And…you know…Happy Holidays and stuff! If you’re offended by anything I’ve just said well, um…..sorry? Anyway, I’ve decided to include a clip of my favorite Christmas song and my favorite Christmas movie (the awkwardly structured “It’s A Wonderful Life”). Enjoy.

Roger’s back! And better late than never. Just when I was worried that Christmas would go by without a review from the man, he surprises me with a magical e-mail attachment. I guess this is his gift…to all of us. It’s a Christmas Eve miracle. This will also be the last review of the week as I’ll be taking Christmas off to hang out with the family. But I may throw up a surprise post if I have a few minutes. Won’t be a review though. Anyway, Roger’s got his eyes on another Black List script. Let’s take a look.

Genre: Period, Espionage
Premise: An FBI agent is ordered to babysit Ernest Hemingway as he goes about running a motley spy ring in WWII Cuba.
About: At Warner Brothers with Johnny Depp’s Infinitum Nihil producing, The Crook Factory made the 2009 Black List with 5 votes.
Writer: Adapted by Nicholas Meyer, based upon the novel by Dan Simmons

The spy fiction of John le Carré isn’t normally the type of story that makes my dick hard, but the fiction of Ernest Hemingway has the type of prose that does. And although “The Crook Factory” ain’t about the prose (it’s a screenplay, baby, it’s about the scenes), it is about Ernest Hemingway in pre-Communist Cuba with plenty of subterfuge and the customary spy fiction shenanigans.

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: A man who possesses a time travel device uses it to go back in time to prevent an alien invasion.
About: Oh how quickly fortunes change. Chad St. John is a writer nobody had even heard of last year. Now he’s on fire. And I’m not talking about that wussy orange fire either. I’m talking the steel-melting blue type of fire. With two scripts on this year’s black list, one of them in the top 10, and a script sale just the other week which is supposed to do for Westerns what Pirates of the Carribean did for pirates (it’s called “The Further Adventures of Doc Holliday”), it’s definitely St. John’s Hollywood. The rest of us just live in it.
Status of this draft: 2nd Draft
Status of project: Development
Writer: Chad St. John
Details: 111 pages (undated)

There are times when scripts don’t get a fair shot with readers. Maybe the reader is tired. Maybe the reader got in a fight with her boyfriend. Or, worst case scenario, maybe the reader was forced to watch “Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakel.” Whatever the reason, sometimes readers open a script with the attitude of, “You better fucking impress me.” Harsh? I’d reckon so. But sweetheart, when the world’s pushing your buttons, you need a place to push back. And unfortunately, sometimes that place is work. I just saw it happen the other day in fact. I was at the supermarket and one of the cashiers – a nice portly guy in his 50s who always had a big smile on his face – had to repair a register in a closed line. One of the other workers saw him and erroneously assumed he was opening up. So he got on the P.A. and said, “Lane 5 is now open. Lane 5.” Everyone from the overflowing lines rushed into Lane 5 and this cashier flipped the fuck out. He threw up his hands and screamed, “What are you doing! I never said I was opening! How dare you! I never said that! I never said that once! GOSH!!” He then charged off like a little boy who’d just had his candy stolen and disappeared into the back room. This left the entire store in shocked silence (except for me – I had a big smile on my face because I had stayed in line and not lost my place. Heh heh, yes, I’m a sick human being). The point is, I’d never seen that man exhibit anything even close to bad behavior before. It was clearly a bad string of events that came to a head. Believe me, readers have those days too.

The reason I’m telling you this is because I remember the circumstances under which I read The Days Before. And looking back on it, I didn’t give it a fair shot. I had a ridiculous amount of scripts to read that week. And by ridiculous, I mean 30. Also, for maybe the first time in my life, I decided to buy groceries in bulk, so I had purchased over $170 worth of groceries I planned to last me for three weeks. Ten minutes after I got home, the power on my block went out. FOR TWO DAYS! This ruined nearly 80% of the food I bought. And yes, even though it’s cliché, in addition to this I was having girlfriend problems! I came into that script with a chip on my shoulder the size of Ellen Page’s forehead. Instead of inviting the writer into my home, I stuck a gun to his head. “This better be good!” Ehhhh, needless to say I don’t think I was in the right state to read The Days Before. So because everyone’s been e-mailing me asking me to review it, I decided to wipe the slate clean and start all over again. I would give St. John another chance.

So let me be the first to say: Holy f’ing mother of balls was I wrong.

This script is all types of awesome. It starts with a grizzled mess of a man, Smith, and his wise-cracking tough-as-nails wife, Riley, barreling towards the White House in a Bonneville. These two are met with the typical response one would expect plowing your car forward at 86 miles an hour towards the White House post 9/11. With lots of SWAT and Secret Service bullets. They survive the onslaught but are captured and stuck in separate interrogation rooms. What each of them tell their captors, is that they’re, you know, from the future, and they’re, you know, trying to save the planet. Their warnings are ignored and mere minutes later, big bad dragon-like alien creatures appear and start killing everyone in sight. Including our president and even Riley. It’s not easy watching your wife die. But if there’s anyone conditioned for it, it’s Smith. He’s watched her die 109 times.

