Genre: Period
Premise: In the dead of winter in the middle of the U.S. Civil War, a young man tries to hide the gold he stole from rogue soldiers who have taken over his remote house.
About: With 13 votes, The Isolate Thief was one of the top 2009 Black List scripts. Lefler has no previous credits or sales and has worked as an editor for the past five years.
Status of this draft: Unknown
Status of project: Development
Writer: Kevin Lefler
Details: 100 pages (undated)

Dread.

What does it mean? To know that something inescapable is charging towards you. That no matter what you do, you will not be able to avoid it. We do such amazing jobs at eluding the things that scare us, that put fear in us, that when something comes along that we can’t evade, it’s one of the most helpless feelings in the world. The Isolate Thief is about dread.

It’s the Civil War era. Edmund Horn is a thoughtful but beaten down 21 year old who maintains an outpost in the middle of nowhere. It’s the kind of place you can live years in and never see another soul. Edmund’s parents used to live here too. But both of them have died, buried in the backyard. This place is too full of memories now, and Edmund plans to leave it once and for all, heading to San Francisco so he can watch the ships from the Far East dock in the bay.

Unfortunately a toothless gravedigger nicknamed Burial Perry comes snooping around, looking for some clothes and food to get him to the next outpost. This man’s a denigrate, the kind of guy you wouldn’t trust to hold a deck of cards. He ties Edmund up so he can take what he pleases. But when he sees that Edmund isn’t a threat, he becomes harmless, just another straggler looking to survive. What isn’t harmless, however, is the gang of murderers disguised as Union soldiers he has following him. It turns out Perry knows the whereabouts of some hidden treasure, and the terrifying Fiddler John Good will do anything to get it.

When Fiddler’s gang does catch up to Perry and he doesn’t divulge where the gold be, he’s eliminated from life, and it seems like the conflict is over. Fiddler asks Edmund if they can use his house for a few days while they get ready for the next leg of their journey. Edmund obliges, and a seemingly cordial dance begins whereby Edmund plays host to these men as they prepare to move on. But as each day goes by, it becomes clear that Fiddler doesn’t really need anything else here, and that provokes Edmund to wonder what it is Fiddler wants from him.

What Fiddler’s not telling Edmund, is that he thinks he has the gold. And not unlike his title, he’s playing Edmund to get him to disclose some clues about where the treasure is hidden. The problem is, Fiddler’s not 100% sure Edmund has the gold. And for that matter, neither are we. These multiple mysteries have us doing our own investigation as we desperately try to figure out the truth before it’s told to us. It eventually becomes clear, that whether Fiddler finds the gold or not, he’s killing Edmund, and that adds a whole ‘nother layer of complexity to the story.

This aspect is what makes The Isolate Thief so good. We feel the dread that Edmund feels, as he begins to realize that these man plan to murder him. At the same time, he must keep up appearences that he doesn’t suspect anything, since the longer they don’t know he’s onto him, the longer he’ll stay alive. It’s like being in the back of a roller coaster as you’re going up the first hill. You hear the “click click click” “click click click” as you go up higher and higher, until you’re wondering how much higher it can possibly go, since you’re already all the way up – then out of nowhere, you’re THRUST over the edge. We never know when we’re going over that edge with Fiddler, and it scares the crap out of us.

The only problem with this kind of story is that it breeds passive protagonists. And Edmund is indeed passive. But whether that actually affects the enjoyment of the screenplay is up for debate. Most readers will spot a passive protagonist and blindly scream, “Bad! Passive protagonist equals bad! Change now!” But there are a few types of stories where it works and I’m thinking this could be one of them. I was so concerned whether Edmund was going to make it out alive or not I just wasn’t thinking about his passiveness. But for better or worse, the studio system likes characters who take charge at some point. And I’m sure they’ll make that argument here.

For a script that starts nice and slow, this ends with a bang. Really liked it.

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

What I learned: This is another great example of how to use subtext — maybe the best example I’ve seen all year. Nearly every conversation in The Isolate Thief is about something seemingly mundane, yet carries a deeper meaning underneath. There’s this great scene late in the script where Fiddler is innocently explaining to Edmund how to use a gun, yet you know that what he’s actually saying is that he’s going to kill Edmund at some point. There are tons of scenes like this here, all very well crafted.

This is the official announcement for the Logline Contest Top 25, a free contest I held that started with nearly 1000 logline entries, and is now down to the Top 25 scripts. To catch up on the contest, go here to read the original post, and here to read the Top 100 loglines.

