby’s. There’s something very alienating about these characters when they’re introduced to us, and that never quite goes away. Even when the script hits its stride, you never feel like you know these people.

The Grigsbys has its moments, and I hope to find later drafts of the script where I just know some of these issues have been taken care of, but this draft doesn’t quite have enough meat on the bone.

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

What I learned: Don’t forget to entertain us in the first act! Most of Grigsby’s problems can be attributed to the first act. In addition to the character issues, there’s not enough excitement going on . The act is used strictly as a device to set up the characters and the inciting incident (them losing their wealth). Now I’m not criticizing Hughes because he may use his early drafts to get all the logical stuff in, then go back and add all the fun and emotion later. I know a lot of people who work this way. I only bring this up because it’s evident in this draft and I’ve been seeing it in a lot of amateur scripts lately. When you’re writing your first act, don’t get so caught up in setting up all the elements (plot, character, subplots, theme) that you forget to entertain your reader. First and foremost your job is to entertain. So make sure everything you set up in your story is done so in a way that entertains us. It’s very easy to lose sight of this priority, because of all the shit you gotta pack in the script early, but you can never lose sight of this.

Josh Baizer and Marshall Johnson made big waves last year with their script, “Dead Loss,” about a crew of crab fisherman who pick up a drifting castaway with a mysterious cargo. It was one of my favorite scripts of the year, as well as one of Hollywood’s. Dead Loss landed on the Black List with 7 votes. It also became one of your favorites when you voted it your 24th favorite unproduced script. I wanted to thank Josh and Marshall again for doing this interview because they’ve been working extremely long hours on an assignment and were nice enough to take some time and answer my questions. There’s a ton of good advice in here so I hope you enjoy the interview.

SS: I know a lot of people want to know where to meet writing partners. How did you two get started writing together?

J: It’s definitely tough to find someone who’s willing to put up with you over the course of many long/stressful workdays. We actually met as assistants in development at Paramount (long hours/stressful conditions). We worked right next door to each other. When I realized I wasn’t going the exec route, I started writing on the sly, between phone calls. Marshall would give me notes…and it all kind of went from there.

SS: What were you doing before Dead Loss? Where were you in your writing careers?

J: We were doing whatever job we could find. Small rewrites. Even a little bit of TV. We’d actually gotten some traction after doing a rewrite on a script for a studio – but then the strike hit and it kind of put us back to square one.

MJ: Before DEAD LOSS, we had written a couple feature rewrites. One was within the studio system, and the other was for an independent producer. But we also had worked on a short-lived TV show and wrote some webisodes for ESPN.

SS: What inspired you to write Dead Loss?

J: Contrary to popular belief, it actually wasn’t a spec. It was a pitch on an open writing assignment. We’d had a general meeting with Jesse Johnston at Thousand Words right before the strike and he’d been a fan of the first script we’d written. During the meeting we discussed our mutual love for a certain cable television show. Months later, he called and asked if we’d be interested in coming up with a take for a movie set in the world of Alaskan crab fishing. It was pretty wide open – they were open to see anything from sci-fi, to horror, etc etc. At the end of the day, our take won out and they hired us to write it.

MJ: A year before we started working on DEAD LOSS, we had met with Jesse Johnston, an executive at Thousand Words, so we already had a good relationship with him, and he was a fan of our writing. Like us, Jesse, Jonah (Smith), and Palmer (West) were all big fans of THE DEADLIEST CATCH and they wanted to do something in that world. We came up with our DEAD LOSS story, pitched them, and they bought it.

SS: I liked how you built in conflict and mystery between your characters (particularly between the brothers). What is your approach to writing characters? What’s the key to writing a good one?

MJ: Good characterization can vary based on a lot of factors – genre, tone, story, etc. Obviously, the ultimate goal is for the characters to resonate with the audience, whether that’s a larger than life buffoon in an absurd comedy, or capturing the nuances and mannerism of a real life person in a biopic.

For DEAD LOSS, it was important for us to ground the crew in realism, so we did a lot of research on crab fishermen and their lives on and off the boat. A lot of the inspiration for the characters followed organically from that research. For instance, a lot of these boats are family owned and operated, and the the business is passed down from generation to generation. So it made sense to have the brother dynamic at the center of things. And even apart from the brothers’ blood relation, the entire crew on these boats becomes like a surrogate family. It’s a very difficult and dangerous job, so they have to trust each other when they’re out on the water or someone is going to get hurt or killed. Understanding those dynamics, it became much easier to look at what kinds of circumstances and conflicts would push these tough guys who live life on the edge to their breaking point.

