Hip Hip Hooray! Oscar nominations day. Maybe I’ll get to my thoughts on that later in the week. As of now, Article Thursday has been moved up to today, and Thursday will become a review day. Also, I found a new draft of Dibbuk Box, so I decided to do something unprecedented: go back and remix my review. So if you want to see my review for the newest draft of Dibbuk Box, head back to yesterday’s review now. Now, it’s time to talk about the increasingly strange behavior of Kevin Smith.
What a strange day Monday was. I woke up and every single site I went to had some blogger ranting about how Kevin Smith had become the anti-Christ. At first I thought they were part of a viral marketing campaign for Smith’s new religious-themed horror film, but no, everybody seemed to be genuinely upset, though it was hard to figure out why. After digging around (and reading through 100-something tweets on Smith’s Twitter feed) I finally put it together.
To summarize it, Smith previewed his long in development horror film, Red State, at Sundance Sunday night. Apparently, he’d told the public for weeks that he would have a live auction for the movie after the screening. So all the major indie companies sent their people there to potentially bid for the film. Except afterwards, Smith went on a 25 minute rant (or so we were told – the actual footage is only semi-ranty) telling those very people that they sucked and he was tired of them stealing his money so they could suck his dick. He then proceeded to “sell” the movie to himself, subsequently pissing off a lot of distributors who could’ve used that time to target other Sundance material.
He then announced he’d be taking Red State on tour, one city at a time, and charging $70/ticket (presumably each screening would end with one of Smith’s famous extensive Q&As – so the cost would cover more than the actual film). Smith’s argument was that this old model of marketing movies, where you spend four times the budget of your film on advertising, forcing you to make five times what your film cost just to break even, was ridiculous, and he wanted to try something new.
So instead of traditional advertising, Smith was going to utilize the power of his Podcast and Twitter feed (which has over 1 million followers) to let everyone know where the film was playing and how to buy tickets. After the tour, he’d release the film more traditionally, but with himself distributing the film instead of some big money-sucking distribution company, giving theaters more lucrative terms as an incentive to work with him.
Now I know this isn’t technically connected to screenwriting, but it kind of is. People with 1 million dedicated “can contact them at any time” followers simply weren’t around two years ago. That gives a ton of power to the individual, whereas before the individual had to depend almost exclusively on the company who financed his film. It’s a different ballgame and it might be time to start thinking about things differently. To think that the old model is going to transfer over seamlessly in this ever-changing world of social media is kind of silly.
With guys like Ed Burns foregoing traditional distribution and selling his movie directly on Itunes (where we’ll likely be watching all of our rented films in two years) so that he could retain ownership of his film, rather than hand it over to some prodco, has both its pros and cons. You’re not going to get that big marketing push, and thus your movie won’t be grossing nearly as much money, but you’ll be receiving some hefty royalties from being the sole owner of your film for quite some time.
Back in the days of video stores (I can’t believe I’m saying that – “Back in the days of video stores”), where shelf space was limited, you wouldn’t have thought of that. Not having that juicy “Miramax” or “Lionsgate” tag on your film would keep corporate-minded Blockbuster from even glancing at your film. But a virtual porthole, such as Itunes or Netflix, where the system is intelligent enough to know which movies you like and recommend them to you, makes those companies excited about a small movie owned exclusively by Ed Burns. It doesn’t cost them anything to throw it up there, and targeted recommendations means people will keep watching it.
At some point I expect this to trickle down to the development stage. If you developed your script openly, providing numerous drafts on the internet and encouraged feedback from fans, it’s an easy way to build awareness for your film (not to mention improve your script) and thus create anticipation throughout the development process. A case can be made that the leaked scripts for Inglorious Basterds and Avatar helped make those films what they were, and I would anticipate that same kind of buzz would happen with any filmmaker who has a built-in fanbase. I know some form of this is going to happen soon. I’m just not sure which major name is going to do it first.
So I’m really interested in what happens here with Smith. What sucks, and what’s turning out to be a distracting factor in this giant experiment, is that Smith may be heading off to Crazy Land. The guy is curling himself up into a cocoon of safety in order to protect himself from any sort of negative reaction whatsoever. First he takes on critics for hating a movie that was truly awful and says he’s not going to screen his movies for critics anymore. And now he’s giving a big fat middle finger to studios and production companies, which is allowing him to try this unique experiment, but creating an unhealthy amount of insulation in the process.