Well, here they are, the Top 25! I’m wondering if I shouldn’t start a whole new thread titled, “Readers agree you may as well have not entered Carson’s contest if you didn’t have a thriller, a comedy, or a sci-fi script,” because I know those comments are coming. I don’t really know what to say except that I never discounted any script that wasn’t in one of those genres. These scripts are simply the ones that spoke to me. It should be noted however, that comedy and thrillers accounted for about 65% of the entries (with comedies around 50%), so the genres I picked weren’t ridiculously off from the entry percentages. I hope you’ll all keep in mind that the contest didn’t cost anyone anything and was as much a learning experience for me as it was for you. So please try to keep the comments celebratory, as I want this to be about commending the people who got through, not forming conspiracy theories about the people who didn’t.

As for those of you who didn’t make the Top 25? Keep your chin up. Just because I didn’t fall in love with your script doesn’t mean somebody else won’t. God knows people disagree with my reviews all the time. Also, choosing whether an entire script was good based off the first 10 pages wasn’t easy, especially when it was a slower story. As a result, it was harder to judge those types of scripts. I actually narrowed the field down to 38, and then had to make some tough choices from there. So you may have been one of the unfortunate late cuts. I can honestly say that outside of, maybe, four scripts, the level of writing here was really good. Nobody embarrassed themselves, and I think that speaks a lot to the kind of people who visit the site. Good writers understand that they need to read other scripts to get better. Bad writers tend to think they know it all. So I’m not surprised that the people who entered the contest knew what they were doing.

Now for a bit of a surprise. Anticipating that some entrants wouldn’t make the deadline for the 10-page round, I came up with a list of about 30 alternates to fill the unused slots. After thinking it over, however, I decided to expand that list to 75 loglines I thought had potential. I would then give 3 of those scripts slots in the final round (so instead of it being a Top 25, it’s actually now a Top 28). Although some might cry foul, I think it was the right thing to do because there were a lot of loglines that had potential but weren’t convincing enough to make the Top 100. I wanted to give some of those a chance. The top 3 from that list are noted as the “Second Tier” winners at the bottom. I want to thank Kristy at MSP and Colin J. Louro (Colin’s blog) for helping me whittle those scripts down, as I didn’t have enough time to do it myself.

I’d like to wrap it up with a few things. If you see yourself on the list, you have until Monday January 11th, at 11:59pm Pacific Time to send me a PDF of your entire script (this is one more week than was originally planned). If you are one of the alternates listed below, you will be notified on January 12th if you’ve made the final round dependent on someone dropping out). You will then have until Monday, January 18th at 11:59pm Pacific Time to send me your script. So I’d advise the alternates – particularly the high alternates – to start work on your scripts now, as I anticipate at least a couple of people not making the deadline. Finally, if you are one of the finalists here and would like your e-mail listed so that managers/agents/producers can contact you, please e-mail me at Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Congratulations to everyone who made it. I look forward to reading your scripts! :)

Comedy
The Rules of Cusack by Josh Penn Boris (Toluca Lake, CA) – John Cusack helps a young man find love using advice from his films. However, problems arise when Cusack falls for the same girl and his perceptions of movie life and real life begin to blur.
E-mail: penn17@gmail.com

Thriller
Silent Night by James Luckard (Los Angeles) – With a brutal serial killer stalking Nazi Germany at Christmas, the Berlin detective on the case gets reluctantly partnered with a Jewish criminal psychologist released from Auschwitz to profile the killer.
E-mail: jamesluckard at yahoo dot com

Comedy
Humans! By Josh Eanes (South Carolina) – In a world populated by sentient zombies, an outbreak of humans threatens the lives of two ordinary zombie youths, as does an increasingly chaotic military response.

Comedy
Couples by Edward Ruggiero (Connecticut) – The friendships and marriages of three couples are tested after they share a group sex experience while vacationing together.

