Genre: Political Comedy/Satire
Premise: You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.
About: This script sold for 2 million dollars in 1990. Adjusted for inflation that would be 3.3 million today. One of the most famous (infamous) spec scripts in history. Why? The premise of course. For those not in the know, Joe Eszterhas, who wrote Basic Instinct, is the most successful screenwriter in history. There was a time when any piece of paper that even got close to his typewriter would sell for a cool million. He sold Basic Instinct for 3 million, Jade for 2.5 million, Showgirls for 2 million, Reliable Sources (unproduced) for 2 million, Male Pattern Baldness (unproduced) for 2 million. And that’s not including the ridiculous amounts of money he got paid for assignment work.
Writer: Joe Eszterhas
Details: 125 pages (April 1, 1990)
Joe EsztherasThere’s a telling clue that you’re in for a strange ride when you open Sacred Cows. The date on the title page reads “April’s Fool, 1990.” I toiled over this strange detail for hours. Was this merely a fancy way of writing down April 1st? Or did Joe Eszterhas fool Hollywood into one of the biggest April Fool’s pranks in history? Or is the April Fool’s prank on us, years later, who’ve been told this screenplay actually sold for 2 million dollars? I mean, it can’t really have been sold for 2 million dollars, right? Not with this premise. There’s no way.
Sacred Cows is about a presidential election for the ages. Jim Taylor, a sort of young sleazy Republican, pushes the “us” campaign. There are many countries struggling across the world. But Taylor’s tired of the way the U.S. throws money at them. What about our country? Why aren’t we investing these dollars in the good ole U. S. of A? On the flip side is Democrat incumbent Sam Parr, 64, an old codger who’s obsessed with India for some reason. The people there are poor. Their economy is non-existent. India needs help. And it’s the United States who can give it to them.
On the outside, Parr embodies the selfless big-hearted moral human being we all aspire to be. But Sam’s got some demons mixed up with all those organs inside his body, namely that he’s obsessed with fucking women. He’s been doing it ever since he got in this whole political game, and his his woman du jour is a big name foxy reporter who – surprise surprise – will do anything for a story.
A day before the first official debate, Taylor’s team sends Parr’s team a message. They wanna talk. It’s important. So Taylor and Parr meet in a dark room minutes before the debate, and Taylor tells him he wants him to drop out of the race. If he doesn’t, he’ll release to the world Parr’s giant secret. We glean from Parr’s expression that whatever this doozy is, it’s big. The kind of thing that makes fucking a network reporter look like a teleprompter mishap.
The next day Parr’s team receives photographic evidence of this secret: Parr, in a barn, FUCKING A COW. Yes, you read that right. Parr is a cow-fucker. Well, he’s not a serial cow fucker. He used to fuck cows as a boy but he hasn’t fucked a cow in over 50 years. Until now. It just so happened that on a recent trip to his childhood home, he got a little nostalgic and…well…decided to give it to Bessie.
Politics is all about spinning. It’s one of the first things you learn when you run for office. But how in the hell do you spin fucking a cow? Parr’s cabinet improvises, doing the best they can with what they’ve got. Maybe they can spin it as a calculated move. The Muslims hate us, are always committing acts of terrorism against us. By fucking a cow, we piss off the Hindus (who hold cows sacred), and since Muslims hate Hindus, by association the Muslims will now love us. Terrorism over.
Which is fine. But Parr is horrified by what he’s done to the carefully crafted relations he’s built up with the Hindus (remember, that was his whole campaign). The Hindus are, understandably, outraged. You don’t exactly break out the champagne when the man in the most powerful position in the world literally FUCKS the animal you hold most sacred. These things don’t go over well. Or so I’ve heard.
No time to worry about that though because a National Enquirer like paper called “The Snitch,” picks up the story and releases a photo of Parr fucking the cow. Luckily it’s dark and grainy and because it’s The Snitch, there’s reason to doubt its authenticity. But it’s just real-looking enough to get the public stirring. Could it really be true? Where’s the beef? It’s in the cow.