What he doesn’t realize, is that he’s effectively becoming the low-budget version of George Lucas. Just make movies in his own back yard and nobody’s allowed to tell him if they’re any good or not. This is the absolute worst way you can approach writing, and almost always leads to subpar work. If you have any doubt about that, go read The Phantom Menace.
It’s a weird scenario, and I don’t know if Smith’s post-modern Howard Huges-like behavior is going to get in the way of determining whether this is a viable option or not. Which sucks, because if it does work, it could be a game-changer. It could give birth to an entirely new generation of writer-directors, guys like Gareth Edwards and Neil Bloomkamp, who have a unique voice and realize that with emerging technology, they can make their movies on the cheap and distribute them outside the studio system, building followers on social media outlets through teaser scenes, short films, and word of mouth, then use those outlets to directly advertise screenings, whether they be in real theaters or online.
I think what Smith is doing is cool. I’m just worried that his questionable red state of mind may screw up the test. What do you think?
Genre: Horror
Premise: Dibbuk Box is apparently based on the real-life events of people tracking and buying some box on ebay that was haunted. Every recipient of the box would have strange and/or terrible things happen to them. To show you just how spooky and haunted this box is, since I posted this review, the real live Dibbuk box has actually started commenting in the comments section. Scroll down to see what it said.
About: Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures started developing this project with Mandate a long time ago, going through a slew of writers. When Lionsgate ate up Mandate, they put some major money behind the project and brought in writers Juliet Snowden and Stiles White, who wrote the draft that finally lit up the green light. Snowden and White are hot horror writers, who got final credit on the Nicholas Cage film “Knowing
Writer: Juliet Snowden and Stiles White
Details: 108 pages – Sept 30, 2010, 2nd draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. 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).
All right, for those who didn’t tune in yesterday, I reviewed an earlier draft of Dibbuk Box. In short, I didn’t like it. The story was way too simplistic and there wasn’t enough tension or suspense. Though to the writer’s credit, I got the feeling that it may not have been entirely his fault. The safeness of the work smelled like overdevelopment, or at the very least a difference in opinion on where the story should go.
So when someone sent me this new draft from writing team Juliet Snowden and Stiles White (great writing name btw!), I thought I’d take a crack at it. It’s always interesting to see a completely different take on the same material. Unlike reading a singular screenplay, you get to compare and contrast the different choices that were made and pinpoint why some worked and others didn’t. Overall I wouldn’t say this new premise was any better than the previous draft, but I thought the relationships between the characters and the direction of the story were more complex and interesting.
In the new version, Division III basketball coach Clyde Brenek has just moved in to his new home. It’s been bachelor central in Apartmentsville since his wife left him a year ago and in order to make things more comfortable for his daughters, 15 year old cheerleader Hannah and 10 year old adult-like Em, he’s purchased himself a house.
After settling in, Clyde realizes he’s forgotten to buy dishes. So they head over to a nearby yard sale where Em falls in love with a weird European-style box. She asks her dad if he can buy it for her and Clyde can’t break out his wallet fast enough. Hey, when you’re a father fighting for custody, keeping your daughter happy is priority number 1.
Well, it should’ve been priority number nuh-uh. Cause what Clyde doesn’t realize is that he’s just purchased…The Dibbuk Box!
Right on schedule, Em becomes inappropriately attached to the box, whispering and humming to it, becoming all “creepy horror film kid-like” whenever it’s nearby.
Clyde doesn’t think much of it, as he’s more focused on a head coaching job at Division 1 North Carolina. This is that once in a lifetime dream opportunity he’s been waiting for, except he knows that if he takes it, he’ll rarely see his daughters.
Things start getting downright creepy at the house. There’s scratching noises everywhere. A huge roach problem develops. And some rooms are trashed without rhyme or reason.
When Clyde suspects that the box is the problem, he buries it out in the forest. But the Dibbuk Box calls to Em, who runs away from home and digs the box back up herself!
Afterwards, she takes it to school so her father can’t hide it from her anymore. When her teacher finds out, she puts the Dibbuk Box in a closet. Em doesn’t like that, and locks her teacher inside, where the Dibbuk Box gets all dibbucky on her, making weird noises and whispering unpleasant phrases.