Comedy
The Man With One Arm by Stephen Fingleton (London) – A struggling filmmaker gets funding for his long-cherished spaghetti western, but is forced to make it in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
E-mail: stephen@driverfilms.com

Comedy
Short Term Forecast by Brad Sorensen (Ottawa) – After discovering a fax machine that can send and receive messages one day into the future, an impossibly inaccurate weather man struggles for career advancement while trying to maintain the space/time continuum.
E-mail: bradbeingbrad@gmail.com

Coming-of-Age
Fast Money by Angelle Haney Gullett (Los Angeles) – A young girl with a gift for numbers struggles to stay in private school and pull her family out of poverty by taking her first job – as the accountant for her neighborhood drug dealer.
E-mail: angelle.haneygullett@gmail.com

Romantic Comedy
Two Compatible by Zach Hillesland & Kieran Piller – Two genetically related test-tube babies – with two radically different sets of parents – meet in college and start dating, unaware that they are brother and sister.
E-mail: zhillesland@gmail.com

Comedy
Get Motivated by Stephen Hoover – When a company motivational camping trip turns into a life and death struggle, a put-upon underling takes action and leads an uprising against his oppressive boss. THE OFFICE meets LORD OF THE FLIES.
E-mail: dontlookbaxter@yahoo.com

Science Fiction/Adventure
Lazarus The Renegade by Bryn Owen (Glasgow) – A man awakens after five years in a coma to discover the Earth has been conquered by an oppressive alien race.
E-mail: lazarus.script@googlemail.com

Horror/Comedy
Oh Never, Spectre Leaf! By C. Ryan Kirkpatrick and Chad Musick (South Carolina) – After a freak plane crash, an awkward teenage boy must enlist the help of a sexually frustrated dwarf, a smokin’ hot cyborg, and an idiot in a bunny suit to defeat the Nocturnal Wench Everlasting and restore sunlight to the bizarre land of Spectre Leaf.
E-mail: flanagancrk@aol.com

Thriller
Hypoxia by Daniel Silk – A woman under Witness Protection awakens on a 747 to discover the pilots and passengers unconscious, the plane depressurized and masked men hunting her. With oxygen and fuel rapidly depleting, she must grapple with surrendering herself to save the 242 people on board.
E-mail: danielsilk85@gmail.com

Comedy
Is that your wife in that celebrity sex tape? By Kevin Via – An insecure husband discovers a celebrity sex tape starring his soccer mom-wife and a rock star.
E-mail: k70via@aol.com

Action
Thorne by Michael Sposito – A lonely, tormented physicist hijacks the world’s most advanced particle collider traveling back in time to save the mother he lost in the 9/11 attacks, but attempts to warn her alert the hijackers to his presence and threaten the lives of millions unborn.
E-mail: msposito_2000@yahoo.com

Thriller
Louisiana Blood by Mike Donald (Oxfordshire, UK) – When five victims of JACK THE RIPPER turn up in a swamp more than a century after their deaths, thousands of miles from the crime scene, an English Detective and a Louisiana Sheriff form an unlikely duo to unravel the ultimate conspiracy and reveal the Rippers true identity.

Sci-Fi
The Alien Diaries by Glenn J. Devlin (Arizona) – While appraising old and rare books at a restored colonial plantation, a book collector stumbles across a series of diaries that chronicle an alien visitation in 1781.
E-mail: gjdevlin@gmail.com

Comedy
Killer Parties by Ben Bolea and Joe Hardesty (Los Angeles) – In the frozen Alaskan tundra, where the sun rarely rises, four best friends struggle against the most terrifying experience of their young lives…graduation.

Comedy
Tasteless by Adam Conway – A world renowned taste tester/food critic loses his sense of taste and struggles to discover who he is once his one defining characteristic is gone.
E-mail: andydufrene2003@yahoo.com

Thriller
Volatile by William C. Martell (Los Angeles) – Eddy lost everything: his job, his house, his wife. Spends his final unemployment check drinking, wakes up with fresh stitches. Stolen kidney? Implanted bomb. Anonymous caller gives him six one hour tasks:
Steal a car, steal a suit, steal a gun… assassinate executives from the company that fired him!
E-mail: wcmartell@scriptsecrets.net

Paranormal Thriller
Destination Yesterday by Dexter E. Williams (North Carolina) – A Sacramento businessman discovers – through information provided by a mysterious woman – that his recurring nightmares of a tragic plane crash could be repressed memories of a previous life.