In the meantime, his wife, his son, his daughter, and his mistress are all horrified by the revelation. Each feels that their name has been shamed and that they’ll be laughing stocks for the rest of their lives. That is IF the picture is real – which is still a matter of debate. During this time, all the major papers try to decide what to do with the story. Do they really run a headline painting their president as a cow-fucker?
His wife is so devastated that she runs off. Parr is concerned enough that he jumps in a gardener’s truck and chases after her. The Chief Of Staff as well as the rest of the White House is horrified to learn that they have no idea where the President Of The United States is. An already cataclysmic situation has gone nuclear.
The story kinda shifts gears and gets into Parr and his wife’s relationship. They’ve had an understanding throughout their marriage that Parr is going to chase younger tail (oops, bad choice of words) but he will always come back to her. The arrangement has worked until now but I suppose there’s an unwritten rule that when you fuck a cow, all bets are off. His wife doesn’t know if she can get over this one.
Naturally, Parr’s 28 point lead plummets and it becomes abundantly clear he’s got no shot at re-election. The last thing he can do is fly to India and try to repair his relationship with the Hindus. American flag-burning demonstrations have over-taken the country and the resulting violence has led to hundreds of deaths. The president, who up to this point has not given a definitive answer on whether he did or did not fuck that cow, goes to the heart of Calcutta where he gives an internationally televised speech, admitting his crime, and apologizing for it. India is thankful. They accept his apology, and of course, the heartfelt speech ends up swaying public opinion back in America, and helping Parr win the election at the last second.
Ummm…
Hmmm…
Did I really read what I think I just read? Did this really sell for 2 million dollars? I don’t know where to start here. On the one hand, you can say Sacred Cows represents just how insane the spec market was in the 90s. On the other, it’s a lesson that when you get hot as a writer, you can put just about anything down on paper and the powers that be will beg you for it.
Was the script any good? I mean, I guess it was. I admit that there’s a smooth flow to Esztheras’ writing, like taking one continuous gulp of Guiness while floating in a bubble bath. It’s a 125 page behemoth but it reads 35 pages lighter, no doubt in part to Esztheras hitting the gas whenever he gets into dialogue scenes, refusing to weigh them down with large chunks of supplementary action. He allows you to work out the visuals yourself and that’s fine by me.
Another thing I like about Esztheras’ script is how well he hides the structure beneath his story. This isn’t as plot heavy as say, Back To The Future, but there’s definitely some plot here, and I marveled at how little I noticed the act breaks or the story beats. They’re definitely there, but as I was reading them I didn’t notice, which reminded me a lot of a similar titan’s script, Sorkin’s “The Social Network.” You’re wholly unaware of the writer trying to manipulate you, and in my eyes that’s the last piece, after figuring out how to structure a script and craft great characters, to becoming a great writer.
But in the end it’s all just so bizarre. This script. This story. I do feel like the butt of an April Fools’ joke and I’m still not completely convinced that this sale actually happened. I can see it having been announced in Variety (“Esztheras sells script about President who fucks cow for 2 million!”) on April 1st, only to be recanted the next day as a prank. Yet throughout the years, people forgot about the prank part, and it was passed on as a real event. I don’t know. For those of you around back then, did this really happen?
I’m torn about whether to recommend this because while the writing is something to admire, the idea is just too out there. I guess, as a curiosity, it’s worth checking out.