Eventually, like the previous draft, Clyde must go find someone to exorcise the demons from the box in order to save his daughter from the Dibbuk curse. The question is, will he be able to do it before it’s too late?
A lot of the problems I had with the previous draft were fixed here. In fact, there’s a lot of good stuff in this latest draft of The Dibbuk Box.
First, they’ve set up key unresolved relationships in the movie. You want conflict in your story and one of the easiest places to find it is in unresolved relationships. Here, Clyde is dealing with the separation from his wife, and more recently her finding a new boyfriend. Not only does this give us something to resolve over the course of the story, but it adds depth to our main character. We see what Clyde is going through. We can tell it hurts him. This adds dimension, which in turn makes him more “real” (three-dimensional) to us.
Also, we have characters with lives here. I always say to writers, if you took away your movie from your characters, would they still have something to do? Or is the story the only way they can exist? Cause if the story’s the only way your characters can exist, then you don’t have real characters.
Here, Clyde has a job as a basketball coach, and more specifically a job offer out of state that he’s considering. Even if there was no movie here, Clyde would have something to do (a job, goals, events to look forward to). Hannah, the older sister, has her cheerleading at school. So she, also, has something to do (albeit less developed). You want as many characters in your script going through the motions of life as possible. Ask yourself “What would they be doing if there was no movie for them to be in?” It’s a quick way to add depth to your characters.
We also have a pseudo-ticking time bomb here, which was smart. Sometimes a story doesn’t work well with a blatant ticking time bomb (i.e. Joe has 72 hours to save his sister or a mobster will kill her). But you still want time to feel contained in some capacity, as that gives the illusion of time moving faster for the reader (and the audience). Here, we’re told right off the bat that this is the true story of what happened to a family over 29 days. Every 15 pages or so, we’re then told what number day we’re on. So even though we’re not screaming towards the finish line, we feel like we’re progressing towards a conclusion. It’s a small thing but it helps if your story takes place over weeks or months.
I also thought there were some smart story choices here. When Em runs away to find the Dibbuk Box, Clyde is deemed an unfit father, and the girls are ordered by a judge back to their mother’s place. Of course, this is right when the Dibbuk Box becomes the most dangerous, and Em is in the most danger. So the moment Em needs Clyde the most is the moment he can’t be with her. There were a few story choices like this that I thought worked really well.
If I had a complaint, it’s that, in the end, we’re going with the well-tread “creepy horror film child” device. We’ve seen this used a lot, in movies like The Ring
This new draft of Dibbuk Box is nothing to write home about, but in a sea of bad horror scripts, it’s not too shabby. If you’re a horror fan, you’ll probably want to check it out.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Every horror film should have at least one big memorable scene – something that an audience can’t stop talking about afterwards. Masturbating with a crucifix in The Exorcist
On a day where they’ve announced that they’re remaking Lethal Weapon (remaking Lethal Weapon
And I realized that in each script I’d read, some basic common mistake was being made. These weren’t unique problems that only pop up once every hundred screenplays or so. These were genre-specific mistakes that I see over and over again. So I thought, hey, if I knew the number one mistake to avoid when I started writing a screenplay, wouldn’t that give me an advantage over other writers?
So lo and behold, that was the genesis for this article. I marked the 15 most popular genres and the most common mistakes I run into while reading those genres. Other readers may have different experiences, but this is mine. So either silently curse me for pointing out, once again, what NOT to do in a script, or use this advice to topple your competition. Here we go!
PERIOD PIECES – Number one mistake I see in period pieces is writers getting lost in their work. We’re cutting to a king in France and a peasant in Russia and a little known uprising in Austria and dozens of years pass and the old characters die and new characters are born and blah blahblahblah blah blah blah. Jumping around to 15 different characters in 18 different countries for 2 and a half hours isn’t going to entertain a reader. It’s going to frustrate them. Instead, find the focus in your period piece. Make the main character’s journey clear. The King’s Speech is about a King who must overcome his speech impediment before giving the most important speech in the country’s history. It’s clean and it’s simple. If you do want to go “sprawling,” remember this: The more sprawling you get, the clearer your main character’s goal has to be. So the story of Braveheart 
DRAMAS – Many writers believe drama is a license to lay everything on thick as molasses. Cancer, death, car crashes, disease, abuse, addiction, depression. If you have more than a couple of these going on in your drama, consider taking them out now. Dramas are at their best when they pick and choose which moments to explore, not just hurl it all down in one giant depression sundae. It’s a delicate balance and by no means easy to navigate, but I always subscribe to the theory that less is more in drama.