Mockumentary/Comedy
Bible Con by Ashley F. Miller – Comic Con for Christians — goes straight to hell when Jesus and Mary Magdalene fall in love, the keynote speaker turns out to be an atheist, and the event is besieged by DaVinci Code fans.
E-mail: ashleyfmiller@gmail.com

Thriller
Synapse by Matthew Sinclair-Foreman – During a brain operation, a man has an out of body experience in which he witnesses a murder in the hospital. Debilitated by neurological post-op side effects, he must catch the killer before his investigation turns him into the next victim.
E-mail: sinclair.foreman@gmail.com

Sci-Fi
Antarctic by Neil Dave (Los Angeles) – When an international team of scientists explore a cavern hidden deep beneath an Antarctic lake they discover an organism that predates biological life.
E-mail: floaton@gmail.com

Comedy
For Your Eyes Only by Mukilan Thangamani – On the eve of a career-defining product launch, a self-centred, misanthropic, food researcher finds her social and professional life turned upside down after the accidental leak of a salacious home video.
E-mail: mukilan.thangamani@gmail.com

Dark Sci-Fi Thriller
Elysium by Fredrik Agetoft & Magnus Westerberg
The world’s first in-orbit spa is on it’s maiden voyage, loaded with celebrities expecting the pampering of a lifetime, when all communications are lost and everyone on board has to work together to stay alive in the desert of space and reveal the dark mystery behind what has happened.
E-mail: vadsomhelst@agetoft.com

1) (Action/Thriller) Ground Work by Patrick C. Taylor (Virginia) – His flight from LA to NYC canceled in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, an Arab-American hitman must travel across the country to complete a job, facing the most hostile environment possible for an Arab with a gun and a guilty conscience.
E-mail: thekeenguy@aol.com

2) (Sci-Fi/Drama/Comedy) A Constant Variable by Chris Rodgers (Utah) – A quantum physics professor finds himself on the outside of his own life, looking in, when he time travels twenty-four hours into the future and gets stuck there.
E-mail: podger7777@hotmail.com

3) (Comedy) High School Hero by Chris Fennimore – When a former high school football star on the brink of middle age can’t catch a break in life; he sneaks back into high school by claiming to have Rapid Aging Disorder in the misguided hope of reliving his glory days on and off the gridiron.

4) (Drama/Suspense) Chasing Hope by Miriam Adams-Washington – After finding a captivating old photo of the grandmother she never knew, an urban teen journeys to the Deep South for answers and stumbles upon family secrets of forbidden love, lies and a fifty year old unsolved murder mystery.
E-mail: miriamadamswashington_01@yahoo.com

5) (Suspense Thriller) Just Like Jesse James by Tim McGregor – Hearing of a folktale about outlaw treasure buried on the family farm, four cousins take up the hunt but the closer they get to the gold, the more each struggles to trust the others.

6) (Drama) Aftermath by Jared Waine – After a giant monster attack on Miami, three disparate people- a retired sailor, a burnt-out virologist, and a torn rescue worker- deal with love and loss amongst the ruins.
E-mail: violator544@hotmail.com

7) (Contained Thriller) Brake by Tim Mannion (Connecticut) – Trapped inside the trunk of a moving car, a newly-hired secret service agent must figure out if his kidnapping is part of a training exercise or an impending terrorist attack.
E-mail: timothymannion@gmail.com

Comedy
Frank Vs. God by Stewart Schill – When his home is destroyed by a tornado, and the Insurance Company informs him that the claim falls under the ‘Act of God’ exclusion in his policy, David Frank decides to sue God himself for damages, beginning a hilarious and soulful odyssey to a surprising final judgment.
E-mail: stewartschill@att.net

Comedy
Roanoke Jamestown: American Patriot by Donnie and Clint Clark (Ohio) – The untold story of one of America’s founding fathers, Roanoke Jamestown, and how he got deleted from history.
E-mail: dclark0699@gmail.com

Romantic Comedy
Make Me A Match by Andrew Bumstead – When a hopeless female mortal proves to be impervious to Cupid’s arrows, Cupid takes on a mortal disguise in order to convince her to fall in love – the problem is, Cupid doesn’t know a thing about real love.
E-mail: phillip_whitfield@msn.com

So how’s the future of cinema shaping up?

Ummm…

Don’t have a concrete answer for you. But I will say this. It’s a lot more shapely today than it was yesterday.

Watching Avatar felt like the first time you had ice cream. Or the first time you tasted cherry coke. There were times where I had to scoot back and go, “Where the fuck am I? What the hell is going on?” Whatever my final opinion of the film was – and I’ll be honest with you, I’m still not sure – there’s no questioning the fact that this theater visit was a completely new experience. And how often do you go to the movies and feel something new these days? Not that often.