P.S. How great would this script have been had it come out after Bill Clinton’s presidency? A script about a president who has sex with a cow months after Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky? Ahhh…what could’ve been.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Esztheras was known throughout Hollywood as a powder keg. He famously clashed with a studio head about recommended changes to his script. And when I say clashed, I mean he PHYSICALLY FOUGHT him. Esztheras’ philosophy was simple. I don’t tell you how to do your job. You don’t tell me how to do mine. He was the one writer who didn’t act as a doormat for the industry, but rather swept people underneath his own. Now as writers, we’re told to shut up and do as told because we’re a dime a dozen. We can be fired and replaced in less time than it takes to say ‘rewrite.’ Yet here we have the most successful screenwriter in history taking the exact opposite approach. Esztheras went fucking bananas when he found out Verhoven wanted to take out all the sex in Basic Instinct. He fought like a bull in heat and eventually Verhoven relented, keeping the sex in, and as a result made one of the best movies of the 90s. So should you stand up for what you believe in or suck it up and do as told? The overwhelming majority of writers recommend that you shut up and do what they tell you to. Yet the most successful screenwriter in history did the exact opposite. So which is right? I guess you have to decide whether you’re as irreplaceable as Joe Esztheras. If you believe you are, then fight on.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: By using the ten biblical plagues, a paramilitary group plans to attack ten major cities in the U.S.
About: Sold in 1996. 850 thousand against 1.5 million. Adjusted for inflation – 1.16 million against 2 million. Rosenberg is the writer of High Fidelity and Con Air.
Writer: Scott Rosenberg
Details: 120 pages (1996 spec sale draft)
This is a funny script. I don’t know if it’s necessarily funny on purpose, but it definitely made me laugh. Why? Well, it’s just so unabashedly NINETIES. I half-expected Eddie Vedder and/or the Counting Crows to jump out and start crooning about O.J. Simpson. There’s flannel on these pages. Keanu Reeves lives in these pages. But most of all, this script embodies the overly-ambitious throw everything and the kitchen sink on the page mentality of spec scripts at the time. It was kind of like the spec world’s sub-prime mortgage. Every writer was so reckless, trying to sell their script without regard for cost or value, that when Hollywood realized they couldn’t make these movies, the spec boom imploded. I mean, I’m no producer, but in my estimation, this script had to have been budgeted at at least 250 million. BACK IN 1996!
Rosenberg himself is an interesting writer. He wrote one of my favorite movies, Beautiful Girls, which captured what it’s like coming back home as a grown-up about as well as any movie I’ve ever seen. Then over a decade later he writes the exact same movie but for TV (October Road), and it’s about the worst representation of what it’s like to come home as a grown-up (the comedic sidekick actually refuses to leave his house because he’s traumatized by 9-11, like, ever).
But Rosenberg’s written some pretty cool flicks, like the incredibly cheesy but guilty pleasure that is Con Air. And of course he wrote everybody’s favorite record store movie, High Fidelity (although there’s some debate on whether he deserved that credit). I think, like a lot of writers out there, Rosenberg can either be so good you wonder how he could ever be bad, or so bad you wonder how he could’ve been so good.
Which brings us to The Ten, the kind of script that’s so unabashedly crafted to sell and NOTHING else, that it actually kills a writer every time you read it. Basically, what Rosenberg did was take two of the biggest movies from the 90s – Speed and Seven – and mashed them together. We get the way over the top villain from Speed (making him ten times more way over the top here), as well as Speed’s manic tone and energy, mixed with Seven’s mystery-driven structure of unique biblical-related deaths (albeit this time on a mass scale). Rosenberg even adds a little Lethal Weapon to boot, as we get the over-the-top (over-the-top is a BIG part of The Ten) wise-cracking partners who would rather be anywhere but with each other. I don’t know if it’s all shameless or genius. But damn if he didn’t sell the thing.
The not as well known as it should be “Beautiful Girls.”Kyle Klesko is an FBI agent with a beautiful wife and son. He seems to have it all, though work plays a little more of a role in his life than family and his wife isn’t happy about it and—
BOOM! A plane blows up!!!