ZOMBIE/SERIAL KILLER/ROM COMS – What the hell are all three of these doing in one category? That’s easy. All three inspire the same problem. Writers never do anything fresh with these genres. Zombie: Group of people gets chased by zombies, usually in a city. Rom-Coms: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again. Serial Killer: Serial killer leaves cryptic puzzle behind for detectives to try and figure out. I see these plots over and over and over again. You have to come up with a fresh angle! Look at Zombieland
SCI-FI/FANTASY – Most new writers get into sci-fi and fantasy for the wrong reasons. They’re more interested in the macro than the micro. In other words, they care more about the world than their hero’s journey. I remember reading a really ambitious incredibly detailed sci-fi script that didn’t have a lick of story to speak of, and the writer’s one big question to me afterwards was, “Do you think the disappearing mech suits on page 25 are realistic?” Of all the questions they could’ve asked, they didn’t want to know, “Was my main character’s motivation strong enough?” Or “Do you think the connection between these two characters worked?” but if a singular tiny sci-fi geeky machine that had nothing to do with the rest of story was realistic. This is representative of how writers think of these scripts. They’re focusing on the wrong things. Focus on the character’s journey first (The Matrix 
COMING-OF-AGE – Coming-of-Age is a commonly encountered amateur genre because most writers are in their 20s when they begin writing. Naturally, they start writing about their own confusing directionless lives. Unfortunately, this confusion almost always translates to NO STORY! The writer feels content to just let their character wander about, experiencing life and all its eccentricities, believing that the “realness” of the journey will be enough to capture the audience’s imagination. It isn’t. It just makes everything directionless and boring. If you want to write coming-of-age, give your script a hook and a story just like any other genre. A perfect example is Everything Must Go – very much a coming of age story, but structured so as to keep the story on track and so we always know what’s going on.
COMEDY and HORROR – I’ve said this a million and one times on the site. The biggest mistake comedies and horror films make, is to focus on the laughs and the scares as opposed to character development. Comedy and Horror plots don’t tend to be that complicated, which is fine. As long as you have a good hook, you’re okay. But the characters in these scripts are a different story. The audience *has to connect* with them in order for the script to work. Yet writers refuse to dig any deeper into those character’s lives than the width of a tic-tac. So figure out what makes your hero tick. What are they afraid of? What’s their biggest flaw? Then use your story to explore that flaw. Happy Gilmore 
WESTERNS – Back in the heyday of Westerns, the world moved much slower. People had more patience, more time. That’s not the case anymore in this information-overload Twitter-centric multitasking world. So you have to update the way you approach the genre. By far, the biggest problem I see in Westerns is that they move too slow. So speed things up a little bit. Develop your characters faster, get to your story sooner, add a few more twists and turns to keep the audience interested. I’m not saying you have to use Scott Pilgrim
ACTION – The big thing with action flicks is the propensity to depend on clichés. Action writers are almost by definition uninterested in character development, and luckily the action genre is the least dependent on that area of writing, so you can actually get away with it. But if your script is just rehashing all the clichés we’ve seen in action movies of the past (a snappy line when disposing of a bad guy, the girl gets kidnapped by the villain in the end, the bad guy is bad for no reason) then you’re not trying hard enough. Some of these things can be done tongue-in-cheek effectively, but even that’s becoming cliche. The reason that the Bourne 
SPORTS – Cliché endings. Amateur sports scripts always end up with some variation of being down by 3 runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and the bases loaded. Then our hero hits the grand slam. It’s sappy, it’s predictable, it’s stupid. You have to find some other way. Look at Rocky
BIOPIC – You’ve heard me drone on about this before. Biopic writers notoriously get caught up on the “best of” or “key” moments of the title character’s life, instead of looking for the most *dramatically compelling* moments of that person’s life. In addition to this, the biopic, more than any other genre out there (since our hero IS the genre) needs to have a *compelling character flaw.* Focus on the events in that person’s life that challenge that flaw and that’s where you’re going to find your story. So if your subject’s flaw is a fear of connection, then place him in a bunch of situations where he’s forced to connect with others. If doing this means leaving out the 3rd most famous moment from that person’s life, then leave that moment out.