Luckily, Smith jumps back in time before these things can catch him. When? Exactly one day before. The alien Blackberry device he’s stolen from these creatures only allows him to jump back one day at a time – or at least, that’s the only type of time jump he’s been able to figure out. It’s not like the thing comes with an instruction manual. Oh, and he’s been doing it. For seven years. Each day coming back and trying to warn his president, his country, his planet, that there’s an alien race ready to invade the planet and kill everyone on it.

But this time when he jumps back, it’s different. He’s amassed enough video evidence, among other things (cutting off the president’s finger after he died) to finally step up to the table with a case. And it’s a compelling one, so much so that they listen to his pleas. The thing is, there’s nothing they can do about it. These aliens are thousands of years more advanced than them. And there’s millions of them. Maybe even billions. It’d be like us jumping back in time and starting a war with the cavemen. However, using classified technology developed by the creepy Dr. Oro, they realize they can send a message back in time 15 years to tell the planet what’s going to happen. As the aliens once again – like they always do – appear in this time and start obliterating the world, the humans are able to get the message out, and Smith and Riley barely escape to jump back in time one more day…

Into a completely different world. A broken down militarized world that for 15 years has been preparing for this day, the day the aliens arrive. Every single cent that every nation has earned has been used on creating a state of the art military. Anyone not with the program, has been forgotten. The streets are Sarajevo. It’s the Third Reich. And yet it has to be. The world has been preparing to save itself, to fight back, and militarizing itself was the only option. Ain’t no giant trees making out with animals here. This is hard core live or die.

The rest of the script then focuses on the hours leading up to the invasion. And it’s beyond captivating, as we’re wondering: Can they do it? Can they actually defeat this race that regularly wipes out the entire planet within minutes? This is fucking “Aliens” times a million!

The really cool thing about this script is that it makes you think. It makes you think about what our world would be like if we spent every single available dollar on our military. It makes you think about whether we would force children to fight. Hey, sure they’re children, but this is the end of the world we’re talking about here. Might as well increase our numbers. And unlike, say, Independence Day, you’re so invested in the characters that it makes you step back and wonder what you would do. Would you cower in fear? Or would you rise to the occasion?

Are there complaints? Well…yes. Some of the over-the-top banter between Dr. Oro and Riley, who say things like, “That is one saucy piñata,” followed by “Get me down, you big Wienie!” was too much to take. “Pervy nerds. Man eating growly things. Bombs falling from the sky. This is the worst Christmas ever!” sounds more like a sitcom than an end of the world film to me. I remember that this is what bothered me so much when I first read it. I immediately thought, “This is going to be another one of those lame action movies with the wanna-be Bruce-Willis’esque action hero spouting out clever line-age. I assigned the script that label way too early, which prevented me from seeing just how much more there was here. St. John has really thought everything through in this world. And while there are holes (It’s impossible to write a time-travel movie without them) they’re minimal enough so that they don’t hurt the story.

The Days Before is a freaking sweet script. It’s “Independence Day” with a brain (and, uh, a script!). Don’t know what Warners’ plans are with this, but I’d be putting it into production today. Or, err, I mean yesterday. :)

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

What I learned: So yeah, regarding the “You better impress me” stuff. You have to remember that readers read *FOR THEIR JOB*. They’re not clearing out their day so they can read your script next to a fire with cookies and warm milk. They’re trying to make it through. That’s their job. Make it through the script remembering just enough to write cohesive coverage. This is why I tell writers they can never half-ass it. That every scene and character and story element they include has to be fucking awesome because you never know what kind of mood or situation that reader is going to be in when they sit down with your script. Assume the worst. That your reader is a bitter old man who hates movies and hates his job. If you can win him over, you can win anyone over!

If anyone knows Jack Selby, Tiller Russell or Duncan Montgomery and can get me in touch with them, please e-mail me ASAP. These guys are doing exactly the kind of thing I want Scripshadow to pioneer, which is to allow the public to interact with the development process, so that the people who will be seeing the movies, will be able to offer input on how to make those movies better. Here is their press release (from IMDB)…

Former Paypal executive Jack Selby has partnered with filmmakers Tiller Russell and Duncan Montgomery to launch Horsethief Pictures.

The interactive production, digital distribution and marketing company, which plans to release 2-3 films a year, will encourage audiences to participate in every phase of the moviemaking process from development to production, distribution and marketing.

“I am excited to be partnering with Tiller and Duncan to launch this venture at a time when the entertainment industry’s audience is transitioning to consuming content online,” said Selby. “With Horsethief, we will look to capitalize on this digital shift by creating smart, targeted digital marketing campaigns that keep audiences tuned in to high quality content.”

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.