Don’t worry. Klesko wasn’t on it. But the plane’s parts come raining down on a farm. We get to see the smoldering passengers cry out for help as their burning bodies are melted into the plastic of their seats. Sweet! Soonafter, the FBI is sent a video message from a man named – no I’m not making this up – Williamton Economides. Williamton Economides is easily, by far, without question, the single most annoying over-the-top villain ever. He starts all his video demands by singing some bizarre song wistfully off-screen, then turning to the camera with a, “Oh, you started already,” face, and then giving his demands in a sing-songy half-rhyming nonsensical rant, before cutting out. If ever there was a model for “went too far,” Williamton Economides would be it.
Economides (I can’t even believe I’m writing that name) is the leader of a terrorist group called the People’s Platoon. Naturally, the FBI gets all pissed off that Economides and his Platoon Pals blew up a plane, so they go searching for his cult off in the desert, find about 30 of them blindly reciting his teachings, and throw them in the Federal version of the nuthouse. This angers the coo-coo for coco puffs Economides, so he naturally demands that they be released or else. Or else what? Or else he will attack every major city in the U.S!
True to his rhythmically annoying words, a few days later Washington DC turns into a bath tub of BLOOD! A lot of it! Oh no no no. I don’t mean like people start getting massacred. I mean blood appears everywhere. In its lakes, its showers, its water fountains. So much blood! Blood bath-o-rama. More blood than Carrie. Did I mention there was lots of blood? Then two hours later the blood disappears without a trace. Sneaky blood. Special blood that doesn’t stain. In a magically delicious surprise, nobody gets hurt.
Hmm, say our FBI agents. That’s strange. But not strange enough to do anything about it.
Bad move. A few days later Miami is hit. By frogs! Lots of frogs! This overabundance of frogs is more lethal than the laymen might assume as 22 people are massacred by the wild ribbit-fueled hopping. But just like the D.C. fiasco, the frogs disappear within a few hours. The FBI now decides this is serious (note: frogs = serious) and demand that Klesko enlist the help of a man named Eddie Gerrick. We can tell by Klesko’s reaction that this is not a good thing. Apparently there’s some deep history between the two. But Garrick is a specialist when it comes to Economides, and if they’re going to take him down, Garrick will be required.
Cusack and Black in High FidelitySo Klesko shoots off and finds Garrick on the floor of some bar, shitfaced beyond your worst Vegas nightmare. Garrick is not happy to see Klesko, muttering something about how he’s a life-ruiner. There’s some backstory to this relationship but there’s no time to rehash it because Boston is experiencing a vermin meltdown. Cockroaches and rats are taking over the city. The cockroaches and rats are even better trained (or are learning from the blood and the frogs’ mistakes) as this time 54 people are erased from existence.
Garrick lets Klesko in on the fact that Economides is obviously summoning The Ten Plauges of Egypt. The Ten Plagues of What?? Well, apparently, back in the day, God punished the Pharoa for refusing Moses’ demands that all the Israliates be set free. Ah, now I see the connection. Economides is angry that *his* people aren’t being set free, so now he’s punishing the FBI!!!
That sound you hear is me sighing for two days straight.
Klesko and Garrick spend the rest of the script arguing and flying from city to city as the Ten Plagues unfold upon the country. I’m not going to pretend like there aren’t some fun sequences here (L.A. run amok with lions, tigers, cheetahs, pumas, and bears making meals out of any humans in sight), but if I could boil it down to one word…it’s just all so *silly*.
There’s no threat here. It all plays out like a giant live-action cartoon. The story doesn’t even make sense when you add it up. The FBI is holding Economides’ cult, who are obviously harmless. The only threat they pose to the public is annoying them to death. Yet for ¾ of the movie, the FBI refuses to release these 30 nimwits, preferring instead to allow Economides to conjure up biblical terrorism at the expense of the United States’ safety.
The conflict between Klesko and Garrick is likewise over-the-top. Garrick doesn’t just dislike Klesko. He HATES him with a burning passion. So all of their investigation is overshadowed by this ridiculous back and forth banter. I guess you’re wondering why they hate each other so much. **Half-hearted spoiler alert** Klesko stole Garrick’s girlfriend and married her. Garrick then went into Mickey Rourke mode. Unfortunately for Garrick, he didn’t have Darren Aronofsky to save him.