THRILLER – The amateur thrillers I read don’t have enough story developments. The writer erroneously assumes that keeping the pace of the story up is all he has to do. But if you don’t throw us for a loop every once in awhile, if you don’t up the stakes, bring in a new character, force your character to deal with unexpected problems, then your thriller’s going to run out of steam. Just try to make sure something interesting happens every 15 pages or so. In Buried
Genre: Action
Premise: A woman must fight off hundreds of yakuzas all sent to do one thing – kill her. The hook? The entire battle takes place in her apartment.
About: Yale Hannon spent ten years as a script coordinator on TV shows, working on such series as Parenthood
Writer: Yale Hannon (Story by Joe Lynch & Yale Hannon)
Details: 92 pages, March 23, 2010 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. 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).
This script sounded too bizarre to be true. A woman stuck in an apartment fighting off hundreds of Yakuzas? Why would Yakuzas want to kill a woman so badly that they’d send hundreds of themselves to do the job? And, um, what is a Yakuza anyway?
Let’s face it. This is geek fantasy at its finest. One woman. Hundreds of warriors. Guns, sweat, and blood. Visions of Matrix
Okay, don’t answer that. Sorry.
30 year old Everly has just been raped by half a dozen men when we meet her. What a wonderful way to meet a hero. She’s holed up in the bathroom of her apartment, barely able to move, the incessant taunts of the men from outside barreling through the door like bullets. They want her back out there, where they can finish their job then do what they came here to do – end her life.
Of course Everly would never be in this position if she hadn’t made some previous mistakes. See Everly used to be involved with a man named Taiko, a Japanese mobster who owns half the city. Then one day, presumably after she realized – you know – that she was schtooping a guy who kills people for a living, she decides she’s going to turn him in to the DEA. Except in this case, the DEA was on Taiko’s payroll.
There are two truths in this world: Never expect a monogamous relationship from a girl named Candy and never double cross a guy named Taiko. Especially if he’s a mob boss. I have personal experience with both of these mistakes so just trust me.
Taiko is so pissed, in fact, that he’s decided to not only kill Everly, but to make her suffer like no one has ever suffered before. And he ain’t stopping there. He’s going to lop off Everly’s mother’s head and put her daughter into a lifetime of prostitution…and probably kill her afterwards just for kicks.
Now Everly’s a tough cookie. She can handle pain. But when Taiko brings family into it, all bets are off.
So she calls up her mom (who by the way, is one of those moms who’s eternally disappointed in their children’s life choices – although in this case I think she may have a point) and tells her to come to her apartment with her daughter. It’s the last place Taiko will expect them to go, and therefore the safest place they can be.
In the meantime, she pulls out one of her many stashed guns and blows through the bathroom door, taking out all the dudes who thought it was funny to rape her. She succeeds, but this only pisses off Taiko more. So he sends a bigger wave of henchmen to take Everly out.
For those wondering how in the hell you shoot up an apartment and not have the entire force bearing down on you within five minutes, well, it turns out Taiko owns this building. Everybody who lives here works for him in one way or another. So instead of these folks calling the police for help, they’re answering Taiko’s calls, to KILL EVERLY.
Everly fights off wave upon impossible wave of these psychos until her daughter and mom arrive. She hurries them into her neighboring friend’s apartment while somehow fighting off even more waves of baddies. Finally, Taiko realizes he has to stop fucking around, and sends in The Sadist. The Sadist is clearly the highlight of the film and maybe even the reason the script was written.
Basically, he’s some fucked up Japanese guy with a lot of masks and a lot of chemical concoctions and even carries with him a slave in a cage. Think of him as a combination of Sling Blade (the Japanese version), that dude in Animal Kingdom, Buffalo Bill from Silence Of The Lambs, and Charles Manson. The Sadist is Taiko’s personal guarantee that Everly will suffer history’s most long and drawn out death.