People were calling this Dances with Smurfs, or whatever clever name they were coming up with. The point was, this was supposedly the exact same story as Dances With Wolves. Well good for me because I never saw Dances With Wolves (I will never EVER see a 3 hour movie with Kevin Costner in it. Ever.). So I didn’t have to worry about wolves or dancing. Instead, I got to watch what was, for me, a unique story unfold. Using clones of the creatures they were trying to excavate in order to understand the natives better definitely felt a little “90s” in its conception (not surprising since Cameron came up with this idea back in 93 I believe) but once we kicked into gear, I really liked it. I was actually so into it – and by “it,” I mean Pandora – that I started getting aggravated every time we’d wake up back at the Marine base. Being with the Na’vi was way more interesting, so I wished we could’ve stayed there the whole time. This brought up one of my big complaints with the film. Which is that basically there were only two locations. The marine base and the forest. Despite the grandiosity of the film, I actually felt like it was quite localized because of this. Cold hard steel or lush green forest. Wished there had been a way to mix it up more. But as for the love story – the key to the film – I thought Cameron did an amazing job. The guy gets knocked as a writer but that’s because most people focus on his occasionally clumsy dialogue. He actually understands structure and emotion better than most writers out there. He knows when you can slow down the script for ten minutes to just focus on your two main characters. Many writers/directors screw that up.

The CGI was definitely a weakness for the film. I bet if you cornered Cameron he would even admit so. From the very first moment when Worthington’s avatar gets up and starts walking around, the movements didn’t look natural, and the skin looked cartooney. Then when he runs outside, the movements looked even more unnatural. There were shots here and there where the creatures looked real, but for the most part they didn’t, and it did take me out of the film several times. The good news is that the Zoe what’s her name’s performance (the main female Na’vi) was really good. She totally convinced me that her character was real and thank God she did because let’s be honest : Sam Worthington is about as average as they come. From his monotone delivery to the strain you hear in the back of his throat anytime he’s forced to emote, he is barely serviceable as an actor (and gets by by the nick of his skin here).

This is where Cameron became not just the king of our world, but of Pandora’s. He obviously put a lot of thought into this and I absolutely loved the idea of a connection between the people and the animals and the earth. The trilly connector things that everyone had was such a perfect visual way to sell this point. From how you connected to the animals, to how you connected with the plants…it just felt obvious. So much so that when that fucking tree got shot down, I actually *felt sadness* *for a tree!!!* But what this ultimately did, was it made the love for these two feel bigger than ever. You felt a love not only between them, but between them, the rest of their people, the animals, the planet, everything. This was set up just right in the beginning, when the Zoe Na’vi gets mad at Worthington for having to kill a bunch of animals to save him. Cameron took such a gamble here with how far out he went, betting the house you’d come with him, you just have to admire him for it. I mean, if it didn’t work, it would’ve been a spectacular failure. We haven’t seen someone take that kind of chance in sci-fi since the original Star Wars.

Three-dee. I came into this about as skeptical as one could possibly be regarding the technology that’s supposedly going to save the movie industry. I left feeling mixed about it. Here’s the thing, when the first 3-D stuff starts hitting you, it’s really cool. It’s not perfect because there’s a lack of sharpness due to the way the glasses work. But it was definitely a new experience. However, once you start getting into the movie, the eyes do what they’re trained to do, which is to adjust. Once they adjust, it’s like you’re not watching 3-D anymore. What I mean is, you never go, “Ooooh, that’s such cool 3-D!” It’s just another set of moving images. I think part of the problem is that Cameron so obviously didn’t want to go for any cheap 3-D moments, that the use of the technology almost didn’t seem necessary. In the end, I didn’t say, “I have to go see another 3-D movie.” I did say, “That was neat. But unless another big time director is making a 3-D film, I ain’t paying for the 3-D version.”

I wish nobody had told me that the ending 30 minute battle was so amazing, because I went into it expecting to see shit I’ve never seen before in my life. Instead, I saw a finale that wasn’t even the best sci-fi finale of the year (that distinction goes to District 9). I’m still kinda torn about it, because I wanted to like it so bad. But there wasn’t even a single “money shot” in that final battle, like, say, when the mech machine catches the missile in D9. And even though I just propped up Cameron’s writing skills, he definitely got lazy here. The vague indication that destroying the sacred tree would somehow end the war felt thin to me. I wish he would’ve tried a little harder.