I’d continue on here, but then I’d be telling you things like Economides ups his demands, which include a grant for his own piece of land so he can start a new country, a 50 million dollar check, and a supermodel. That’s not me being sarcastic. That really happens.
I mean, here’s the thing. The 90s were the decade of the fun no-holds-barred over-the-top action film. We got Con Air, The Rock, and Face-Off, for God’s sake. So I mean, if we stay within that context, The Ten makes sense. But there’s a point where you’ve jumped the shark. And I can’t help but feel like this script was written over a shark tank, so that it could be suspended in one continuous jump.
If you like big and silly action movies light on logic, you might enjoy this. It’s also a script that fits perfectly inside the 90s time capsule. But for pure enjoyment, I’m afraid to say it doesn’t work.
Script link: The Ten (This script is meant for educational purposes only. If you are the writer or copyright holder of this script and would like it taken down, please e-mail me at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I will do so immediately)
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: How dangerous influence can be. Remember the 90s when everyone was writing Speed and Seven specs? It was either super cheesy over the top action or gritty religious serial killer procedural. And not a single one of them was ever better than those two. That’s my big problem with being influenced by popular movies. That no matter what you do, you will never ever make a version of that movie that’s better than that movie. So why even try? Why not create something original that can stand on its own that everybody ELSE tries to copy? I want you to remember that when you’re sitting down to write your version of Avatar or Inglorious Basterds. Even if you do a bang-up job, it’ll still be seen as, “A not as good version of Avatar or Inglorious Basterds.” Is that really how you want your script to be remembered? If you’re going to be influenced by something, try to make that influence subtle. Write something that has shades of that film, but isn’t built from a template of it.
Now that may be why the *movie* never got made. But I can’t ignore the fact that the script DID get bought. For 850,000 dollars no less. So how good is that advice I just gave you? Hmm, good question. I think in this day and age, it’s good advice. But back then, it might not have been. The 90s spec market was like the 90s stock market. Drop 50 grand in a stock and 5 years later you’re buying a condo in San Francisco. So I definitely think spec-happy Hollywood played a part in this. Also, Rosenberg was a hot writer at the time. He had some major indie cred with his two recent films, Beautiful Girls and Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead. And so it made sense that his spec would have a lot of eyes on it. Finally, and probably most importantly, the script could be pitched as Speed meets Seven, less than two years after both of those movies were mega-hits. Now an interesting side note to that is, Speed and Seven weren’t just hits. They were both out-of-left-field hits. Nobody expected them to do as well as they did. I think this gave The Ten a hidden advantage in that it didn’t have to be as good as a normal spec since the implication was that Hollywood people didn’t understand why these types of scripts did well. In other words, if those two movies undeservedly became monster hits, why couldn’t this one? Anyway, if you put all those things together, you have the ingredients for a monster spec sale.
When you get into the all time top-selling scripts, there are some discrepancies as to the actual order. That’s because numbers have been distorted through the years and there are provisions attached to some of the numbers. For example, I guess Steinbeck’s Point Of View is the biggest sale of all time at 6.5 million, but something like two million of that was provisional, based on the script going into production, and three million of that included potential future deals? M. Night was paid in the vicinity of 7.5 million for The Village (yeah, I know) but a good portion of that was his directing fee. The number one top selling spec (not including inflation) of all time seems to be Deja Vu, which sold for 5 million dollars. Surprisingly, there are only about 30 scripts that have sold for 2 million dollars or more, and a lot of them have been turned into movies, leaving me with less choices than I’d like, and forcing me to dip into the scripts that “only” sold for like a million dollars. Pft.