When it’s all said and done, the entire apartment is leveled to the point where it looks like a tornado, a bomb, an earthquake, and a tsunami hit it all at once. There’s no floor, no ceiling, and of course, Taiko has to show up to finish the job himself. Will he succeed? Or will it be Everly who wins?
A spade is a spade right? Everly is long on stylized action and short on story. But I have to give it to Yale. He injects just enough reasons for this story to exist (surviving, saving the daughter) that it works. Not only that, but you can see this as a movie. In fact, I see directors drooling over this script. There’s just so much craziness to play with. It’s kind of like Kill Bill without all the slow parts. And I’m guessing that after seeing Everly, Tarantino may be drooling as well, wondering why he didn’t think of it first.
If there’s something that places this above all the wannabes – and make no mistake about it, it’s easy to fail here – it’s the “impossible” factor. When you write a story, you want the goal to seem impossible for your main character. The more impossible it is, the more gripping the story tends to be. It’s like watching a football game where your team is down 21 points in the 4th quarter. You know they’re probably going to lose – but dammit you want to watch to see if they win.
I mean just the sheer number of people trying to take Everly out has us in constant flux, wondering how she’s going to pull it off.
The other driving force here is one of the oldest story devices in the book. Make us hate your bad guy. Make us want to take that fucker down. BUT! Don’t forget to also give your villain proper motivation. I was just talking about this with some writers the other day. If your villain is bad just to be bad, he won’t work. There has to be a REASON he’s bad. In this case, Everly double crossed Taiko. That’s why Taiko is so relentless. He’s not just trying to kill Everly cause he’s a bad guy.
Everly has some problems. I would’ve liked a twist or two. This script goes pretty much according to plan. And man is it a chore to read through at times. You’d have a better chance finding Emelia Earheart than you would a full page of dialogue in Everly. This is only a 95 page script, but because it’s so much action, it reads like it’s 135. I would strongly advise anyone writing an action heavy script to please keep the paragraph chunks lean, since failure to do so results in novel-itis, a disease you don’t want your screenplay to catch.
But other than that, this is a cool screenplay, and probably a movie you’ll see on the big screen within the next couple of years.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is the very definition of the kind of script I see a lot of unknown writers break in with. Unique hook (1 girl, hundreds of attackers). Marketable (who can’t see this trailer?). Clear singular goal (survive). Contained space and time (one apartment, one night). By no means do I think Everly’s execution is perfect, but that’s the advantage of writing this kind of script – you keep the story so simple that your mistakes don’t matter nearly as much as they normally would.
Genre: High School
Premise: Two best friends at Providence high school, Gabriel and Kayla, find themselves preparing for their lives after graduation. But when their relationship becomes more than friends, all of their plans will have to be reevaluated.
About: Another “write what you know” tale. (from Wikipedia) In his sophomore year at USC, Schwartz wrote Providence as a homework assignment. He entered it into a local contest and won. Unfortunately, the prize was quickly revoked; to be eligible he had to be in his junior year at the time. Schwartz says “I dropped it in a box – I was a sophomore. And I got a call over the summer saying I’d won, and I’d won five thousand dollars. I was like, “This is awesome!” Then they called back, like, the next day and said you had to be a junior to enter and not a sophomore, so they were rescinding it. I was pretty pissed.” Nevertheless, with help from connections through his fraternity, he generated interest in Hollywood to buy his screenplay. In 1997, Tristar bought the script in a bidding war for $550,000 against $1 million (while he was still a junior). Schwartz got an agent and subsequently wrote a TV pilot called Brookfield for ABC/Disney while he was still studying at USC. It was a boarding school drama about wealthy kids in New England and was his first TV pilot script; it sold only a few months after he had sold Providence. Brookfield was produced starring Amy Smart and Eric Balfour but never aired. Schwartz then dropped out of USC to work full-time and wrote another pilot called Wall to Wall Records, a drama about working in a music store for Warner Bros. TV that was also produced but never aired. Later, at 26, he became the youngest person in network history to create a network series and run its day-to-day production when he ran The O.C.
Writer: Josh Schwartz
Details: 107 pages – Nov, 19, 1997 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. 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).