But despite my problems and misgivings, Avatar is undeniably an experience that stays with you. The sum of its faulty parts is a groundbreaking whole, and I can’t help but feel like I just saw what a real alien world looked like. I took a trip to Pandora, and it was awesome.

[x] impressive

Avatar scriptment: Avatar

What I learned: There are some things you can’t write. No matter how hard you try there are simply moments that are impossible to convey on the page. There’s a moment in Avatar where Worthington’s Avatar and the female Avatar are flying on these dragon things for the first time, dipping and diving in and around trees and mountains and they’re glancing at each other, smiling, and the music’s swelling, and it’s this shared experienced between them, and between the filmmaker and the audience, that I can’t imagine anybody being able to convey on paper. It’s just so unique to the medium of film.

Genre: True Story/Biopic
Premise: The true life story of a man with multiple personality disorder who pleaded insanity in three rape cases back in the 1970s.
About: Titanic director James’ Cameron’s treatment of the true life story of Billy Milligan. Supposedly, when this looked like it was going to be a go movie, Milligan claims to have taught Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, John Cusack, and Christian Slater how to accurately portray someone with multiple personality disorder. One wonders if he was speaking with the real actors, or if they had also become characters in his head.
Writer: James Cameron
Status: Dead
Details: 139 freaking pages.

Taking a break from The Black List today to give a little love to James Cameron. Tomorrow marks his first feature directorial effort in over ten years. And hence, we shall take a look at an old unproduced script of his, “Crowded Room.”

I can’t tell you how excited I was when I watched The Hollywood Reporter’s meeting of directors series that had Katheryn Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino, Jason Reitman, Peter Jackson, James Cameron, and Lee Daniels. Watching four of the directors I respect most chit chat as if they were hanging out at the local gym was better than 90% of the movies I saw this year. But the biggest gift was James Cameron’s response when asked how long he plans to direct for. I’d always assumed, since Cameron went AWOL after Titanic, that maybe he wasn’t all that into directing. Well it turns out I was wrong. Cameron divulged that the whole reason he went off the “deep end” (so to speak) was because he knew he wouldn’t be able to endure all that underwater stuff when he was older. Since he knew he could direct until he was 80, he decided to save that aspect of his career for later. He actually says that he’ll probably die on set! Hooray! Since, in my opinion, Cameron is the greatest big-budget director in the world (with no one else even close), this is about the happiest news I’ve come across in awhile.

So getting back on track here, in celebration of the release of Avatar, I thought it would be nice to take a look at one of Cameron’s older scripts, a little known project called “Crowded Room.” Crowded Room, unfortunately, doesn’t consist of any sci-fi elements, but is rather the true story of Billy Milligan, a man with multiple-personality disorder who raped 3 Ohio State college students in the 1970s, then pled innocent by reason of insanity, stating that it was one of his other personalities who did the raping, not him. I guess this was the case that began the end of accountability, huh?

This script is a bizarre mixed bag that is so clumsy in its execution, it makes me wonder just how interested James Cameron was in telling the story. The script starts off wonderfully, with us jumping between the multiple rape victims’ account of the rapes. Each one was methodical, with Billy catching them in the parking lot, bringing them to a secluded location, making them undress, reading them a poem, raping them, then taking them out to lunch.

It’s intense, it’s horrifying, it’s mysterious. During the accounts, Billy is said to have mentioned “the others” and some kind of “brotherhood,” so you’re thinking this has a lot of interesting places it can go. But interesting places to go it does not. What happens next is a brief snapshot of Billy’s trial, where he wins the case on the insanity plea, is then sent to a mental hospital for rehabilitation, and then, on page 40, we’re inexplicably thrust back to the beginning of Billy’s life, as an 8 year old boy, with a clueless mom and an abusive step father.

What follows is a bumpy reflection of – I guess – how Billy created these personalities.The people in his head consist of a Slavic man who reads and writes in perfect Serbo-Croation, a refined Englishman, a petty thief, an escape artist, an angry lesbian (supposedly the one who did the raping – not sure how that works). All in all, there are over 20 different personalities living inside of Billy. Now I know you’re probably reading this and going, “That sounds pretty cool.” But the problem is, none of these personalities is ever utilized in an interesting way. They occasionally pop up and start bitching about their situation. We hear a lot *about* what they can do. But as far using each of their unique traits to craft a story…no, we never get anything even close to that.