Now we’ve reviewed big-selling specs before. We did a week last year where we reviewed the top selling specs of 2008. Here are those five reviews…
The Low Dweller
Pierre Pierre
The Long Run
Wedding Banned
Dan Minter: Badass For Hire
We’ve also reviewed million dollar seller The Cheese Stands Alone and 2 million dollar sale River Road (The Cross). I haven’t been able to get my hands on some older unproduced specs though, so if you have Bad Dog (3 mil), Alpha (1.5), The Worst Man (2.5), The Arrangement (2 mil), or Vito (2 mil), please e-mail them to me and maybe we can do a second week of this in the near future.
We’re going to start out with one of the monster spec sale’s little brothers. “Smoke and Mirrors” brought in the eensy teensy amount of just one million dollars, but for those who remember, this was a heavily coveted script whose bidding war made headlines. So scroll down and check out Roger’s review. It definitely kicks Big Money Week off with a bang.
Here’s Roger with the first review of Big Money Week! To say he gets things started is an understatement. I’m going to have to read this thing!
Genre: Historical Adventure
Premise: The reclusive “Father of Modern Magic”, Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, is called upon by the French government to debunk an Algerian sorcerer who is using his feats of magic to spearhead a civil war.
About: Penned back in ’94, this script was part of a fierce bidding war that involved Disney, Tri-Star and Steven Spielberg (people really really wanted this script). Andy Vajna’s Cinergi Pictures bought the script for $1 million dollars (1.45 million adjusted for inflation). Not only was Disney able to land Frank Marshall as director, but Sean Connery was attached to the lead role. Unfortunately, Sean Connery demanded rewrite after rewrite until Frank Marshall was pulled off the project by Paramount’s Sherry Lansing because he was under contract to direct Congo (why Lord, why?). Kevin Brodie (A Dog of Flanders) was attached to direct and the project lingered in development hell until January 2000, when Catherine Zeta-Jones’ production company, Zeta Films, acquired the rights to the script. Naturally, Michael Douglas was attached to the lead role, with Catherine starring opposite him as Robert-Houdin’s wife.
Writers: Lee and Janet Scott Batchler. The husband-and-wife team who worked on Batman Forever. Other projects include My Name is Modesty and Pompeii, an epic drama telling the famous story of the destruction of that city. They also wrote a project for Paramount called Alpha, a fast-paced adventure about a team of military working dogs and their trainers. Here we have “Smoke and Mirrors”, an Original Screenplay by Lee Batchler and Janet Scott Batchler.
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[x] genius
What I learned: This script is suspenseful as hell. But why was it so suspenseful? Every time Robert-Houdin performed, someone’s life was on the line. That’s the simple genius behind the trick. Every task your protagonist has to perform should have high stakes. And as the protagonist completes each task and moves on to the next, crank up the stakes. The stakes in “Smoke and Mirrors” have a clear ascendant progression: (1) Darcy’s life, (2) Robert-Houdin’s life (3) and collectively, the lives of Robert-Houdin, Colette, Darcy and all of the Legionnaires. Here’s the other lesson: Every overarching thematic conflict in this script, Science vs. Magic, God vs. Allah, France vs. Kabyle, Civilized Man vs. the Savage, is boiled down to the two characters who come from each side. Robert-Houdin and the sorcerer, Zoras Al Khatim. Their intimate battle of wills puts two entire nations at stake. By making your characters symbols of bigger conflicts, you widen scope of your story. It’s how you can tell an epic story but at the same time make it personal and intimate. There are many other lessons and tricks to be learned in this script, you only have to look closer to discover them.
One of the changes I want to make this year is to add a theme week every month. For example, last year we had Horror Week, Biggest Sales of 2008 Week, Repped Week. I want to do that once a month this time around. So if you guys have any theme suggestions, feel free to offer them in the Comments Section. Next week we’re going to be tackling 5 scripts that sold for a lot of money. Since most of them are at least a few years old, script links should be available. But swoop in quick just in case. And if you don’t know when I post, get yourself onto my Twitter and Facebook feeds (upper right hand corner of page). :)