We’re back with another break-in script. This time from Josh Schwartz, creator of the O.C., Gossip Girl
Well count me surprised. I dug Providence from the very first scene. When I was a Freshman in high school, I remember going to my first school assembly. I’d never been to an assembly before and had no idea what they were. But with myself and 2500 other kids crammed into an auditorium, the lights went out, the latest hip hop song started blasting through the speakers, and 40 of the hottest junior and senior girls in drill team uniforms you can imagine came charging onto the floor. It was like the Lester Burnhum auditorium scene in American Beauty
Providence doesn’t hit us quite so severely over the head, but opens with a dream sequence where our awkward high-strung hero, Gabriel Gordon, is back in his 8 year old body, looking up at the stunning 18 year old Ashley Adams, a high school goddess who’s leading Gabriel through a football field of students. It’s the yearly assembly, the only one where every student, from ages kindergarten through 12th grade, came together, and here he is, the luckiest second grader in the universe, being paired up with his dream girl, Ashley Adams. We’re told about this moment through voice over, and the way Gabriel describes it was very similar to the way I remember my own assembly.
From that moment on, the script had me. I just totally identified with this character. And I’ll be the first to admit, it resulted in my overlooking a lot of the script’s deficiencies.
Anyway, Gabriel isn’t 8 anymore. He’s 18. His best friend is Kayla Evans, one of those pretty girls who has no idea they’re pretty. But Gabriel doesn’t see Kayla that way and she doesn’t see him that way either. They’re just best friends who’ve always gotten along.
Providence surrounds the duo with quite the cast of characters. You have Gabriel’s dictator of a little sister, Sarah. His dad, whose running regimen is more important than the family. Gabriel’s best friend, Vince, who’s skipping college so he can start a cult. And there’s Kayla’s best friend Whitney, who’s in love with a five year old. Despite the broad nature of these characters, Schwartz manages to make them work in a weird if not forced way.
One night, while innocently hanging out at a Halloween Party, Gabriel and Kayla accidentally kiss. But they quickly decide they don’t want it to be accidental, and kiss more. And then they quickly decide that instead of this just being a lot of kissing, they want a relationship, but want to make sure that their friendship isn’t ruined if the relationship fails. So they make up these rules. Can’t say I love you. Can’t kiss in front of others. Can’t break plans with friends to be with each other. Which is fine at first (isn’t it always fine at first?) but when things start getting more serious, all of these rules start getting challenged.
The point of contention is that Gabriel wants everything protected for the future and Kayla just wants to experience the now. It’s only when Kayla starts challenging these notions that Gabriel realizes how important being “in the moment” is. The problem is, when this finally gets through his thick skull, his philosophy likewise gets through to Kayla, who now values preparing for the future.
Man, timing sucks.
It’s one of the things I liked about Providence. The script moves along a predictable path for most of the way, but once it gets to that last act, you really have no idea what’s going to happen.
I also liked the theme of the movie but more importantly, what I learned about theme in the process. I think one of the reasons writers are afraid of theme is that they’re afraid of being tasked with coming up with some profound statement about the world. It’s like they have to invent a new theory that no one in history has come up with before. Yet a lot of the themes that work are deceptively simple, like this one. Providence’s theme is “Live in the moment.” That’s all. It’s brought up in some of the conversations. It’s tied in to the main character’s flaw (Gabriel is more concerned with the future than the now) and that’s it. It’s subtly explored and the reason it works is because it’s a theme everybody can identify with.
So it’s a good reminder that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to theme. Just pick something that’s meaningful to you and that’s relevant to your characters and go with it.
The script wasn’t bullet-proof by any means. There’s no true hook to the story. It’s just a regular high school movie (and I’m assuming that’s why it never got made). Schwartz made some classic young writer mistakes, such as carrying scenes on for a page or two longer just to get a few more jokes in (on Page 26). The broad stuff was bordering on too broad (girls liking 5 year olds?) We even get that awful cliché of the female lead being a photographer. Though in Swartz’s defense, I have no idea if this was a cliché back in 1997.
Still, Providence is the strange love child of The Graduate 
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I don’t usually like dream sequences. They tend to be hacky excuses to throw a bunch of weird imagery together. However, I do like them when there’s a progression to them, where each dream builds upon the previous dream. Here, we keep coming back to the scene where Gabriel as an 8 year old is holding Ashley Adams’ hand at the rally, and we want to know what happens next. In that way, it’s like a mini-movie. And just like any movie, we want to know what happens next.