In fact, all we do is go back and forth between these lame points in Billy’s life (in one portion he’s involved in drugs! oh no!) occasionally jumping inside Billy’s mind where these personalities argue about how to keep their existence a secret from Billy. There’s absolutely no form to the story. We’re never given any clues as to where it’s going. And because of that, Crowded Room is as aimless as the mind of its main character.

I guess I’d understand the jump back to Billy’s earlier life if they left us with a cliff-hanger as to whether Billy would win the case or not – the implication being that we needed to go back and understand how Billy obtained this personalities in order to decide whether we wanted to root for his acquittal or not – but since his verdict is already decided, we leave that time without any sense of suspense whatsoever. After this long arduous flashback that takes nearly 80 pages, we come back to the present where a second trial seemingly pops out of nowhere, making an even stronger case for leaving us with a court cliffhanger, since we ended up coming back to the court anyway.

I wasn’t even clear on what this second case was about, but to be honest, by this point I was checked out of the story. There was just nothing interesting going on.

As long as we’re talking about cases, Crowded Room is another case for why I don’t think biopics work. People’s lives don’t fit into the three act structure. Ever. For that reason, they always feel clumsy and wrong, and because you must honor the truth of the subject’s life, you consistently miss out on some of the more intriguing opportunities the story can take advantage of. For instance, there are a few personalities in Billy that don’t seem to stem from logic. How does one of his personalities know how to read, write, and speak in a completely different language? How does one of his characters have better escape skills than Houdini? How can one of his personalities be left-handed? There is just some great potential to explore there, particularly if you jumped into the ream of the supernatural and began to ask, “What if this is more than just multiple personality disorder? What if the people inside his head are actually real?” That’s a movie I’d wanna see. Instead, we just get a bunch of cops and lawyers musing, “Did you realize that one of his personalities is left-handed?”

I don’t know. This started out great, but went south quickly. I’m still seeing Avatar this weekend though dammit. Thank God for present day Cameron.

Note: You can hear more opinions on this script by going over to Mystery Man’s site. He and some friends broke down the script themselves (I have not read the breakdowns so I don’t know if they liked or disliked the script).

Script link: No link

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

What I learned: Um, biopics suck? Let’s see. What else? Cameron has an interesting style of writing. He’ll write these huge 10-line paragraph chunks that drive readers crazy, but then he’ll have like ten pages of just dialogue, so you forgive him. I’ll tell you what drives me crazy. It’s writers who add little mini-paragraphs between every line of dialogue (or even every couple of lines). I understand the intention is to give us a little insight into what’s happening in the scene. But it seriously interrupts the flow of the read. For example.

LISA
This pie is amazing.

She licks her fork seductively.

JOE
Thanks. It’s a special recipe.

He cleans off his plate.

LISA
So what are we doing tomorrow?

She walks over and joins him at the sink.

JOE
Ehh, maybe go to a movie?

He gives her a quick kiss.

AHHHHHHHHH!!! I guarantee if you write like this the reader will just stop reading your line descriptions and go straight to the dialogue. So you might as well save space and make your script look cleaner anyway by not including any of this nonsense. Only add the action lines if they’re absolutely necessary.

Genre: Biopic
Premise: The life story of chess legend Bobby Fischer leading up to his historic world championship match against Boris Spassky.
About: With 17 votes, this ended up number 13 on the 2009 Black List. Steve Knight, the writer, wrote 2007’s gritty “Eastern Promises.”
Update: David Fincher is now said to be directing this.
Writer: Steve Knight
Status: Unknown.
Details: 123 pages – August 24^th, 2009 – FIRST DRAFT (because this is a first draft, there have likely been significant changes to the script, potentially addressing the issues I bring up)
First of all, in making sure I didn’t step on anyone’s Black List buzz, I had to read five really bad Black List scripts just to get to one I could tolerate. I guess I was a little spoiled reading The Voices and Desperados, cause I’m here to tell ya, they ain’t all like that. Luckily, chess legend Bobby Fisher came along, the myth who inspired the delightful little film, “Searching For Bobby Fischer,” (with a pre-Morpheus Lawrence Fishburne!). But this first draft feels more like a game of checkers, as Knight is clearly still exploring the possibilities here. It’s a bit like taking a museum tour in a helicopter. It’s clumsy and messy and not the best way to see things, but there are wonderful things to see nonetheless.