SS: What’s your writing method in general? How much do you outline? What do you emphasize? Do you write a lot of drafts? How long do you write each day?

J: We’ve always treated it like a job, even when we were just starting out. We meet everyday for at least eight or nine hours. When there’s a deadline, the days definitely get longer – but even when we’re not actively writing on anything, it’s good for the sanity to have a strict structure. Though, when actively writing, we don’t necessarily emphasize time, but page count. Outlines are probably the most important part of our process. We try to get as detailed as possible before starting the draft, otherwise, we could find ourselves in trouble if the plot is particularly complex.

We definitely try to emphasize the tone and the world. Tone can be tough on some projects, but that oftentimes takes many drafts of tweaks in dialogue and character choices…so we tend to tinker with that for as long as we can. The world comes out of the research phase. It’s probably the stuff we love most. Our second script took place on an aircraft carrier and the navy allowed us to fly onto the USS Reagan and explore everything we needed for two days. That research helped a lot and allowed us to make the world believable.

MJ: Most of our projects generally start with a lot of research. We really enjoy exploring new subcultures and environments. In fact, I think in many ways screenwriting can be like journalism. From there you find your characters and storylines, etc, and things usually start to crystallize in an organic way – like I was saying before about DEAD LOSS.

And yeah, when we’re getting ready to write or pitch, we usually do a lot of outlining. Josh and I both are very logic-oriented, so we try hard to make sure everyone’s motivations make sense and that there aren’t any plot holes ahead of time. It’s time-consuming to be so thorough up front, but it usually pays off in the long run. As far as schedule goes, we’re pretty diligent about writing and treat it like a day job, working regular hours together most every day.

SS: I’m assuming you guys are fielding offers in the assignment market now. Could you tell us a little bit about that world? How does a writer get into a room to pitch his/her take on, say, “Clash of the Titans?” Would you guys be able to get into a room for that? Or is that a whole nother level?

J: For those who don’t know how it works, most times your last good script becomes your resume for open writing assignments available in that genre. Your reps will know what assignments are around and put you up for those jobs. Of course, the timing isn’t always so perfect – jobs may not be in abundance. So you’ll end up going on a lot of ‘general’ meetings with production company execs around town who have read your work and hopefully liked it. A lot of jobs come out of these generals, directly and indirectly. Good relationships help so much. We got DEAD LOSS from a general meeting the year before. We were able to get another rewrite job when a pitch on another project didn’t sell…but the studio exec liked us and liked our writing (and we were the right price at the time). With something like CLASH, I’ve seen how it works from the studio side as well as from the writers’ – execs will try and go with big name writers, but there’s always room for a young up and comer with an amazing sample to blow them out of the water and get the job. Again, relationships are huge. You never know what big producer will read your sample and champion you. A big job like CLASH is in the realm of possibility for guys like us, but we’d still be up against heavy hitters…so we’d need plenty of luck.

MJ: The assignment market is pretty tough right now. It seems like there are fewer jobs each year at all levels. But there are still opportunities, from high-profile gigs like CLASH to smaller budgeted projects at companies who are independently financed. Still, in every case it starts with someone liking your writing.

From there, it’s hard to generalize. Studios obviously have conservative reputations, so unless you’ve sold something or had a movie go into production, it’s more difficult to get a job there but still not impossible. Starting as an unknown quantity, it generally just takes time to build your fan base and for everyone in town to get to know you and your writing. So hopefully, when a big project like CLASH comes along, you already have a relationship with either the producer or the studio exec supervising the project, and they will remember how much they liked your script, or maybe they had already met with you and recall how you had mentioned being obsessed with Greek mythology or whatever. Then they’ll consider you for the project and give you a shot at coming up with a take for the movie. That scenario has happened to us many times, even with DEAD LOSS. But once you’re in consideration, it’s up to you to make the most of the opportunity and come up with a fantastic take that is in line with their vision of the movie.

SS: Do you have any particular screenwriting books or scriptwriters who inspired/helped you? Who do you suggest Scriptshadow readers read to learn about the craft?

J: I’ve never read a screenwriting book. But I’ve read many, many scripts. We’ve actually got a loose writers’ circle made up of a bunch of friends at various stages in their writing careers and it’s very helpful.