Bobby Fischer is cut from the same cloth as John Nash (A Beautiful Mind) and Howard Hughes (The Aviator), a brazen paranoid schizophrenic who manages his delusions by escaping into the world of chess. Even as a kid, he was an oddball, losing himself in self-played chess matches instead of making friends and playing “real sports.” What would later become a central force in instigating his delusions, Bobby’s openly communist mother repeatedly tried to get him diagnosed as “crazy.”

But Bobby’s mastery of chess eventually led to him becoming the youngest American champion ever, at 15 years old. We don’t spend that much time watching Bobby’s meteoric rise to fame here, but rather focus on two key events. The 1969 “Good Will” chess tournament between the United States and Russia. And one of the most famous sporting events in American History: The 1972 World Championship between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer.

Now a lot of you youngsters may be asking, “Why the hell did anybody care about chess?” Well here’s the thing, back in the 60s and 70s when America and The Soviet Union wanted to blow each other to pieces, there were only a few areas where they could prove their dominance over one another. One of them was sports (in the Olympics) and the other, what many considered to be the more important venue, since its application implied superior intelligence, was chess. For this reason, there was no such thing as a “friendly” chess match between the United States and Russia. It always carried a level of subtext. Whoever won was smarter, which, by association, made their country “smarter.”

The problem was, for as long as anybody could remember, nobody came close to challenging the Russians in this arena. That is, until Bobby Fischer showed up on the scene. The crazy wild-eyed swing-for-the-fences vagabond had more raw talent in his pinky toe than the entire Russian team put together. But his inner demons – his schizophrenia, his strained relationship with his mother – consistently hampered his ability to maximize his talent. Yet it was these deficiencies that turned him into such a superstar. You never knew what was going to happen when Bobby Fischer sat down to play chess.

Although the Good Will match is kinda fun, the draw here is the final act, and more specifically the 1972 World Championships. It’s here where Bobby did the impossible and defeated world champion Boris Spassky. The well-documented match was mired in controversy when, having gone down 2-0 to Spassky, Fisher walked away and refused to play unless they moved the rest of the match into a back room where it was quieter and he could concentrate. After some debate, Spassky agreed to the move, and Fischer went on to defeat him. Many people call Bobby’s demand one of the greatest chess “moves” in history, but for me, it left me feeling conflicted about the man. The lesson seemed to be, “If things aren’t going your way, whine and throw a tantrum until they do.” Could you imagine the Celtics being down 50-40 to the Lakers at halftime, then refusing to continue unless they moved the second half to a local high school? Is that really a heroic move?

And that’s the biggest challenge with writing Fischer’s story. You can see Knight struggling with it the whole way through. Fischer is so complicated, so all over the place, that it becomes almost impossible to define him with a single trait, that “fatal flaw” you traditionally assign characters in a dramatic story. For example, in one scene, we’re told that Bobby studies how the Russians play 18 hours a day. Then later on, when somebody points out to Bobby that Boris Spassky is “…up at five every morning to study. Goes to the ocean at six to swim then back to study.” Bobby replies with, “I have a routine too. Stand in the rain with a hooker. Wake up. Win.” So which is it? Is he a relentless worker or a careless vagabond? Since you never really know, and since you never really understand Bobby, it’s hard to find sympathy for him. It’s hard to get to know him.

But one thing is undeniable. Bobby Fischer is a fascinating character. If you go over to his Wikipedia page, you’ll read all sorts of stuff about his life that’s hard to believe. The trick is finding a way to focus all these events into a story that’s easy to digest. There’s some great stuff here, but Knight clearly has a ways to go (which he very well may have in the following drafts). The key lies in staying with the Russian conflict, as I think that’s where the story shines brightest. I didn’t care much for his relationships with his sister and his mother, as they felt like biopic cliché (i.e. Will the parental figure show up at the sporting event?)

Pawn Sacrifice isn’t there yet. But I have a feeling it will be. Fischer is too interesting of a human being.

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

What I learned: Don’t be afraid to get messy in your first draft. Throw more things in there than you plan to use. Explore a relationship you didn’t initially plan to explore. You’re looking for your core here. You’re trying to find something, whether it be your theme or the heart of your story, that you can anchor your story around in subsequent drafts. It’s okay not to know that right away. I’m a big fan of outlining before you write, but I’m just as supportive of leaving that outline in the dust if you think you’ve found an interesting tangent. The point is, you can always reel it back in later.