MJ: I took screenwriting in college, so that’s where I learned the basics, like formatting and act structure. But there are lots of books that can teach you that stuff too (Syd Field, Robert McKee, etc). And ultimately it is very important you have that understanding – not only for writing and crafting a script, but also for pitching and discussing projects. It’s the jargon of the industry, so you have to be able to talk about act breaks, structure, etc. But honestly I found that the absolute best education came from reading scripts. While working at Paramount, I must’ve read thousands of scripts – and there’s just as much to learn from the bad ones as the good. And of course now there are so many online resources, so you can go watch a movie, then download the script and see how it read on the page. It can be very helpful to see how certain things are communicated and get a taste of different writing styles.

SS: Writers deal with a lot of rejection, and are oftentimes unsure of where they are in the journey. Are they close to that magical sale? Do they have a ways to go? When did you guys know you were legitimately able to compete with professional writers in one of the hardest markets in the world? Is there a way for a writer to know when he/she’s made that step?

J: Probably getting our first paycheck. It made it seem real for the first time.

MJ: I think there are probably certain milestones that are important to people for different reasons. Getting a key producer or talent to read your material, or landing an agent or manager is obviously important. But for me, it was getting my first paycheck. It wasn’t a big one, but that was the when I felt legitimized as a professional writer. And the idea of the “magical sale” is tantalizing, but honestly the odds of a first spec selling are very low. Obviously it happens, and when it does, it’s great and those Cinderella stories often make news, but speaking practically, it truly is a marathon and not a race. So I think as long as you’re continuing to progress in your career, enjoying it, and paying your bills (however that may be), then persistence is key. Just try to keep perspective on the bigger picture and ask yourself some basic questions about the big picture. Are your scripts getting better each time? Does your feeback get more positive? Are you getting more access with each script? And once you start getting paid, are your quotes getting higher? etc.

SS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received in regards to screenwriting? If you could speak directly to that writer out there who’s just about to start his new spec – what would you tell him to give him the best chance to sell his/her screenplay?

J: Just finish it. You can always fix things in the next draft. Or the one after that. As for selling a spec, I have yet to do so, so I can’t speak from experience. But I would say to take a look at what’s recently sold to get a feel of the market. Passion projects rarely match what the town is buying. (I know from experience)

MJ: In regards to advice, there’s no single useful pearl of wisdom that comes to mind (omitting a few cynical ones, that is). Instead most of the wisdom I found useful came from working in the industry for several years before I started writing full time. It’s proven invaluable to have an overall understand of the process and how screenwriters fit into the bigger picture.

So maybe working in the industry is something to consider for yourself. But obviously, not everyone is able to do that. So let’s assume that you’re already writing something you like, and writing about settings, characters, and stories you feel competent portraying, then I would advise taking a step back and think about the commercial side of things.

Of course there’s artistry and craft involved with writing, but having worked in the studio system and seen that side of things, one thing becomes crystal clear: screenwriting is storytelling, but ultimately it really is just a for-profit business.

So keep in mind that the agent reading your script will be wondering how they can sell it, and the producer reading it will be thinking who will buy it. And if you’ve already got the access, then if a buyer reads and likes it, then they will also be thinking about the economics of saying yes, risk and recouping, etc.

So take some time and ask yourself some key questions like… is your movie meant for all audiences, just guys, just kids? There’s not a right and wrong answer here, but don’t forget that narrow demographics means lower box office which means lower budget, etc.

How much does your movie cost? It might be hard to estimate if you haven’t worked in Hollywood, but do some online research and find budgets of comparable movies.

Even if you write with an actor in mind, are there lots of other actors who could play the part? Because if your space epic costs $300M, there are only so many stars like Will Smith who will ultimately guarantee financing.

What does the marketing look like? Thinking about the poster and taglines is not only something that companies will have to do down the road anyway if your script gets produced, but it can also help you during the writing process to focus your story.

Obviously, in the end you still have to write a script that is going to resonate on the page and that people will like, just don’t lose sight of the business side of things so you aren’t wasting your time, or at least so that you have reasonable expectations about the response.

SS: Where is Dead Loss in the process, and what are you guys writing next?

J: Thousand Words has Chris Gorak attached to direct, and beyond that we don’t really know what their plans are. Right now, we’re in the middle of adapting a novel, LONG LOST by Harlan Coben for Gaumont, a French studio. Nick Wechsler and David Gerson are producing. Massy Tadjedin will direct and Hugh Jackman is attached to star.